Feeling Good

A circle, a square and, in the centre, an emblematic figure of a man.

Who does not know this extraordinary design of the Gallerie dell’Accademia di Venezia, known as the Vitruvian Man, by Leonardo da Vinci?

Certainly, the fortune of a work has very complex and, at times, mysterious motivations, but I would like to propose a critical reflection in a philosophical key the work takes on a new and very profound meaning.

Leonardo inserts the man exactly in the centre of a square. The legs, placed in a vertical position, the top of the head and the arms, open at 90° with respect to the bust, touch the sides of this geometric figure. The body, if extrapolated from the context of the other drawn limbs and the circle, seems to be in a static and stable position.

From the ancient pre-Christian civilizations to the Middle Age and the Renaissance, the square is understood as a geometric symbol that expresses the desire to horizontally move in a world that appears chaotic, through the introduction of coordinated directions.

The quadrature involves a principle of order that seems to be innate in man and that, in a dualistic system, contrasts with the circle, which represents celestial powers.

The legendary quadrature of the circle (properly the transformation of a circle into a square of equal surface, by means of geometric procedures) symbolizes the desire to bring the “celestial” and the “terrestrial” elements back to an ideal concordance.

But if the square, by its nature, expresses stability and definability, on the contrary the circle or wheel, consisting of infinite points, suggests the idea of motion and indefinability.

Note then how the second pair of limbs of Leonardo’s homo, resting on the circle, suggests a kinetic course to the human figure, which thus loses that characteristic of staticity in favour of an idea of circular motion within an ideal wheel.

From the letters of motivation on the project received from the possible disabled dancers there were many references to this emblematic figure, its representation and its geometric proportions and perfect symmetry.

What I noticed as extremely interesting was that the United Nations recently commissioned the Department of Public Information to produce a new symbol of Accessibility, named “Logo of Accessibility”.

The proposed logo symbolizes a stylized “human figure” (moving and not static on the computer) “universal with open arms” included and connected to a circle “to represent the harmony between human beings in society”.

The circle does not force the “symmetrical” human person inside, but links him/her in his/her area “to represent harmony among human beings in society”, enclosing and symbolizing instead the “global scope of this logo”. What the “human figure” expresses is its universality and “with open arms it symbolizes the inclusion for people of “all abilities”, all over the world”. The open arms presumably mean welcome and that the intent of the United Nations is that of an all-inclusive logo.

References to Vitruvian man are evident and visible and this can lead to criticism and controversy, but if we simply do not dwell on the image itself and what the eye can observe, but simply to its poetics and meaning we find the desire for a body that experiences connecting with itself and its surroundings, both on a rational and emotional level. Then perhaps the circle brings with it a sense of constant motion, acceptance, understanding and change and the square becomes that surface that we can destroy, change, modify.

These are the starting points of Feeling Good a duet about the ability to “be” and “feel”, a skill of contemporary dance that does not reign in a canonical form of perfection, but that finds its “being” in the acceptance of oneself, of one’s own strength and fragility which is not dictated by a symmetrical form of thinking, but which looks at the diversity of every human being in an asymmetrical way, since only diversity can destroy an idea of “canonical” beauty, which no one can please because there can be no universal model of “beauty”.

Diego Tortelli
Choreographer