60 years after the Belice earthquake: Gibellina chooses Virgilio Sieni's dance to build community

Gibellina, a small town in northwestern Sicily that was destroyed by a devastating earthquake in 1968 and later rebuilt as an open-air museum of contemporary art, has been named Italian Capital of Contemporary Art for 2026. To mark the occasion, the town commissioned choreographer and dancer Virgilio Sieni and his dance production center Cango to create "Cerimonia," a participatory community performance project. Over three weeks in May 2026, residents of four municipalities—Gibellina, Salemi, Santa Ninfa, and Salaparuta—along with adolescents from a recovery community, a local band, and a trio of musicians, took part in workshops led by Sieni and his team. The project culminated on May 30 with an itinerant performance that began in Piazza Joseph Beuys and ended at the Ex Church of Gesù e Maria, incorporating rubble from the earthquake as symbolic objects.

This project matters because it demonstrates how contemporary art and performance can serve as tools for community healing and identity-building in a place still marked by trauma. Gibellina’s choice to invest in participatory dance rather than a traditional exhibition underscores a growing trend in the art world toward socially engaged, process-based practices that prioritize collective experience over static objects. By involving multiple towns and diverse participants, "Cerimonia" also reinforces the idea that art can rebuild social fabric, not just physical structures, nearly sixty years after the disaster.