From cinema to theater: “Ballades”, a reflection on life and love in the Italian style

In mid-2020, when in Europe it was believed that the worst was over and the Covid-19 spread furiously in America, the ban on dancing in Italy, both indoors and outdoors, dashed the hopes of citizens who yearned to return to normality. Why couldn’t this relaxing activity be enjoyed if bars, beaches, amateur soccer fields, and gyms were free to operate? That was the question everyone was asking. This event and the subsequent reflections on the times of the pandemic marked a change of perspective in “Ballades”, a show by dance the Fábula Sáltica company that arrives in Lima totally renewed.

“Dance is celebrated as a social activity, which eliminates distances and differences, because whatever social class you are from or whatever language you speak, you are going to have fun, leaving prejudices aside.”

Claudio Ronda / choreographer of the company Fábula Sáltica About the dance show “Ballades” and its essence.

The starting point for this dance montage is the film “Le bal” -or “El baile”, thus translated into Spanish-, directed by Ettore Scola and released in 1983. Listed as a masterpiece of cinematography, the film covers Without the need for dialogue, the history of Europe from 1936, before the Second World War, until the beginning of the eighties, through music and dance. The characters in the film, says Claudio Ronda, choreographer of the production, “They are prototypes, typologies, masks, attitudes, a vocabulary of what we are, with our hobbies, fears and hopes”. And it is this conception that Fábula Sáltica has collected to transfer it to “Ballades” and thus, he adds, “creating the protagonists who help us find ourselves, everything we are with our fragility included. The ballroom – where the action takes place – is a place full of subjective expectations”.

“Ballades” was born in 2009 at the Teatro Sociale de Rovigo. The success took the show to a tour throughout Italy, but in the two years in which the coronavirus did its thing, it had a profound evolution. The terrible experience that this virus meant for many and that resulted in the lack of interpersonal contact gave rise to a new version. We no longer only talk about humanity in general but about that need we have to meet others. In this regard, Ronda points out that “dance is an immediate tool that eliminates distance. You meet people without knowing them, you ask them to dance and even without knowing her name you discover that you are as close to her as if you had spent a week together. Therefore, dance is celebrated as a social activity, which eliminates distances and differences, because regardless of the social class you are or speak the language you speak, you are going to have fun, leaving prejudices aside”.

It is within this magical and timeless world that the ballroom represents, where a plot of desires and fears unfolds that portray life after a context of pain and discouragement. “That’s why the ending was also changed. In the first version, loneliness was assumed as the key to understanding the work. Now, on the contrary, it is contact and closeness that prevail in the work. Covid-19 made the body be perceived as a problem, but the time has come to think about contact without fear.

All the situations that “Ballades” proposes are exalted thanks to the music of Paolo Zambelli, who with waltz, tango, mazurka, jazz and rock melodies enriches the show defined by specialized critics as intelligent and at the same time captivating.