14 September 2021
Newsdesk
Trailblazing forces of the contemporary arts scene Wayne McGregor, Thomas Adès and Tacita Dean come together with The Royal Ballet in a co-production with Paris Opera Ballet to present The Dante Project, a new ballet partly inspired by Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy. This unique ballet receives its world premiere in the 700th anniversary year of Dante’s death in 1321.
Wayne McGregor is renowned for his ground-breaking choreography and collaborations. For this new work he has assembled an award-winning team of international talent, featuring a new score by Thomas Adès commissioned by The Royal Ballet and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Set and costumes are by visual artist Tacita Dean, celebrated for her pioneering and poetic work across film and multiple mediums. Lighting design is by Lucy Carter and Simon Bennison and dramaturgy by Uzma Hameed.
The Dante Project, 14 – 30 October, streamed on Friday 29 October and on demand for 30 days via www.roh.org.uk
Completed in 1320, The Divine Comedy is considered to be one of the great literary works and was inspired by the agony of Dante’s forced exile from his beloved city of Florence. In this new ballet we follow Dante’s epic journey through the afterlife, from crisis to revelation, guided by his literary hero Virgil and his lost love Beatrice. The ballet encompasses the drama of Inferno and its damned, to Dante’s mystical pilgrimage on Mount Purgatorio and the dazzling spheres of Paradiso with their endless configurations of light.
Part One of The Dante Project, Inferno, received its premiere in Los Angeles in 2019 as part of The Royal Ballet’s international tour. The full three-act ballet now receives its world premiere in October 2021.
Wayne McGregor is Resident Choreographer of The Royal Ballet, The Dante Project is his nineteenth work for the Company and his first full-length ballet since the Olivier-award-winning Woolf Works (2015), inspired by the life and work of Virginia Woolf.
Tacita Dean’s 12-metre-long blackboard drawing Inferno will also be publicly on view in the Royal Opera House’s Paul Hamlyn Hall from 4 September–7 April 2022.
