“Today, Italian dance is not experiencing a happy moment. The four ballet companies and the three dance schools of the Lyrical-Symphonic Foundations are directed by illustrious professionals from the Opèra de Paris. Unfortunately, the only director of Italian nationality is the our Eleonora Abbagnato, all the others are of French nationality”. This is what you declared during your speech to the States of National Culture. Thinking the Italian imagination’, the director and choreographer Mvula Sungani.
“And yet dance was born at the French court with Caterina de Medici and the Sun King who worked with Italian artists and masters, Baldassare di Belgioioso and Giovan Battista Lulli, for example – he added – Enrico Cecchetti (1850-1928) instead began the his career as a teacher at the court of the tsars, at the Imperial School of St. Petersburg, among his pupils Anna Pavlova, Vaslav Nijinsky, Serge Lifar and George Balanchine.Even today, prestigious Anglo-Saxon companies use the Cecchetti method, but in Italy that ‘school’ is been completely forgotten”.
In his long speech, Mvula Sungani then recalled that “in our country there are 170 dance companies financed by the National Fund for Live Entertainment, formerly Fus. In the last ten years a very strange process has been triggered, the companies that produced classical, neoclassical, modern and contemporary ballets have been sacrificed on the altar of experimental contemporary dance, the pride of northern European countries. I understand innovation, but I absolutely do not agree with cultural homogenization – he continued – Italy, it can certainly innovate its intangible heritage, but not at the cost of denying its history and culture”.
In Italy there are about 30 thousand private dance schools scattered throughout the country and one million and 400 thousand young people practice dance. “In my opinion – the well-known director and choreographer hoped – the leadership of the companies and schools of the Lyric Symphony Foundations should be returned to Italian artists, at least in part, and at least another 2/3 corps de ballet should be reopened in the short term. moreover, a policy of reorganization of the companies financed by the Mic has been developed starting from the optimization of the resources already available – he advised – to then arrive at the drafting of the new decrees envisaged by law 106 of 2022 alongside an interministerial table of Terpsichorean training “.
“The guidelines for teaching dance should be drawn up within the table, another topic of vital importance – underlined Sungani – In short, to give dignity to the whole sector, the training / production / distribution chain should be reactivated, which is essential for returning to make dance excel in Italy and in the world. Italian dance – he concluded – should no longer be considered the Cinderella of the arts”.