29th August: Matera
We reach Naples because tomorrow we leave from Capodichino to reach Stefano Faravelli in Turin.

30th August: Turin.
We meet Faravelli. His house inspires us with solutions for the ‘camera secretissima de lo core'. Stefano listens very carefully, then shows us some of his emotional maps. We agree upon everything, we take note of critical issues, too. We say goodbye holding three of his maps in our hands as if to say that we have already started working together.

August 31st: Berlin
We leave from Bergamo and in an hour and a half we are in Berlin. Andrea, kind soul for us, comes to pick us up at the airport and takes us to his house. That afternoon we go to the Radial system V,seat of the Sasha WalzCompany, to meet her art director, as well as her husband, Jochen Sandig. First, he wants to show us their work space: just great. After the long interesting visit to their place, Jochen leads us outside where, around a coffee table, we start telling about our project. As soon as Matera is mentioned, Jochen nicefully requests a long digression about the town and the Sassi, surfing the Internet with his mobile, as if he needs to be sure that what we are describing is real ... Even with his great ability in digressing Jochen is very interested in the project and immediately shows his understanding of it. He has taken notes of everything and asks to know the possible dates for the next meetings as soon as possible. He tells us that he immediately wants to report to Sasha Walz the contents of our meeting and agrees to submit by 15th September their commitment to the project together with the broad economic proposal, the hypothesis of co-financing and also the best period for their participation. We suggest the following: 1-a couple of workshops aimed at ordinary people,not at professional dancers, held in 2018 by Sasha Walz together with at least 4 dancers from her company; 2- to perform,with her dancers and the participants to the workshops, at least five short stories to be told through dancing in an equal number of places in the city of Matera in 2018; 3-to be present at the crash tests planned in 2018; 4-to perform the 5 stories with 5 mini-choreographies for two consecutive weeks in 2019.                                                        
Before leaving, we remind each other that we will meet again later that night to see the show 'Women’ by Sasha Waltz at the festival “Tanz Im August” and also the next morning to meet Sasha Walz after taking part to a virtual reality experiment precisely on the show ‘Women’.

1^st September - Berlin
At 1.30 p.m. we meet AlessioTrevisani in front of the restaurant Oxymoron, Rosenthaler Str. 40-41, a beautiful road full of buildings which were restored after the fall of the Wall. We are on time but he is already there. We settle in and begin a business lunch. Alessio immediately looks like a gentleman: speaking of ideas for our ‘Atlante’ he tells us about angels and about his desire to make the authors of the stories dance. Around 15th September he will also send us the project proposal and financial plan. He will ask his theatre in Leipzig for a possible co-financing.

1^st September - Berlin: Meeting with Heike Hennig, choreographer from Leipzig.
In the afternoon of September 1st we meet Heike Hennig in a café. She is from Leipzig and is half an hour late: in a message she describes a huge unexpected traffic jam. She arrives with a bright smile on her face and apologizes. She is with her husband, a big man who turns out to be shy and nice. We get straight into the heart of the matter and we tell her about the project, Andrea Villani, our good soul from Berlin, translates every German phrase. She often nods and,as we speak, she shows us some photos and brochures that she brought with her, as if to stress the fact that our project tells about people, methods and ideas that already belong to her. Indeed it does look just like that and we feel we have found a potential great workmate. At the end, before we say goodbye, she brings out a box of chocolates and gives it us as a present. We greet each other reminding her our mutual commitments, but with big hugs and smiles.

1^st September - Berlin: "Women" by Sasha Walz
At 9:00 p.m.,at St. Elisabeth-Kirche, a deconsecrated church, we watch the show ' Women’ by Sasha Walz. After that, the choreographer joins us for greetings and for asking further details about our project.

