Making Cinderella dance is nothing new. Not even Sleeping Beauty. But putting them together with Aladdin, Puss in Boots, Snow White, the Three Musketeers in a single evening is a challenge. The Italian choreographer Francesco Ventriglia tackled it. Using a corps de ballet arriving from Uruguay, a handful of Italian étoile. The music is by Alexey Shor, Maltese. Roberta Guidi di Bagno’s costumes. The debut, on January 6th and 7th, in Dubai. Title : “A Thousand Tales Ballet”, as if to say the ballet of a thousand fairy tales.
Forty-four years old, dancer and choreographer, Francesco Ventriglia was appointed artistic director of Maggio Danza in Florence at the age of 32. Then he moved to the Royal New Zealand Ballet. Until 2020 he was co-director of the National Ballet of Uruguay. He has choreographed for La Scala, the Arena di Verona, in Russia for the Bolshoj in Moscow and the Mariinsky in Petersburg, for the Grand Théatre in Geneva and the Venice Biennale. He is director of the Sydney Choreographic Center, a place dedicated to the realization of choreographic projects. A “Bottega” of dance, a term that Ventriglia means in the Renaissance sense.
How was “A Thousand Tales Ballet” born?
«Shor had already worked out a series of music inspired by various fairy tales. I wrote a booklet that could combine them all together. They liked the idea.”
How does ballet develop?
«To make an entire ballet of Shor’s pieces required a dramatic line, a story. I chose to follow the story of “Cinderella”. The prince of “Cinderella” turns to the Rabbit of “Alice in Wonderland” to organize a party and to find a wife and it is again to him that he turns when Cinderella runs away and loses her shoe».
Who will dance?
«The corps de ballet is made up of eight couples, while the protagonists are the Italians Alessandro Riga and Giada Rossi of the Compañía Nacional de Danza in Madrid. They will play “Beauty and the Beast” and “Snow White”. Then again from Madrid I signed Mario Galindo very good and very young. From Naples Cinderella and the Prince will be Chiara Amirante and Alessandro Staiano. Susanna Salvi and Alessio Rezza arrive from the Rome Opera».
What genre is Shor’s music?
«Very narrative, follows the dramaturgical line, is for large orchestra, cantabile, is not difficult to understand ..»
It is not an avant-garde show, but rather a traditional ballet one would say.
“It is aimed at an adult audience as well as children. I want to go back a bit to my origins, therefore to the great ballet. I really liked the idea of making a sort of homage to this type of show and I follow its typical grammar: ensemble scenes, pas de deux. I also enjoyed putting some typical things from the classical repertoire into it. I worked for two months before entering the rehearsal room, because I like to arrive in the room very well prepared for the music and the project».
Why the debut in Dubai?
«In Dubai there is a huge opera house but it doesn’t have stable bodies inside. They are all invited productions that come from abroad. Let’s hope that this one can then turn around ».
Also in Italy? Are there already projects in this direction?
«I worked a long way from Europe: Australia, New Zealand. Uruguay. I very much hope to get closer if not to Italy at least to Europe».
In the cast there are great names of today’s Italian dance.
«It was a complex job because I went to assemble the first parts in Madrid, Naples and Rome separately. While with the corps de ballet I worked in Uruguay. Then it was a matter of putting it all together in Dubai in the days immediately following. It was also very exciting.”