La Verità to recreate Dalí’s surreality in Abu Dhabi show

La Verita (The Truth), a circus theatrical produced by Switzerland-based company Compagnia Finzi Pasca uses the original painting of Spanish surrealist artist Salvador Dali as a backdrop. It will be staged in Abu Dhabi from August 21.

A performance of La Verita against the Salvadore Dali backdrop. Courtesy Compagnia Finzi Pasca

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In 1944, the Spanish surrealist artist Salvador Dalí created a massive backdrop for the ballet Mad Tristan at New York's Metropolitan Opera. The 9x15-metre scrim with Dalí's trademark dandelions, ants and crutches, found and restored by a European art collector in 2009, was finally displayed last year as part of the stage production La Verità (The Truth). Produced by the Switzerland-based Compagnia Finzi Pasca, the international touring show is devoted to Dalí's genius, with a troupe of acrobats and dancers performing aerial contortions and clowning.

Next month, Dalí's painting will accompany the La Verità troupe to Abu Dhabi for a performance. The painting is said to be inspired by the German composer and theatre director Richard Wagner's three-act 1850s musical drama Tristan & Isolde. It has two cryptic figures depicted in a barren expanse – one is robed, with a wheelbarrow protruding from its back, the other has a dandelion on its head and ants oozing over its body.

“When we first saw this work, my team and I began dreaming, like we thought Dalí must have, and tried to incorporate his world into ours,” says the director Daniele Finzi Pasca, who has written and directed shows for Cirque du Soleil, Cirque Éloize and the closing ceremony of the 2006 Winter Olympics. The show featuring this backdrop opened at Montreal’s Théâtre Maisonneuve last January. The show here will use a copy; the actual backdrop will be shown at the end. “To use the original during the show, we need a big opera theatre setting,” he explains. “For places where we do not have such a stage, we present the real one in the end.”

Pasca says they tried to interpret Dalí’s last years. “The language of the acrobats is not linear. It’s not a straightforward story but a recreation of surreality.”

• La Verità will be staged from August 21 to August 31 at Adnec; tickets on www.alchemy-project.com