Rhapsody in Blue: A Mirror of Water Performance Celebrating Rome's Aquatic Heritage

On April 12th at 18:00, Cristiano Leone will illustrate the "performative" nature of the Mirror during a press conference, on the occasion of the Roman Premiere of Rhapsody in Blue, Aterballetto's Dance on Water, the first performance on the Mirror with which the Special Superintendence of Rome wants to celebrate with the Capital the return of water to the Antonine Baths by offering citizens an afternoon of entertainment, culture, and beauty. For the inauguration of the Mirror, Leone proposed the Roman premiere of the show Rhapsody in blue, choreography by Iratxe Ansa and Igor Bacovich created for the centenary of George Gershwin's score for the National Dance Foundation / Aterballetto. This choice is in continuity with the RADIX audiovisual project, of which Cristiano Leone is the creator and director. In RADIX II, in fact, Iratxe Ansa and Igor Bacovich danced in all the spaces of the Baths, in a double homage, both to the Monument and to two Spanish intellectuals, Rafael Alberti and María Teresa León. Rhapsody in blue will be presented to the public on April 13th in a double performance, at 16:00 and 17:30, with access to the performance included with the purchase of the entrance ticket to the site. "The Water Mirror is a project for the enhancement of the historical, artistic, and cultural heritage of the Baths of Caracalla, which occurs with the architectural gesture of Hannes Peer, as radical as it is non-invasive: the Baths are not only not covered by the installation, but are even visually doubled, in a relationship that indissolubly links the Monument, the artists who will perform on stage, and the audience. The Mirror is therefore not only a tool for the contemplation of the ancient, but it is the engine of activation of the principle of reciprocity typical of performance. A performance that is always unique and unrepeatable, which will vary continuously depending on the people, the artists but also the light and atmospheric agents." The Water Mirror thus constitutes a concrete application of the theories presented by Cristiano Leone in his latest book, Atlas of Performing Culture, published by Rizzoli New York in November 2024 (recently presented at the MAXXI in Rome and the Triennale in Milan, as well as in New York and Mexico City).