Inferno

Legendary lovers

In Canto 5 of his Inferno, Dante sings of the unhappy love of Paolo and Francesca. Dante’s lovers were immortalised in Rodin’s The Kiss, which is part of a larger sculpture called La Porte de l’Enfer. Camille Claudel, Rodin’s pupil at the time, also worked on it.

Rudi Meulemans interweaves Dante’s story with other stories and characters in Western culture. Paolo and Francesca could, for instance, be seen as August Rodin and Camille Claudel, or as the legendary writing couple T.S. Eliot and Vivienne Haigh-Wood, or Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath, and of course as Dante himself and his beloved Beatrice.

● In Inferno, the writer and director Rudi Meulemans crosses the boundaries of disciplines for the first time. Choreographer and dancer Vincent Dunoyer is co director of the performance and video designer Kurt d’Haeseleer creates a set of moving images. Inferno is performed by Vincent Dunoyer and the actors of De Parade, Tom de Hoog, Caroline Rottier and Hilde Wils.  With this production, Meulemans is starting a three-part theatrical adaptation of Dante’s Divine Comedy. Inferno will be followed by Purgatorio and Paradiso. Inferno is an adventurous journey in which there is much to discover in the world, the other and ourselves.