Abstract:
The marking of the 700th anniversary since the death of Dante Alighieri in Georgia began with the world premiere of Mariam Aleksidze’s contemporary ballet Beatrice. The contemporary ballet-vision Beatrice was inspired by Dante’s Divine Comedy and is another interesting and original contemporary interpretation of the poem. The concept of the ballet is based on the artistic idea of Dante’s “triad” (Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso), uniting the choreographic, plastic (physical) and geometric thinking in Mariam Aleksidze’s perception of the world; spiritual and intellectual music created especially for Beatrice by Dario Marianelli, contemporary Italian composer and winner of Oscar and Golden Globe awards; and high level of performance in musical and plastic forms of contemporary Georgian artists.
The artistic foundation of the contemporary ballet is Beatrice, Dante’s muse and a carrier of a symbol of multiple allusions in the same way as The Divine Comedy itself. In the ballet, Beatrice is both the protagonist and antagonist: human, demonic and divine natures are concentrated within her. The musical and plastic world of the ballet is constructed precisely around the artistic idea of Beatrice’s transformation and metamorphosis, it begins with the hellish (earthly) reality of the contemporary reality and ends with Dante’s cosmic, harmonious unity of three colours (the triad) – a metamorphosis of the trinity symbol. Given all of the above, I consider the question of interrelation between Dante’s text and the ballet in three directions:
7. The artistic concept of Beatrice;
8. The interpretation of Dante’s text;
9. The artistic idea and forms.
