Starting June 12, for three weekends, an unusual collective ritual unfolds in Pavilions 17 and 18 of Reggiane Parco Innovazione. In one of the most evocative places in Reggio Emilia—the Santa Croce district—SANTA comes to life: a site-specific project that weaves together contemporary art, dance, and storytelling in a sensorial and immersive experience.

SANTA is the first chapter of the three-year project Danze dell’Utopia by the Centro Coreografico Nazionale / Aterballetto, conceived by director Gigi Cristoforetti to explore the relationship between body, space, and imagination in processes of urban regeneration.

What exactly is SANTA? A performance? A liturgy? An exhibition? A dream?
Perhaps all of these things—or perhaps none. Above all, SANTA is a passage. Through space, time, and thought.

“Contemporary art shouldn’t provide answers, but ask questions,” says curator Nicolas Ballario. “So we’d rather not give this project a formal definition: is it dance? Theatre? Music? Visual art? Prayer? It’s all of these at once, which means it’s none of them. What interests us are boundaries, no man’s lands.”

Like visitors on a tour, the audience—equipped with silent-disco headphones—is guided by music and the voice of Nicolas Ballario along a path that unfolds among choreographic actions and works by Maurizio Cattelan, one of the most renowned and provocative Italian artists on the international contemporary art scene, known for his ironic and disruptive language.

“Dance,” explains Lara Guidetti, artistic director of Compagnia Sanpapié (co-producer of SANTA with CCN/Aterballetto), “is a moving bridge, a choreographic fabric that weaves through spaces, artworks, and the bodies of spectators without ever settling. In SANTA, the performers’ bodies do not narrate—they evoke; they do not represent—they appear as fleeting visions: presences that emerge and dissolve, carrying traces of irony, beauty, cruelty, and virtuosity. It’s an unstable ritual, a journey in constant motion that invites us to lose ourselves and be transformed by the unexpected.”

The choice of Reggiane Parco Innovazione is no coincidence. This is where a virtuous example of urban regeneration is taking shape—a space where culture, innovation, and research converge. In this context, SANTA is more than an event: it is a symbolic gesture, a way of regenerating our gaze.

“We’re offering a new and experimental creative key,” says Gigi Cristoforetti, director of CCN/Aterballetto, “aimed at surprising the audience, transforming them into visitors of a social, urban, and artistic terrain vague. Thanks to Nicolas Ballario’s vision and the inclusion of Cattelan’s works, we attempt to place paradox at the center of an unclassifiable artistic experience.”

Here, the artwork is not merely to be observed—it becomes a catalyst for reinterpreting reality.

“Contemporary art has many layers of meaning,” adds Ballario. “There can be no single interpretation, which is why we’ve chosen to entrust the ‘critique’ of these powerful works to languages and disciplines that, while seemingly different, can intersect. In these spaces—so full of evocative history—we push ourselves to speak of the ‘unnameable’ in both ironic and tragic ways. To exorcise it, to stretch our imagination a little further.”

SANTA is an invitation. To disorient yourself. To look again. To believe that art can still surprise.