CCN / ATERBALLETTO

The Centro Coreografico Nazionale (CCN)/Aterballetto is Italy’s first National Choreographic Centre, established in 2022 at the behest of the Ministry of Culture, evolving from the historic Aterballetto company active since 1977. Based in Reggio Emilia in northern Italy, the Centre is housed in the Fonderia, an early 20th-century industrial space formerly used as a foundry. This space has been repurposed into a creative crucible with five large multipurpose rooms, costume workshops, meeting rooms, and offices. It is a place designed for creation, hosting, and conceptualisation, encompassing all aspects of contemporary dance and its connection with other art forms.

Currently, CCN/Aterballetto comprises sixteen dancers working full seasons, focusing primarily on new productions by internationally renowned choreographers and performing a select repertoire of iconic works. The company strives to be cosmopolitan, curious, and dynamic. Their productions are highly sought after by major theatres and festivals in Italy and around the world. They now come to the Teatro Arriaga with a triple programme featuring choreographies by notable dance figures Iratxe Ansa and Igor Bacovich, Crystal Pite, and Diego Tortelli.

Rhapsody in Blue by Iratxe Ansa and Igor Bacovich opens the evening. This piece plays with Gershwin’s rhapsody. The dancers embody the music’s message, creating a powerful, fun, lively work filled with constant variations in form. It feels like traversing an enchanted forest where new magical elements emerge at every turn, surprising you continuously. The rhapsody provides a musical space where anything is possible, with new elements arising from every corner, prompting quick and ever-changing bodily reactions.

Love, loss, and acceptance lie at the heart of the next dance piece, Solo Echo by Canadian choreographer Crystal Pite. It is inspired by two cello and piano sonatas by Johannes Brahms and Mark Strand’s poem “Lines for Winter.” Like Strand’s poem, Solo Echo invokes winter, music, and the moving body to express something essential about acceptance and loss.

Lastly, Shoot me by Diego Tortelli is a company creation set to the music of English rock band Spiritualized and recordings of Jim Morrison reciting poems about freedom. The work is built on the concept of a “ballet-concert” revisited in a contemporary manner: music and dance combine to create a piece without a narrative, but through the power of the music—sometimes aggressive, sometimes poetic—it guides us to discover open imaginations and emotions. A central element of this work is the strength of the group guided by individual voices, the desire for a body to be observed and perceived, to communicate. Inspired by images of demonstrations, pride, catwalks, and all that unites us in a group while allowing us to maintain our individual voices, it contrasts sharply with military parades or political rallies. It celebrates the beauty of the body available to the community as a source of entertainment, reflection, and exploration. Shoot me aims to create a direct dialogue between dancers and the audience: a game of seduction, gazes, sweat, an assault on the senses, and an ode to the body, breathing the same air.El Centro Coreografico Nazionale (CCN)/Aterballetto es el primer Centro Coreográfico Nacional de Italia, fundado en 2022 por encargo del Ministerio de Cultura y surgido a partir de la histórica compañía Aterballetto, activa desde 1977. Situada en Reggio Emilia, en el norte de Italia, la sede del Centro Coreográfico Nacional se encuentra en la Fonderia, un espacio industrial que data de principios del siglo XX y que alguna vez albergó una fundición. El espacio ha sido recalificado y transformado en un crisol creativo, con cinco grandes salas polivalentes, talleres de vestuario, salas de reuniones y oficinas. Es un lugar para crear, acoger y concebir, que abarca todos los aspectos de la danza contemporánea y su conexión con otras formas de arte.