Dante and the Divine Comedy: conversations around interpretations in movement, music and performance
This one-day conference explores interpretations of Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy through the lens of visual art, music, movement, and performance. The contributors present an up-to-date exchange of ideas on different historical and contemporary contexts in which the creative and performance arts have engaged with Dante's poem to create new artworks in different media. The conference draws inspiration from the diverse elements of Wayne McGregor’s ballet, The Dante Project, premiered in full in autumn 2021 and since repeated in the programmes at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden. Stimulated by the contrasting views and reactions provoked by the ballet, the conference presents reflections from leading Dante scholars on the ways that McGregor's ballet stimulates discussion of the Divine Comedy’s rich afterlife in the interpretations of dancers, musicians, and artists, and concludes with a Round Table discussion.
Contributors include: Lachlan Hughes (Durham), Helena Phillips-Robins (Cambridge), Francesca Southerden (Oxford), Heather Webb (Cambridge).
Co-organised by: Jane Everson (RHUL), Catherine Keen (UCL).
Free attendance, registered attendees only (in-person and online). Tea and coffee service.
The organisers would like to thank the Society for Italian Studies and University College London for their generous support for this event.
Image credit: Illustration to Dante, Purgatorio 26, designed by John Flaxman, engraved by Tommaso Piroli (1793). Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
