Diego Tortelli Reimagines 'Sleeping Beauty' for Junior Balletto di Toscana

Choreographer Diego Tortelli has created a new version of Marius Petipa's classic ballet 'The Sleeping Beauty' for the Junior Balletto di Toscana (JBT), debuting at the Teatro Comunale di Ferrara. Commissioned by artistic director Cristina Bozzolini, the work strips the original of its definite article, becoming 'Bella addormentata' (Sleeping Beauty) and shifts focus from a princess to a young poet searching for beauty, harmony, and art. Tortelli, a 30-year-old from Brescia trained at La Scala and influenced by choreographers like Frederic Flamand, Ohad Naharin, Nacho Duato, Angelin Preljocaj, William Forsythe, Lucinda Childs, Olivier Dubois, and Richard Siegal, uses Tchaikovsky's score selectively. The set, dominated by black, white, and red, includes a milky box with a black screen, a futuristic megaphone, an old record player, and scattered papers. Key dancers include Roberto Doveri as the Poet, Matilde Di Ciolo as Aurora, Martino Biagi as Carabosse, and Veronica Galdo as the girlfriend. The production explores the dialectic between good and evil resolved by love, but through human, contemporary nuances. Tortelli's choreography blends neoclassical vocabulary with abstract, lyrical movements, avoiding direct quotes from Petipa.