La Strada / Le Sacre

In the organizer's words:

Ballet by Maura Morales and Roberto Scafati
Music by Nino Rota and Igor Stravinsky

Love and sacrifice are the main themes of the film La Strada. Gelsomina, a young girl, learns about life on the road as an artist from the traveling juggler Zampanò. Although Zampanò is brutal and unpleasant, she stays with him, even when he kills Matto, a high-wire artist and Gelsomina's friend, in a fight. Gelsomina's desire to understand Zampanò and be close to him leads to unconditional sacrifice - a sacrifice that ultimately changes Zampanò himself when he realizes what he has done to Matto.

41 years earlier, Igor Stravinsky created a musical interpretation of the archaic spring sacrifice in his ballet Le Sacre du Printemps. Its impetuous rhythms and dissonant sounds illustrate the inevitability of the event: a human sacrifice must be made in order to preserve the cycle of nature. Stravinsky celebrates the resurrection of nature in The Rite of Spring.

Whether in Fellini's cinematic circus world or in Stravinsky's musical-archaic ritual world, both works are about love and the sacrifice that is made for someone else or for the good of an entire community.

Maura Morales and Roberto Scafati dedicate themselves to two classics of film and music history and, together with the dancers of the ballet company, transform the untamed figures on the screen and the sounds of the score into expressive dance moments on stage.