Let us remember that Mediterranea was created in 1993 for the Ballet of Tuscany and immediately achieved an amazing success. For his fifteen years, in 2008, he was taken back and reassembled for the company of the Teatro alla Scala, thanks to the invitation made by Elisabetta Terabust, then director of the Corpo di ballo Scaligero, in Bigonzetti. An invitation to which the choreographer responded with great creative and choreographic energy. For the occasion, the Roman choreographer was not limited to a simple resumption of the original but produced a real choreographic rewriting, a real restyling, drawing the ballet on the dancers of the Scala, on their technique, on their interpretative quality, declining with them a new production that of the original maintained the inspiration, the gestures, the strength and the colors.
Despite the 25 years that have passed, this ballet is more current than ever because it is a mirror of these lands of ours in which apparently different cultures still confront and clash, but with a common root: the Mediterranean.
Mediterranea is an evocative work: a true circumnavigation of the Mediterranean, through the music of the cultures that surround it and that make the viewer travel through space and time. Built with moments of together alternating steps in two, the ballet unfolds by highlighting youthful strength and beauty, energy and speed. The two male protagonists, the Man of the Earth and the Man of the Sea, act as the common thread of the show. Each other’s alter egos meet and collide in a complex interweaving of mutual support and dependence.
All dance is built in the coexistence of opposing emotions: energetic and punctuated movements alternate with extremely lyrical passages. The great Mediterranea fresco closes in a great final embrace between the dancers as a symbol of union between the different cultures that animate this Mare Nostrum.