CHOREOGRAPHY | Songs of Heaven (extracts) --- 2023 chor. Cristiano Principato

Songs of Heaven (one act ballet) 2023 Rahvusooper in Tallinn, Estonia (main stage) Closing Gala of Summer Ballet Estonia Workshop choreography by Cristiano Principato performance video (extracts from two performances with two different casts) dancers: Elisabetta Formento, Cristiano Principato Raven Loan / Julianane Arduino, Yura Hanasaka / Jacqueline Sugianto, Emery Meroni, Paul McKinney Audra Cockrell / Kyra Olson, Andrew Shields / Benjamin Pierce Katie Drozd / Vanessa Childress, Livia Ferrati / Mia Katrina Lill SONGS OF HEAVEN is a twenty minutes neoclassical piece for ten dancers. It premiered in Tallinn on the stage of the Estonian National Opera at the Summer Nights Galas, the two closing shows of Ballet Summer Estonia (annual three weeks workshop attended by pre-professional and professional ballet dancers). It was performed twice, with two different casts. "I’ve been catching many many flights over the course of my career and each and everytime I am so fascinated by the beauty of the sky and its colours. Sometimes I think how funny it would be to look out the airplane window and see glimpses of little angels jumping up and down the clouds: I wonder if that’s what Heaven would be like, if there were to be one. The composition that I chose for this piece is the soundtrack of Les Choristes, a beautiful French movie that talks about an orphanage's kids choir and about how music heals the souls of its members. I found that the purity of children’s voice, together with the beauty of French language, would be the perfect match for this ballet. Songs of Heaven is just simply a series of sketches of life in paradise over the course of a day, in the hope that some day we will be reunited with our loved ones, freed from our human flaws and only left with the purest, kindest and happiest parts of ourselves. I wanted to portray different kind of souls - such as lovers, kids, families, friends -, as well as different emotions like freedom, joy, and, most of all, hope".