WORLD PREMIERE
COPRODUCTION ORIENTE OCCIDENTE
Among the most vibrant and talented young Italian choreographers, the Apulian Davide Valrosso has a unique artistic journey behind him. Arriving late to dance, he quickly made up for lost time from the age of 16: after studying at the renowned English National Ballet School in London, he became a contemporary dancer and began to travel throughout Italy and Europe as a professional interpreter in prestigious companies. Choreography, he confesses, “has been a natural outlet for the frustration and restlessness of being an interpreter for others,” and thus, since 2014, it has become his primary activity, while he continues to dance in works by Virgilio Sieni and Fabrizio Favale. As an associated choreographer of the Oriente Occidente Festival, Valrosso is now preparing to realize his first commission for the Balletto di Roma: a performance for eight dancers from the company, freely inspired by Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream.
Valrosso creates a fantastic and dark story of couples in love who get lost and chase each other in a labyrinthine forest, filled with pitfalls and seductions. This new creation, connecting to the fundamental themes of the great English poet's comedy, isolates two in particular: magic and dream. Magic is nothing but love, while the dream is so prevalent that reality and fantasy begin to blur, amplifying the gaze on a timeless occurrence. The dreamlike element is expressed through the presence of living and impalpable bodies that animate Puck, an unreal but always-present creature who unwittingly pulls the strings of human relationships.
In an interplay of duets and collective movements, balancing between the intimate and the communal, A Midsummer Night's Dream by Davide Valrosso sets in motion a continuous migration from the ethereal to the corporeal, continually inviting the audience to “play with imagination.” “Ultimately,” Valrosso concludes, “Shakespeare hints at how insignificant we humans are in the face of things we cannot control in any way. However, we can cultivate the transformative sense of this chaos made of deception, jealousy, and tenderness, embracing the power that thoughts, words, and actions have to lead us inexorably to beauty.”
ballettodiroma.com
davidevalrosso.com
