Ravenna Festival

The dance playbill includes several events of exceptional international importance: following Alchemy by Momix, May will see the return of British choreographer and director Matthew Bourne and his company, New Adventures, together with the award-winning costume designer Lez Brotherson: their latest creation is Sleeping Beauty, on the immortal music of Tchaikovsky.

Also from London’s Sadler's Wells is a Festival exclusive, Ivan Putrov’s Men In Motion, a gala celebration of male dancers, showcasing choreography made by and for men over 100 years. One of the greatest international contemporary choreographers, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui (whose splendid Sutra we still remember), will offer his interpretation of the tango in Milonga - A Tango Project. The tango will be transfigured into a quite contemporary dimension where Sidi Larbi, along with a cast of selected Argentinian dancers and musicians, will capture the atmosphere and the essence of the Milonga as well as the Buenos Aires new wave of tango fusion dance.

The Mark Morris Dance Group will present some of the American choreographer’s finest creations on a live performance of music by Bach, Hummel, Henry Cowell and Lou Harrison. Live music is strictly integral to all of Morris's work, since he made a commitment to feature live music as the essential complement to his idea of dance.

Ravenna Festival will also be a partner of the Ric.Ci. project (Reconstruction Italian Contemporary Choreography, Eighties-Nineties), created by Marinella Guatterini. The project will stage three seminal creations of Italian post-modern dance: Duetto by Virgilio Sieni and Alessandro Certini, La Boile de Neige by Fabrizio Monteverde and Calore by Enzo Cosimi. In the line that descends from these authors is Simona Bertozzi, who will star in her own choreography on music by Arcangelo Corelli in the third centenary of his death.

A particular focus will be dedicated to new African dance with young South African dancer and choreographer Dada Masilo, who will present her original and iconoclastic version of Swan Lake, and with Kenyan dancer-choreographer Anuang'A who, in his Feelings & Voices, will stage a group of Maasai warriors. They will channel the faith and strength of the initiation rites of the highland people living on the Kenya-Tanzania border into gestures and vocals of great primitive power.