Ballet

Dante and Dance at Dante Season 2021

February 14, 2022 By Harrison Betz, FSU '25

On November 4, 2021, the collaborative effort behind Dante in Oxford hosted the “Dante and Dance” event. The performance was described as follows:

“Luc Petton, choreographer, will present a screening of Ainsi la Nuit, his extraordinary ballet for human dancers, birds, and animals inspired by Dante’s Divine Comedy. Luc Petton will also be in conversation with members of the audience. The event is programmed in conjunction with the display ‘The Divine Comedy from Manuscript to Manga’ which is open to the public in an adjacent space of the Bodleian’s Weston Library. The film screening will be followed by a response from Professor Sue Jones and a Q&A.” —TORCH (retrieved February 13, 2022)

More information about “Dante and Dance” and its programming can be found here.

Other Dante in Oxford posts can be found here.

The Dante Project, The Royal Ballet (2021)

October 11, 2021 By Professor Elizabeth Coggeshall

“Presented as part of the 700th anniversary celebrations of the poet’s death, Dante’s epic journey through the afterlife, The Divine Comedy, is realised in a major artistic collaboration between trailblazing forces of the contemporary arts scene.

“In an inaugural co-production with Paris Opera Ballet and music co-commission with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Wayne McGregor’s groundbreaking choreography comes together with a virtuoso new score by one of the most influential musicians of the 21st Century, composer-conductor Thomas Adès, and designs by the acclaimed artist Tacita Dean, celebrated for her pioneering and poetic work across film and other mediums. With esteemed lighting designer Lucy Carter and dramaturg Uzma Hameed, the creative team unite in this three-part work for the full Company to illuminate the extraordinary vision of Dante.” —The Dante Project, Royal Opera House

Book tickets here (runs from October 14-30, 2021).

Stream the ballet here (from October 29, 2021).

A couple of teasers! Watch principals Francesca Hayward and Matthew Ball rehearse Inferno 5 (Paolo and Francesca in the whirlwind), with direction from Wayne McGregor, here.

And watch principals Edward Watson and Sarah Lamb rehearse the meeting with Beatrice in the Earthly Paradise here.

Sarah Crompton, writing for The Guardian, calls the performance “bold, beautiful, emotional and utterly engaging. The opening section, Inferno, where Dante (Watson) journeys to hell in the company of Virgil (Gary Avis), all but blows your socks off.” Read the review here.

Reviewed: Thomas Adès’ “Inferno” (2019)

December 13, 2020 By Laura Chatellier, FSU '23

“Thomas Adès’ ‘Inferno,’ the first half of what will eventually be a full-length Dante ballet, makes an uproarious heaven of hell. An equal-opportunity score, it offers wry reasons for celebrating our vices — be we among the selfish, gluttonous, suicidal, deviant, papally pretentious; be we illicit lovers, pollsters (the fortune-tellers), hypocrites, thieves, lost souls of one sort or another, satanic majesties or, yes (thanks for thinking of us, Tom), critics.

“It proved the most ambitious and electrifying of more than five-dozen commissions celebrating the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s just-completed centennial season and a bonanza for choreographer Wayne McGregor. In an exceptional collaboration among the Royal Ballet, the L.A. Phil and the Music Center, the staged “Inferno” had its premiere at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion over the weekend in a production for which celebrated British artist and filmmaker Tacita Dean created the design. The composer conducted with the L.A. Phil in the pit.” [. . .] –Mark Swed, Los Angeles Times, July 14, 2019.

Inferno by the American Contemporary Ballet (Los Angeles)

September 30, 2018 By Professor Elizabeth Coggeshall

In October 2017, the American Contemporary Ballet of Los Angeles, under the artistic direction of Lincoln Jones, performed Inferno, based on composer Charles Wuorinen’s ballet “The Mission of Virgil” (featured on Dante Today here).

“You can really draw a parallel between Dante’s time and our time because of the incredible divisiveness. The issues were different on the surface but underneath, probably a lot the same. In Dante’s time, cities would fight wars with each other. Dante wanted to get his point of view heard and send the people he thought should be in hell to hell. I think maybe there’s a lot of similar feeling with the diatribes people are writing today against those they feel have it wrong. So there’s a lot of similarities, political corruption, factions.” — Interview with American Contemporary Ballet artistic director Lincoln Jones in the LA Times (October 10, 2017)

“Francesca da Rimini”: Ballet Meets Robotics

September 13, 2018 By Professor Elizabeth Coggeshall

“Francesca da Rimini is an experiment in using a robotically controlled camera to capture ballet. Starring dancers Maria Kochetkova and Joan Boada, Francesca is based on a story from Dante’s Inferno and set to Tchaikovsky’s Francesca Da Rimini. The entire performance was filmed with motion control camera movements designed to synchronize with the dancer’s every step. The camera moves as if operated by a third performer, fluidly orbiting around the two dancers from the intimate perspective of another artist on stage. Using a combination of motion capture, 3D animation, and industrial robotics, Francesca demonstrates how the synthesis of art and technology can bring a new perspective to a classic art form.” — Director of Photography Joe Picard

Director: Tarik Abdel-Gawad
Dancers: Maria Kochetkova & Joan Boada
Choreographer: Yuri Possokhov

To learn more about the project, see the Making-Of film here: Ballet Meets Robotics: The Making of Francesca Da Rimini.

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