Inspired by the mythological figure of the Siren, Luna Cenere embarks on a new project dedicated to the city of Naples, whose founding myth is that of Parthenope—dissident and generative. Her aim is to refract the mythological, physical, philosophical, and political dimensions of the body through this figure.
A contemporary, revolutionary myth that invites us to revisit ideas of duality, of the feminine, and even the very definitions of ethno-genealogical belonging.

Across all their genealogical variations, the Sirens inherit a precise symbolic role which, as Elisabetta Moro notes in her book (Sirene, 2023), can be read as either positive or negative depending on the time and the gaze through which we see them: song, seduction, lament, passage, liminality, knowledge, fertility or its denial, duplicity, hybridity, the underworld, disobedience, subversion, and the founding of cities.

The Sirens are bodies that arrive upon foreign shores, reclining on their edges, shipwrecked. According to the Homeric myth, three of them each founded a city; in her shipwreck, Parthenope founded Naples. They are unproductive virgins who despised marriage, barren beings to whom myth nonetheless grants the founding of communities. Feathered or scaled, they have always embodied an in-between state—incarnations of diversity on many levels.
Dissident beings, dangerous for all these reasons, and because, originally through their song and later through their seductive bodies, they lured the curious into the greatest act of disobedience: abandoning homeland and family to seek their knowledge. Seductresses who do not devour, but let one die of hunger. Yet also wise and prophetic beings—and it is precisely this wisdom that has always drawn those who encounter them.

SIRENE
community project by Luna Cenere
assistant and performer Ilaria Quaglia
music Renato Grieco

with Laura Arcudi, Maria Betteghella, Barbara Cerrato, Floriana D’Ammora, Daniela Di Mattei, Eleonora Fardella, Angela Ferretti, Laura Gagliardi, Luca Laudante, Anna Orabona, Stefania Palumbo, Claudia Ottavia Piccolo, Serena Serino, Dara Siligato, Ludovica Sorrentino, Martina Starace, Guendalina Zanghì

technical management Mattia Santangelo
logo Giovanni Frasconi
project manager Fulvia Orifici

location Monte Echia, Napoli 24.07.2025

executive production Associazione Culturale Zebra

Original project for the Dance and Body Language section of theExtra Fringe Special Projects category of the first edition of the Napoli Fringe Festival 2025, celebrating the 2500th anniversary of the founding of Neapolis, under the artistic direction of Laura Valente

Special thanks to Rosalba Ruggeri for her assistance in writing the project.