Viaggio nel repertorio del balletto (A journey through the ballet repertoire) is a project by the Centro Coreografico Nazionale Aterballetto, curated and led by dance journalist and critic Francesca Pedroni. A series of performance-talks hosted at the Fonderia in Reggio Emilia, the project brings together guest artists—dancers and maîtres from Italy’s most renowned ballet companies—to reveal the behind-the-scenes process of preparing key titles from the traditional repertoire.

Four events focused on repertoire, offering both practical demonstrations and theoretical insights into classical-academic ballet technique and its evolution in relation to costume, set design, and music—from the first studio rehearsals to the final performance. The series opens with the Accademia Teatro alla Scala.

Dance is a transformative art form. Both ancient and contemporary. It is reborn in the bodies of dancers, generation after generation, constantly renewed each time a studio, a stage, a street, or a museum becomes a space to be inhabited through its creativity. It is an art of the present, capable of delving into the great works of the past while illuminating its own time. A fertile art that moves forward, never forgetting what still resonates in its past.

Dance lives through creations: some are fortunate, beautiful, and resilient enough not to vanish into oblivion, but to become part of the “repertoire.” Traditional companies around the world—from the Teatro alla Scala Ballet Company to London’s Royal Ballet, from the Paris Opéra Ballet to the Rome Opera Ballet, from the New York City Ballet to Naples’ Teatro di San Carlo, from the Mariinsky in St. Petersburg to the Bolshoi in Moscow—preserve the great 19th- and 20th-century classics such as Giselle, The Sleeping Beauty, The Nutcracker, Swan Lake, Romeo and Juliet.

To these classical titles, each new season adds neoclassical, post-classical, Tanztheater, and contemporary productions—narrative and abstract ballets alike—featuring masterpieces such as Theme and Variations by George Balanchine, Le Sacre du Printemps by Pina Bausch, Signes by Carolyn Carlson, In the middle, somewhat elevated and Blake Works by William Forsythe, and Onegin by John Cranko.