Photos of The Royal Ballet’s new Wayne McGregor work: The Dante Project

Ballet World Premiere

The Royal Ballet presents Wayne McGregor's  latest full-length ballet The Dante Project 
Thursday 14 – Saturday 30 October 2021 
Streamed on Friday 29 October 2021 

Wayne McGregor, Thomas Adès and Tacita Dean come together with The Royal Ballet in a co-production with Paris Opera Ballet to present The Dante Project, a new ballet partly inspired by Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy. The ballet receives its world premiere in the 700th anniversary year of Dante's death, in 1321.

For this new work, McGregor has assembled a team of international talent with a new score by Thomas Adès, commissioned by The Royal Ballet and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Sets and costumes are by visual artist Tacita Dean, well known for her pioneering and poetic work across film and multiple mediums. Lighting design is by Lucy Carter and Simon Bennison and dramaturgy by Uzma Hameed.

The Divine Comedy is one of the greatest literary works, inspired by the agony of Dante's forced exile from his hometown, Florence. The new ballet follows Dante's epic journey through the afterlife, from crisis to revelation, guided by his literary hero Virgil and his lost love Beatrice. It encompasses the drama of Inferno and its damned, to Dante's mystical pilgrimage on Mount Purgatorio and the dazzling spheres of Paradiso with their endless configurations of light.

Part One of The Dante Project, Inferno, received its premiere in Los Angeles in 2019 during The Royal Ballet's tour. The full three-act ballet now receives its world premiere in October 2021. The Dante Project is McGregor's nineteenth work for The Royal Ballet and his first full-length ballet since Woolf Works in 2015. 

Tacita Dean's 12-metre-long blackboard drawing Inferno will be on view in the Royal Opera House's Paul Hamlyn Hall from 4 September to 7 April 2022.

14 – 30 October 2021 
The Royal Opera House, WC2E 9DD 
14,15,18,20,21,26,28 October at 7.30pm 
16 October at 1pm 
30 October at 11.30am 

Tickets £7 – £90 

www.roh.org.uk 

Streaming  

29 October 2021, 7.30pm (Recording of Tuesday 26 October performance) 
Price: £16 and on demand for 30 days

Gramilano( Editor )

Graham Spicer is a writer, director and photographer in Milan, blogging (under the name ‘Gramilano') about dance, opera, music and photography for people “who are a bit like me and like some of the things I like”. He was a regular columnist for Opera Now magazine and wrote for the BBC until transferring to Italy.

His scribblings have appeared in various publications from Woman's Weekly to Gay Times, and he wrote the ‘Danza in Italia' column for Dancing Times magazine.