DANTE’S EVOCATION – A JOURNEY INTO THE DIVINE COMEDY (Image, Dance, Music and Word)

Lectures & performance art conceived and organized by Carla Rossi Academy – International Institute of Italian Studies (CRA-INITS Non-Profit Organization – Private Italian Institution for University Education and Research) with the patronage of the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities

Starting from the 2007-2008 academic year, Carla Rossi Academy – International Institute of Italian Studies (CRA-INITS) organizes programs of public meetings, called Dante’s Evocation. A journey into the Divine Comedy (Image, Dance, Music and Word), multidisciplinary performances lasting about an hour and twenty minutes. Each meeting includes the presentation of a different Dantean canto by Marino Alberto Balducci (CRA-INITS Director / Associate Professor at the University of Stettin in Poland). Dante’s Evocation was designed to promote the updating and deepening of the Divine Comedy, with all its ethical and spiritual values. During each meeting, the various thematic units of the original text of Dante’s poem are illustrated, through a historical-philosophical discourse and also by virtue of performative art: digital sets (Arianna Bechini), electronic music (Andrea Pozzi / Sensory Gate), contemporary dances (Antonella Tronci /Axe Ballet) and dramatized readings (Marco Arrigoni / Compagnia Teatrale Progetto Idra) of some passages of the CRA-INITS commentary in poetic-interpretive prose of the Divine Comedy that M.A. Balducci is writing. Art works by Marco Rindori, created to illustrate each canto of the new commentary, are exhibited in video installations during each event. Every artistic component of these lecture-perfomances is entirely original. Dante’s Evocation has a specific didactic character, inspired by the most recent psycho-suggestive, dramatic and spectacular methodologies: therefore, it is a program particularly suitable for high school and university students. Since 2007, CRA-INITS has organized more than eighty Dante’s Evocation meetings in Italy (Castiglioncello, Florence, Rome, Monsummano, Montecatini Terme, Milan, Pistoia, Torre del Lago Puccini, Vigevano, etc.) and abroad (Australia, India, Poland, Switzerland). The initiative is sponsored by the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities (MIBAC), the Tuscany Region, the Italian Dante Society – Florence, the Dante Center of the Friars Minor Conventual – Ravenna and the Dante Alighieri Society – Rome.

CRA-INITS has also favored the general project of the “CRA-INITS Divine Comedy Museum”®, conceived by Arianna Bechini as a psychoeducational and multisensory museum.