2^nd September - Berlin: Virtual Women.
As promised, in the morning of 2nd September we go back to the church where the night before we watched the show ‘Women’ by Sasha Walzthe. There we watch a 30-minute virtual version of the same show. At 12 o'clock we, along with about twenty people, are invited by the technical staff to wear special glasses, which have a cell phone instead of lenses. In the scene that we see there are the women sitting around four tables arranged in a square. The prospect of vision is central: we are in the middle and the dancers sitting around us that act and dance. They invite us to get up and move in that space. We have a 360-degree view so that, when we move our head or turn back, we see exactly what happens behind us. At the end, we think about the sensations felt and we agree that the augmented reality we imagine for our project does not exactly match what we've seen and felt this morning.

2^nd September - Berlin: we meet the Grape shade
Our last meeting before reluctantly leaving Berlin is with a member of the Grapes hade, a group of ‘tough’ dancers on the up-to-date Berlin scene. We liked them on you-tube during a long surfing on the Net looking for new trends in European dance. The representative of the group listens to the translation by our exhausted good-soul Andrea and constantly takes notes. When we speak of co-financing, he tells us that also in Berlin the Ministry of Culture has recently been asking artists for a 20% co-financing on each proposed project. Groups like them-he explains- aren’t able to work with local authorities any more, precisely because they can't support that 20%. Anyway, he seems interested in our project, but he says he needs to talk about it with the others in the group. In any case, they will write to us by the deadline. After this, our meetings with German artists are finished. Tomorrow we leave to Verona, to Padua and then to the Venice BIENNALE!

3rd September - Rovereto, at the ‘Oriente Occidente’ Festival
We say goodbye to Berlin and Andrea. We take a flight to Verona and then a train to Rovereto. In the early afternoon we meet Paul Manfrini, one of the two artistic directors of the festival. They are interested in participating in our project and they suggest us to go to the Mart and see the exhibition by Salvo Lombardi, performer and choreographer, who has used augmented reality. If his work were to be interesting to us, says Manfrini, the Festival might consider his presence in Matera as some form of co-financing. They also ask if it could be possible to make a further 'stage ' after 2019 in Rovereto. So, we go and see the exhibition by Lombardi: it seems interesting but we can't imagine a version for our project. At 6.00p.m. we watch the show on the terraces of the Mart: OSCYL VARIATION by the French company of Eric Lamoureux and Héla Fattoumi. In the evening we go to the theatre to watch Lutz Forster and we are fascinated and moved.

4^th September - Padua, towards the ART BIENNALE
In Padua we join Marco at his home, where he will host us during our two-day visit scheduled in Venice for the BIENNALE. Our good soul from Padua shows us the city and relieves our exhaustion.

5th September - Venice, Biennale, Arsenale
We spend two days at the Biennale in Venice, starting from the Arsenal: we find many ideas for our project. Many thanks to Ariane for having recommended this visit. How many books, how many maps!

6th September – Venice Biennale, Gardens
A great part of this section also seemed very interesting. We were especially fascinated by the Russian and Japanese pavilions, but many others really deserve a visit.

7th September, Turin - meeting with Alessandro Baricco at the Scuola Holden
We are back in Turin, this time to meet Alessandro Baricco and the people in charge of the Scuola Holden. We are impressed by the beauty of the building. Alessandro walks towards us along the corridor on the first floor with Marta, his assistant. His kindness makes us feel immediately relaxed. While sitting around a table Luciana explains our project in detail: both Alexander and the director of the Scuola Holden really like it. Alessandro intends to oversee the work done by three or four very talented graduates of the school, including young people coming from the South of Italy, who would be in Matera for two or three weeks to analyse stories, to meet the authors of maps and maybe to helping us even collect stories so that they would have an insight of how the people and the city are. Alessandro tells us that he has to finish his latest book by May, so he could start working by June; anyway he promises that he will be with us in Matera for a week in March, after the collection of maps will be completed. We also ask him to plan an overall idea of narrative drama. By 15th September, as we requested, the school will make a proposal specifying whether and which co-financing they plan to adopt. This brings our go&see to an end. We are very tired but really happy.

Teatro dei Sassi