There is a subtle electricity that accompanies every show: lights, music, sequins that pull the viewer into a sparkling elsewhere. In burlesque this sensation intensifies, and since 2021 photographer Enrica Panà has been asking herself what remains when the curtain falls and the enchantment fades. The project Sur-reale was born from this very question.

Panà carries forward a photographic project that observes burlesque and boylesque from a double perspective: that of the spectator fascinated by the stage and that of the photographer who wants to cross it. No longer the frontal performance, but the backstage: rituals, discarded garments, repeated gestures, the concentration before stepping into the spotlight. An intimate space where reality and dreamlike dimension blend together.

The images of Sur-reale tell of waiting, transformations, suspended silences. They don’t seek the gloss of the show, but its most fragile truth. The book published in 2022 collects a first portion of this journey, which however continues, expands, returns.

In this imagery, identity, fiction, and presence intertwine until they become indistinguishable. The result is a visual narrative that goes beyond the performance and reveals the most human side of the act, where the surreal is not an escape but a poetic extension of the real.

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