“Dante and Dance” at Dante Season 2021

On November 4, 2021, the collaborative effort behind Dante in Oxford hosted the “Dante and Dance” event. The performance was described as follows:

“Luc Petton, choreographer, will present a screening of Ainsi la Nuit, his extraordinary ballet for human dancers, birds, and animals inspired by Dante’s Divine Comedy. Luc Petton will also be in conversation with members of the audience. The event is programmed in conjunction with the display ‘The Divine Comedy from Manuscript to Manga’ which is open to the public in an adjacent space of the Bodleian’s Weston Library. The film screening will be followed by a response from Professor Sue Jones and a Q&A. […]

“Luc Petton founded the dance company Le Guetteur in 1994. An avid ornithologist since childhood, he began to work with birds in various projects. In addition to his staged choreographies, he intervenes with his company in hospitals to work with disabled children and the elderly. Birds do not share the language barriers of human beings and consequently can help to establish new modes of communication. Ainsi la Nuit is a creation by Luc Petton launched in 2017 which responds to Dante’s Divine Comedy through the movements of dancers, owls, a vulture, a wolf, and a circus artist. At an event to be hosted at the Bodleian Library in November 2021, Luc Petton will introduce a screening of a film of this production. Luc Petton is an Officer of the French Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.”  —TORCH (retrieved February 13, 2022)

More information about “Dante and Dance” and its programming can be found here.

Other Dante in Oxford posts can be found here.