Sergei Polunin's Dante Metànoia at Ravenna Festival

Sergei Polunin, the Ukrainian-born former bad boy of ballet, presented Dante Metànoia, a multimedia spectacle commissioned by Ravenna Festival for the 700th anniversary of Dante's death. The show blends 1990s fantasy, video games, and theme park aesthetics with horror, graphic novel style, and 3D video-mapping. Polunin conceived the work and choreographed the Purgatorio section, while Inferno and Paradiso were choreographed by Ross Freddie Ray and Jiří Bubenícek respectively. Video designers Yan Yanko and Otto Bubenícek, composers Miroslav Bako and Kirill Richter, and for Purgatorio, Marcella Grimaux and Gregory Revert contributed. The one-man show features Polunin hooded in a dark forest, battling through hellish scenes with live piano, then ascending a 3D corridor to a luminous door opening onto a desert with a monolith. Beatrice appears as singer Andjela Ninkovic. In Paradiso, Polunin interacts with white face casts on columns, his face projected large. The critic Giuseppe Distefano notes that Paradiso is the most successful choreography for its contemporary language, while Inferno and Purgatorio are overwhelmed by invasive imagery and music, with Polunin's dance remaining virtuosic but lacking dramatic depth. The performance took place at Teatro Alighieri in Ravenna in 2021.