The program for L’Aquila, Italian Capital of Culture 2026, is expanding with a major new international project that combines contemporary art, participation, and inclusion: “SOND – The School of Narrative Dance,” conceived by artist Marinella Senatore. The project, funded by the City of L’Aquila, approved by the City Council, and endorsed by the Supervisory Committee, was promoted and presented by the MAXXI Foundation—National Museum of 21st-Century Arts, which will coordinate its implementation.
This is a large-scale, participatory collective performance that will transform the city into a vast, open-air stage, involving citizens, organizations, schools, and local cultural institutions in a parade of dance, music, theater, and shared creativity.
The School of Narrative Dance is a program conceived by Marinella Senatore, which has already been implemented in cities such as Rome, Modica, Rivoli, and Quito (Ecuador). It promotes dance as a language of storytelling and participation, capable of restoring to the community an active role in the construction of meaning, identity, and community.
“The collaboration with MAXXI L’Aquila,” emphasizes L’Aquila’s mayor, Pierluigi Biondi, “represents a significant step on the path toward 2026. Through this project, which intertwines contemporary art and community participation, L’Aquila reaffirms its role as a laboratory for cultural rebirth and innovation. Marinella Senatore is an internationally renowned artist capable of blending different artistic languages and transforming collective participation into a powerful tool for social cohesion. “With every initiative,” added Biondi, “we create experiences that demonstrate our ability to regenerate and look to the future. Culture, as this collaboration with MAXXI L’Aquila and Marinella Senatore demonstrates, is one of the highest forms of civic and social rebirth. One region, a thousand capitals.”
Marinella Senatore’s project joins the initiatives already announced in recent weeks, including the National Arts Award, the Academies Event, the exhibition “Architecture and Urban Planning in Abruzzo 1930–1960,” and the ItARTS Festival – Back to L’Aquila, helping to shape the diverse mosaic of L’Aquila, Italian Capital of Culture 2026.
The full calendar of events will be presented during a national event with institutions and strategic partners, which will outline the overall program and guidelines for the year as the Capital.

Image Credit
Marinella Senatore, 1977
THE SCHOOL OF NARRATIVE DANCE, Afterglow, 2022
Performance at Battersea Power Station, London
Courtesy of the artist and Mazzoleni, London–Turin
Photo by Christina Almeida