Rodin and the Dance

Rodin and the Dance
Mudec – Museum of Cultures, Milan – October 25, 2023 to March 10, 2024
The exhibition is made possible thanks to a collaboration with the Rodin Museum in Paris, from which 53 works come. It tells, through an unprecedented and original exhibition project, the fascination and very strong creative imprinting that dance had on the artistic genius of Auguste Rodin. A virtuous circle in which, on the one hand, dance was an inspirational muse for the artist in the early 20th century, and on the other, contemporary dance still finds inspiration from the artist through his ‘dancing’ works, which are unique and so relevant today.

For the first time in Italy fifteen statuettes of dancers dedicated by the French artist to “Dance Movements.” Fourteen in fact come from the Paris museum, and this nucleus, on the occasion of the exhibition, will be joined by a fifteenth statuette, kept at the National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art in Rome.

The exhibition becomes an opportunity to take an extraordinary journey into the world of dance through a video selection referring to contemporary choreography and choreographer artists who have drawn inspiration from Rodin for their performances. The continuous dialogue between Rodin’s sculptures and the multimedia and digital apparatus, together with the immersive installation, create a constant play of visual and symbolic cross-references

The three exhibition sections, through complex and painstaking six-handed work, are curated respectively by Aude Chevalier, assistant curator of the sculpture department of the Rodin Museum; Cristiana Natali, professor of South Asian Anthropology, Dance Anthropology and Ethnographic Research Methodologies at the University of Bologna; and Elena Cervellati, associate professor of History of Dance and Dance Theories and Practices at the Department of Arts, University of Bologna.