Caracalla Danza 2026

Caracalla Danza, promoted by the Soprintendenza Speciale di Roma in collaboration with CCN/Aterballetto, is at once a festival capable of showcasing the best of international dance, dedicated to enhancing an extraordinary venue, and a highlight of Rome’s cultural calendar.

The 2026 edition opens with something new: a site-specific initiative from June 26 to 28, with CCN/Aterballetto leading a surprise journey through the famous spaces — and other secret and hidden ones — of the archaeological complex, curated by Diego Tortelli, while from June 30 to July 5, stage performances are scheduled on the Specchio d’Acqua (Water Mirror).

“Caracalla Danza is an important initiative for the Baths of Caracalla,” explains Daniela Porro, Special Superintendent of Rome, “because it brings contemporary languages to the city that are capable of engaging in a dialogue with its historical and monumental identity. Dance, in this context, does not impose itself on the archaeological landscape — it accompanies it, enhances it, offering the audience an experience deeply rooted in the place. Previous editions have confirmed the importance of creating cultural occasions that can unite preservation, artistic research and public engagement, making the Baths not only an archaeological site but also a space for cultural production.”

Caracalla Danza was born with an architectural installation at the centre of the Baths’ gardens, the Specchio d’Acqua inaugurated in 2024 with the choreography Rhapsody in Blue: images from that evening travelled around the world — a crisp and moving performance, with no stage apparatus to distract from the absolute beauty of the monument behind the performers.

From that success came the idea of giving continuity to the experience and its defining qualities: Caracalla Danza 2025, staged at sunset, offered the audience total immersion in a visual experience of great naturalness. As if those bodies existed outside of time.

“Enhancing monumental heritage,” says Gigi Cristoforetti, director of the Centro Coreografico Nazionale/Aterballetto, “is one of our most important areas of work. The dancing body on a stage is a wonderful aesthetic and choreographic statement, but when working in site-specific contexts the audience discovers different emotions. Unexpected resonances with the spaces emerge, and the closeness to the performers transforms the experience of both the dance and the monumental landscape being traversed.”

The 2026 edition sharpens a dual mission: enhancing the archaeological site in all its layered significance through the site-specific performance, and recreating the magical atmosphere of the evening shows, in which the archaeological landscape and the images of the dancers are reflected together in the water mirror, sealed by the colours of a Roman sunset. This year, new artistic partners join the project: the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma with its Dance School, and the Fondazione Ravenna Manifestazioni.

Caracalla Danza 2026 / schedule

SITE-SPECIFIC

Découverte: Caracalla, from Friday 26 to Sunday 28 June

A new site-specific creation, produced exclusively for the Baths of Caracalla and choreographed by Diego Tortelli, drawing on CCN’s well-established experience in creating performative journeys through museum and heritage spaces, such as the MicroDanze series (here a short video from the 2022 edition at Castel Sant’Angelo).

Découverte: Caracalla is a performance of undeniable artistic value and high emotional engagement, with dancers and a cellist guiding groups of visitors/spectators through the spaces of the Baths, from the water mirror to the underground mithraeum. A kind of guided tour of the Baths of Caracalla, among interrupted architectures and missing volumes — and it is precisely this absence that becomes the material. The choreography is built from here: it does not fill the space, it listens to it; it does not impose a form, it lets itself be traversed by what persists; it is not a reconstruction, but an act of presence.

Yet at the heart of everything, there was water. Water that continues to shape the perception of space. It flowed, enveloped, reflected, amplified sounds and bodies. It was living, unstable matter, impossible to hold. In this work, water is not represented but evoked: in the flows of movement, in transitions, in the quality of time. It is a presence, a force that has left traces without leaving form. Originally, the bathing journey was a precise ritual, almost a score for the body. Viewed through contemporary eyes, it reveals a surprisingly choreographic structure: a continuous passage between activation, expansion, intensity, release, shock and equilibrium.

In Découverte: Caracalla this sequence is embodied. It moves through bodies and spaces as an internal principle, as a memory that acts without needing to be declared. The performers inhabit the space as intermittent presences, never entirely stable. They do not construct images, but activate relationships: between body and ruin, between warmth and stone, between memory and present.

Découverte: Caracalla is a state, a suspended time, the body as an instrument of perception. The intention is to activate a contemplation that is not distant or purely visual, but deeply embodied. The audience is not asked to observe a story, but to enter a sensory condition in which the past is not represented but re-emerges as physical echo, as a warmth still felt whose origin can no longer be traced.

