Compagnia Finzi Pasca
presents La Verità
Written and directed by Daniele Finzi Pasca

La Verità, a creation by Daniele Finzi Pasca, is a theatrical homage to the surrealist painter Salvador Dalí. The contemporary circus work features a certified replica of a backdrop Dalí painted in 1944. Originally created for a ballet at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City, the backdrop is a stunning focal point for this production by the creator of Cirque Éloize’s Rain, Cirque du Soleil’s Corteo, and his own company’s Donka: A Letter to Chekhov. La Verità, which features music by Maria Bonzanigo, includes a versatile cast of twelve performers who play instruments, sing, juggle, contort, clown, and dance the can-can. Channeling the surrealist vision of Dalí, themes explode into other themes. Ideas in the mind jostle and form themselves into images of blindfolded characters, hands with unnaturally long fingers, shadows that deform proportions, red blood, yellow flowers, the blue of the Virgin Mary’s cloak, the color white, ladders suspended in empty space, impossible balances, dismantled corpses, and colliding feathers and sequins. It’s as if the story takes place in a decadent Vaudeville. “La Verità delights through performances tinged with sheer beauty and offbeat humor,” writes a critic for Le Journal de Montréal. “Like a daydream … the acts are mesmerizingly beautiful.”

The Palmer Museum of Art exhibition From Dada to Dalí: Surrealist Work on Paper, which features about forty prints, drawings, and texts by Surrealist and Dada artists and writers, has been organized in tandem with the Center for the Performing Arts presentation of La Verità. Learn more about the exhibition, which continues through May 8 at the Penn State museum.