“It was two years ago in Montepulciano. I saw Il Cortile by the Sosta Palmizi group,” says Andrea Pazienza, “a show so beautiful that I went back to see it every time I could”. I was fascinated by their apparent expressive disorder, I was fascinated by the bodies of the dancer-actors who moved almost like my characters, I was fascinated by an artistic quest that doesn’t beg for approval and goes its own way. At that point our meeting came naturally”. 
Natural, above all, to create a show together: Sosta Palmizi, the dance-theater group appreciated everywhere, and Andrea Pazienza, one of the most popular comic artists, the inventor of Zanardi, hero-antihero of the urban jungle who lived in Frigidaire, the prestigious name for readers of  Zut.
Dai colli, which the Elfo presented until yesterday to close the “Festival dei festival”, was born like this, from their shared feelings, passions and explorations. 
“At first we were supposed to do a big, grand show. The project is already largely defined, and a model of my sets is ready too. It was going to be called Alberi (Trees), and it was supposed to take place in a big open-air space, with Sosta Palmizi but also with other dancers, comedians, mimes… Alberi may still happen sooner or later, but for now it was impossible”, says Pazienza. 
Giorgio Rossi, Sosta Palmizi’s choreographer, then made him another proposal: why not work together on another show? 
“Dai Collicould be one of the many moods we had chosen for Alberi. Let’s say the most positive, most cheerful mood. I see it as a show about a group of kids, maybe young dancers, who decide to go for a walk toward the hills. There, from the hills, these kids tell the audience what they see, they show their loves, their encounters with small animals, their games with stones… in a fresh, playful, joyful atmosphere… Here there are none of Sosta Palmizi’s usual characters, questioning, suspicious, a bit spirited”.
The beauty of it is that Andrea Pazienza put so much love into this show that his contribution to making it was truly hands-on: a constant presence, even if now the visible mark, the “Pazienza” signature, appears above all on the set’s backdrop. A simple, handmade backdrop on which the artist painted a landscape of hills and streams, nature in soft, sky-blue colors, not unlike those of the actors’ costumes.  
“Compared to my work, it was like acquiring another level of knowledge,” he says, “after a first set-design experience in Florence in ’83 with Franco Branciaroli. Of course, now I intend to make the most of this baggage”.
But his readers can rest easy, because Pazienza is not abandoning comics. In Montepulciano, where he lives with his wife in an 18th-century manor house (“to be renovated”, he points out), he is now swamped with work. And while he waits for the arrival of a new motorbike that excites him very much, he is busy with a photographer friend setting up a Japanese photo comic.