FLASH #24 – THE ITALIAN CONNECTION
While JBA’s programs are always carefully planned – cohesion of content is a high priority – yet practically each time the elusive spirit of the dance manages to spring a surprise and demonstrate how vast and how interwoven are the threads which bind ballet and dancers closer together the world over.
This time around it’s Italy, the birthplace of ballet which holds the key.
Let’s start with SALTARELLO, our FURORE program opener premiering in the Antwerp Opera on 27 February.
A ‘saltarello’ is the name of an Italian dance from the 16th century – joyful and lively, based on a fast-moving hopping step. Choreographer Jorma Elo found it an apt name for his JBA creation, garnered as it was from part of Felix Mendelssohn’s eponymous composition which together with pieces by Antonio Vivaldi & Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber, made up the ideal musical backing for the ballet. Added to it all are the subtle and cunningly referenced early Commedia dell’Arte movements and gestures that illustrate Elo’s choreographic ideas.
Our second guest choreographer Francesco Annarumma hails from Naples.
Annarumma is a dynamic upcoming talent who is enriching the repertoire, expanding the balletic boundaries for a fresh, young & powerful generation of dancers.
For his emotionally driven FURORE (at the same time both the title of the program as well as the finale to the evening) Annarumma was inspired to use the music of his compatriot and a modern-day Italian master, Ezio Bosso.
Standing central to it all is YU, a tale of grit, determination and courage, created and reworked for JBA by our own Altea Nuñez. This work underlines all the qualities necessary for success for any young person battling to carve out a dance career for themselves.
And it is that ballet aesthetic which binds the evening together: the beauty of sculpted, finely tuned bodies, richly trained to portray this art at its absolute finest. An art which originated in Italy, was then refined in France before being infused with Russian poetry and now given a modern makeover in the New World.
Viva il balletto and viva la musica, past, present and future!
Furore
Come and discover the power of the dancers of the future in FURORE!
- 27&28/02/2025 Opera Antwerp
- 29/03/2025 CC De Meent Alsemberg
- 12/04/2025 CC Scharpoord Knokke-Heist