Choreography and staging Diego Tortelli

Costumes Diego Tortelli

Cellist Daniela Savoldi

CCN/Aterballetto Dancers: Veronica Biondini, Edoardo Brovardi, Matteo Capetola, Matilde Di Ciolo, Vittoria Franchina, Julien Guibourg, Clément Haenen

Students of the Dance School of the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma, directed by Eleonora Abbagnato

Duration 50 minutes.

Three times daily, at 6:00 pm, 7:15 pm and 8:30 pm

SPECCHIO D’ACQUA (WATER MIRROR)

IMPROMPTUS. ARIE, DANZE E IMPROVVISAZIONI 30 June

In 2025, the Centro Coreografico Nazionale / Aterballetto and Fondazione Ravenna Manifestazioni launched the project Impromptus. Arie, danze e improvvisazioni, where dance and music meet, intertwine and transform into new, unrepeatable performances. The aim is to create a creative space in which choreographers and musicians work side by side, shaping works born from improvisation and mutual inspiration.

The goal of the project is to explore new ways of interaction between movement, sound and space, fostering a fluid and spontaneous relationship between disciplines. Through artistic experimentation, dancers and musicians push beyond the traditional boundaries of composition, creating short performances that capture the intensity of this encounter.

Dancers: Matilde Di Ciolo and Matteo Capetola

Musicians: Simone Zanchini (accordion) and Michele Rabbia (percussion)

Duration 50 minutes, start time 8:30 pm

preludio by Diego Tortelli

an echo, a wave by Philippe Kratz

bliss by Johan Inger

From Friday 3 to Sunday 5 July, three creations by CCN/Aterballetto

Total duration 60 minutes, starting at 8:30 pm

A creation for 5 performers, Preludio is built around some of the most intense songs by Australian singer-songwriter Nick Cave, one of the greatest figures of Post-Punk.

In these songs, Cave explores the interweaving of themes such as love, “belief”, addiction, obsession and loss, crossing into one another as if he were telling a story, a lived experience that can be felt by everyone through his use of notes or tone of voice. His strength lies in the fact that one does not need to fully understand the content or the source of inspiration in order to “feel” and “make oneself felt”. Through his work, Cave argues that we should not go to the theatre, to a concert, to a museum in order to understand, but to ask ourselves questions, to enrich ourselves, to analyse ourselves.

In one of his songs I found the question I wanted to ask myself for this creation: Mah Sanctum (my credo). What do I believe in? I believe in the “body” — I believe in its fragility and strength, in its limits and its expansion, in its capacity for change and constant transformation. I believe in its contemporaneity, but also in its ability to keep experiencing the emotions that have been handed down to us; I believe in its violent beauty and frightening fragility. In this work I explore above all these obsessions, compulsions, addictions and contrasts, transforming the bodies of the 5 dancers not into men and women, but into emotional stimuli — stimuli that are part of written poems, of which it is enough to understand that they do not end there on the stage.

Preludio is my profane prayer, my love letter to the body, my credo of today.

Diego Tortelli

Credits

Choreography: Diego Tortelli

Music: Nick Cave

Choreographic assistant: Casia Vengoechea

For 5 dancers

Duration 16 minutes

Perhaps no other view, like that of the sea, can come close to explaining the difficult concept of eternity. Observing its apparently infinite blue surface, we come to understand how ephemeral we are, how small and limited, like the proverbial drops in an ocean. The sea is a place of wonder, of dreams and promises, of an overwhelming fascination that conveys a deep serenity. It hypnotises us, absorbs us and can fill us with spiritual awe.

Great stories have been told and written about the Mediterranean Sea by all the peoples who border it, inspired by discoveries, conquests and adopted homelands. All of this carries down to us the echo of infinite hopes, unbearable tragedies and extraordinary encounters.

Those waves have crossed history — they have always been occasions for departures, meetings and farewells. Wars and knowledge have always travelled across the sea.

Watching the flow of a dancer’s movement, we sometimes find that natural and uninterrupted motion of the sea’s surface. And two people dancing always pass through different moods, contrasting emotions, closeness and distance.

Credits

Choreography by Philippe Kratz

Sound Designer Tommaso Michelini

For two dancers

Duration 10 minutes

BLISS is one of CCN/Aterballetto’s signature works, a piece that has always captivated audiences around the world. Exclusively and specifically for Caracalla, Johan Inger’s choreography is being revived by the company with an entirely new cast, to mark its 10th anniversary since its premiere in 2016.

The starting point of this new work is the music of Keith Jarrett’s Köln Concert, which, beyond myself, has inspired and moved millions of people through its perfect timing in capturing a generation moving from one phase of life to another.

