the Company Historical Dance
Harmonia Suave
Directed by Carla Favata
present
1st Edition of the Historical Commemoration ofthe Gran Ballo dai Ponteleone form the novel“The Leopard” by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
“ Le Grand Bal du Guépard”
“The Grand Ball of the Leopard”
The Dream of the Principe di Salina
To exist also consists of the awareness thathistorical memories, traditions, pastachievements and their legends are fully part of our artistic and cultural background. As such they will live on forever, for indvidualsand places – alongside the historical eventsboth written and lived through – food and drinking habits of this land of Sicilyaccompany our lives so as to become and integral part our memory. The year 2018 willsee Palermo as the official Cultural Capital ofItaly. On this occasion the Dance Company Harmonia Suave directed by Carla Favata willorganize the 1st Edition of the HistoricalCommemoration of the Gran Ballo dai Ponteleone as described in the Sixth Chapter ofthe acclaimed novel “The Leopard” by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa and as directed for the screen by Luchino Visconti in the omonymousward-winning movie. Luchino Visconti.
“Le Grand Bal du Guépard”
“The Grand Ball of the Leopard”
The Dream of the Prince of Salina
Saturday April 7 2018, in Palermo within the enchantingVilla Boscogrande, location of the opening scene ofVisconti’s movie.
The novel “The Leopard” is set in Palermo, 1860 in the aftermath of the landing on the the Island ofGaribaldi’s Thousand. As such, it tells the story of the period stretching from the glories of the Romantic era tothe annexation of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies to the Kingdom of Italy.
The novel’s pages are redolent with the memories of the wonderful places and memories now gone forever which the Principe di Salina experienced in his childhood and as a youngman. Those places are now laying in ruins. The same are nowbrought back to mind in the most atmospheric scenes of the movie “The Leopard” and especially in the first, shot in the fascinating Villa Boscogrande, as well as in the sixth, whichdescrive the Gran ballo dai Ponteleone . The novel’scharacters, the costumes and dances – such as the famousWaltz or Mazurka by Giuseppe Verdi and Nino Rota respectively – together with the magistereal coreographies byAlberto Testa, the places, the musical scores, landscapes and buffet where rhum jelly, timballo di maccheroni and rosolio – all will be celebrated during
“Le Grand Bal du Guépard”
“Il Gran Ballo del Gattopardo”
“The Great Ball of the Leopard”
The Dream of the Prince of Salina
Within both a nostalgic and intense atmosphere aimed at bringing back to life a crucial passage in the history of Sicily. “If we wish everything to stay the same, everything mustchange”. Thus Tancredi, the Prince’s nephew, in “The Leopard”: an apparently enigmatic and ambiguous phrase still nowadays rich in its implications. “Le Grand Bal duGuépard “ – “The Grand Ball of the Leopard” of the Dance Company Harmonia Suave diretta da Carla Favata, will re-enact the climax of the novel as contained in its Sixth Chapterin the description of the “Grande Ballo dai Ponteleone”.
This describes a crucial historical passage in which Palermo’sruling elite lived in awe of the new events, for “following the arrival of the Piedmontese and the ominous events ofAspromonte [where the Piedmontes shot Garibaldi], havingfears of expropriations and violence subsided, the two hundredpeople who constituted “‘the World” never got tired ofmeeting each other to congratulate themselves on being still in exsistence” ( G. Tomasi di Lampedusa “The Leopard”).
All participants will wear 1860 attires clothing; dances will belisted according to a rigorously philological carnet; the film location , the music, the buffet’s historical menu, the viewfrom the Villa’s balconies and the smells of the land of Siciliy– and more: the Novel’s pages as well as the movie’s centralscenes - all will scrupolously brought to life under Carla Favata’s direction, aimed at making participants live again the glories of time gone past forever cast in the pages of a novelthat made history.
The Grand Ball, guided tours and visits to the venuesof both “The Leopard” and Palermo Capital ofCulture 2018 will be organized by Compagnia Harmonia Suave directed by Carla Favata. For info concerning hotels, transport, shuttle from/to the airport and any other request, please contact: Carla Favata e-mail carla.favata@gmail.com
