The song of the fall

Marta Cuscunà

The realm of the Fanes

The myth of the Fanes is a popular tradition belonging to the Ladin people, a small ethnic minority (35,000 people) living in the central valleys of the Dolomites.
It is an epic cycle, but the contents are quite unusual and different from other Ladin myths. The myth of the Fanes speaks of the end of the peaceful reign of women and the beginning of a new era of domination and the sword.
It is a dark song of the collapse into the horror of war.
The central figure of the story is Dolasilla, princess of the Fanes, forced by her father (called "the false king"), to become a Tjeduya. This is a warrior, the armed hand of power.
It is this unfortunate choice of the false king, obsessed with the possession of wealth and power over the lands and neighbouring peoples, that causes the end of the matrilineal kingdom and its people.
The myth tells that the few survivors are still hidden in the bowels of the mountain together with their elderly queen, waiting for the golden age of rebirth to return. A golden time of peace when the people of the Fanes will finally be able to return to life.

Looking back to go forward
"When I started to think about the myth of the Fanes at the centre of my new theatrical piece, I immediately came up against one big question: what sense does it make to tell an ancient Ladin myth in the theatre nowadays? Who would really find it interesting?
The answers I found is rooted in Riane Eisler's anthropology essay: The Chalice and the Blade.
Riane Eisler investigated the social structures that humanity has set itself over the centuries during a continuous epic of wars and injustice. This thinking raises questions that are more important than ever: is war an indelible part of the destiny of humanity? What perpetually drives us to war instead of seeking peace? Why do we hunt and persecute each other? Is male brutality and domination over women inevitable? Is the transition from a system of incessant war and social injustice to a mutually peaceful system realistically possible?
According to the anthropologist Riane Eisler, the answers for a better future could be rooted in a point in prehistoric European civilization, also referred to by the Lithuanian archaeologist Marija Gimbutas, where our cultural evolution was literally overturned. The song of this fall, through the ancient myth of the Fanes, seeks to bring to light the lost account of how we were, a description of a desirable social alternative for the future of humanity, but one that is always presented as a utopia that is impossible to create.
But perhaps it already once existed ".
Marta Cuscunà