My task, together with that of the dancers, is to tell the story of how we relate to this iconic music. In the way we encounter this music through the eyes of today, both a compositional and an emotional challenge are present.

Today I have been asked to give an idea of what my work will be, but the truth of the performance will have to be discovered through my encounter with the dancers and, together, through our encounter with the music of the Köln Concert.

So here we are, all of us, whatever our experience may be. We are “beginners” in relation to one another and in relation to the music that will give voice to this new encounter.

Johan Inger

Credits

Choreography Johan Inger

Music Keith Jarrett

Set design Johan Inger

Costumes Johan Inger and Francesca Messori

Choreographic assistant Yvan Dubreuil

Production Fondazione Nazionale della Danza / Aterballetto

Premio Danza&Danza 2016 “Italian Production of the Year”

For the full company

Duration 27 minutes

Caracalla Danza 2026 / calendar

Découverte: Caracalla
26 – 28 June
performances at 6:00 pm, 7:15 pm and 8:30 pm
duration 50 minutes

Impromptus. Arie, danze e improvvisazioni
30 June – 8:30 pm
duration 50 minutes

Preludio – An Echo, A Wave – Bliss (three works by CCN/Aterballetto)
3 – 5 July – 8:30 pm
duration 60 minutes

Caracalla Danza 2026 / tickets

Ticketing and ticket sales

The evening performances will be offered to the public at two different price levels:

€25 central seats;

€20 lateral seats;

€20 Découverte: Caracalla and Impromptus

Tickets will be available for purchase through a redirect from museiitaliani.it to the CCN/Aterballetto website from the first days of June.

Published On: 25 May 2026

News

Caracalla Danza 2026

A site-specific initiative from June 26 to 28, with CCN/Aterballetto leading a surprise journey through the famous spaces — and other secret and hidden ones — of the archaeological complex of the Baths of Caracalla, curated by Diego Tortelli. From June 30 to July 5, stage performances are scheduled on the Specchio d'Acqua (Water Mirror).

  • From 2 to 29 March, Aterballetto performs in Italy and on the French Riviera some of the most acclaimed titles from its repertoire, including Notte Morricone by Marcos Morau, Solo Echo by Crystal Pite, and Glory Hall by Diego Tortelli.

From Rome to Naples: Aterballetto’s March tour

From 2 to 29 March, Aterballetto performs in Italy and on the French Riviera some of the most acclaimed titles from its repertoire, including Notte Morricone by Marcos Morau, Solo Echo by Crystal Pite, and Glory Hall by Diego Tortelli.

  • From 1 to 8 March 2026 Dance Week at La Fonderia of CCN/Aterbaletto in Reggio Emilia gives the tribute to the female creativity.

Dance Week. A tribute to female creativity

From 1 to 8 March, Dance Week comes to Fonderia, paying tribute to female creativity through visions, languages, and imaginaries shaped by choreographers and artists capable of questioning the present through plural perspectives.

  • Four events exploring time in dance: from improvisations with an accordion to the tragic fate of Macbeth, from gestures spanning centuries to the talent of new dancers.

Danza in Fonderia in February

Four events exploring time in dance: from improvisations with an accordion to the tragic fate of Macbeth, from gestures spanning centuries to the talent of new dancers.

  • Per la prima volta nei suoi quasi 50 anni di storia, Aterballetto in tournée in Sudafrica dall’8 al 12 novembre, all’interno di ITALIA DANZA.

Aterballetto in South Africa for the First Time

As part of the ITALIA DANZA project, and with the support of the Italian Embassy in Pretoria and the Italian Cultural Institute of Pretoria, Aterballetto will perform in South Africa from 8 to 12 November 2025.

  • Siamo orgogliosi di annunciare che il Centro Coreografico Nazionale / Aterballetto riceverà il Premio Taobuk 2025, nell’ambito del prestigioso Taobuk Festival, in programma a Taormina dal 18 al 23 giugno.

Caracalla Danza

From September 26 to 28 at the Baths of Caracalla, a new project by the Special Superintendency of Rome in collaboration with CCN/Aterballetto comes to life. Guest company: Gauthier Dance. In partnership with Romaeuropa Festival.

  • Aterballetto a Granada: l’ultima di Don Juan e le MicroDanze all’Alhambra per il Festival Internacional de Música y Danza

Aterballetto at the Granada Festival

On June 28 and 29, Aterballetto returns to the Granada Festival, performing Don Juan by Johan Inger for the final time, and bringing the MicroDanze to life in the enchanting setting of the Alhambra.