Andrea Loreni is a tightrope walker, recordman and trainer, the only funambolist in Italy specialized in walks at great heights. Born in the Turin in 1975, began to practice circus skills, attending the Flic Circus Accademy in Turin while in 1999 he graduated in Theoretical Philosophy with a thesis on Adolfo Levi.
In the following years, Andrea deepens the contemporary circus techniques at the Circus Space of London (2002-2003) and its artistic mission clears up: walking on ropes at great heights.
The relationship with the cable and the void, the intuition of illuminating truths about 'presence' and ‘authentic essence’ during the walkings lead Andrea to a new search that involves body, mind and spirituality.
Andrea starts therefore to practice Zen meditation, under the guidance of Shodo Harada Roshi translating into Italian the master's book 'How to practice zazen ', and attending his retreats at the Sogen-ji monastery in Okayama, Japan where last year, in August 2017, he finally walked, crossing the temple’s pound.
Since then Andrea has realized lots of artistic tightwire performances, walking in the skies of world, above the cities of Rome, Locarno, Belgrade, Perugia Modi'in (Israel), Turin, Bologna, Florence, Venice and Milan, in breath-taking natural settings or in charming historical town centers, on the flat or uphill, in silence or accompanied by the sounds and elements that vibrate together with the rope.
The wirewalk is for Andrea a movement on a steel line, done in a certain space and in a precise moment.
Each walk is the result of a precise choice, the choice to bring his energy to vibrate together with the energy of a place, a natural or a urban context.
It’s a moment of extreme suspension and at the same time of maximum rooting in the “here and now”.
At the same time, the walk of the funambolist is an archetypal act that communicates directly to the unconscious, showing a way where no one sees any.
Suspend the ordinary, raise your eyes to the sky and discover up there, in our familiar urban context, an extraordinary hazard: the subtle balance of the tightrope walker. A profoundly symbolic, dense and essential show, synthesis of human feeling.
“I imagine that there is a sort of context that has slowly widened around the wire because there are not only me and the wire, but it’s me and the wire both connected to two hills, which are themselves connected to the ground, which is connected to a world inside a whole universe.”