Balletto di Roma was born in 1960 from the artistic partnership between two icons of the Italian dance: Franca Bartolomei, prima ballerina and choreographer of the main Italian and foreign Opera houses, and Walter Zappolini, Director of the Dance School of the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma from 1973 to 1988.
During its 59 years of life, Balletto di Roma has witnessed many prestigious collaborations and many creative souls, so that with the passing of time the productive activity has increased both in terms of quantity and quality of the staged works during the seasons, with a growing consensus of audience. It is for the extraordinariness of the events and for the remarkable and constant request that the Balletto di Roma presents every year its entire repertoire, enriched with the new productions.
In the three-years 2015-2017, under the artistic direction of Roberto Casarotto, personality among the most interesting on the current national and international scene of the contemporary dance, Balletto di Roma has strengthen the research planning and the partnerships allowing to conjugate at its best the tradition with the innovation and to develop the presence of the Company in Europe and in the world. With the passing of time, the Roman group has built an ensemble of elevated technical and interpretative level, producing a repertoire of high artistic value and welcoming numerous choreographers, also very young.
For the new path undertaken in the three-years 2018-2020, the General Manager Luciano Carratoni has brought a significant generational change at the top of the structure by appointing Francesca Magnini to the Artistic Direction. The new artistic figure reinforces the schemes and expands the internationalization goals of Balletto di Roma involving many institutions, active in this important process of growth that will see the structure celebrate in 2020 its first 60 years of artistic life. Alongside the new management will be the associated reknown choreographers such as Massimiliano Volpini, Fabrizio Monteverde and the young Davide Valrosso. Among the new collaborations also the one with the Department of History, Anthropology, Religions, Art and Performance of “La Sapienza”, University of Rome, engaged for the whole three years period to carry out joint artistic and academic activities that start from the training in the field of dance and theater, to directly implement the live production and performance practices.