The Mystical Dances of The Bolivians in Rome (Part One)

“The first manifestations of man
it had to be dance and the poetic language.
With these two tools man expresses
his fears, his hopes,
makes his invocations,
try to communicate.”
(Jorge Luis Borges)

Bolivia Carnival. Via dei Fori Imperiali. Rome, 2 March 2014

Bolivian dancers rotate.

They rotate with plastic cap on the black bowler hat to protect it from the rain, because the velvet dress costs a lot, as well as the precious clothes that were dispatched from Bolivia specifically for the Carnival, and it takes even a year to make them.

And they dance, they rotate on themselves like the Sufi dervishes, and perhaps they don't know of the mystical ecstasy, of the transcendence that communicates the soul to God; they dance, like an invisible colored thread that connects the Isola del Sol to Konya to the stone streets of Rome, swirling the Colosseum into a tariqa, and the white clothes of the mystics in the blaze of the bright colors of Bolivia.

The rain that falls every year does not stop them, nor does the cold, because all the women of Oruro dance with them.

Reza. “Dervish of the Mavlana school, Istanbul”

All these photographs of the Bolivia Carnival were taken in Rome, during the months of February or March, every year from 2014 to 2017.

With the preparation of clothes and makeup in the park of Colle Oppio and the parade along Via dei Fori Imperiali, under the sun and pouring rain (almost every year).

I arrange the order of the photographs from the moment of preparation to the dancing on the ancient stone road that leads from the Colosseum to Piazza Venezia.

A long journey in two parts for the Roman version of the Oruro Carnival in Bolivia.

A triumph of clothes and colors.

Let the dances begin.