Lethe and Eunoe is a 2015 sculpture by Jacob Yanes, in balsawood, ethafoam, paper pulp, wood putty, and aqua-resin. The sculpture features personified figures of the rivers Lethe and Eunoe in Dante’s Earthly Paradise.
See more images here.
Citings & Sightings of Dante's Works in Contemporary Culture
By Caleb Taylor
Lethe and Eunoe is a 2015 sculpture by Jacob Yanes, in balsawood, ethafoam, paper pulp, wood putty, and aqua-resin. The sculpture features personified figures of the rivers Lethe and Eunoe in Dante’s Earthly Paradise.
See more images here.
“Presented as part of the 700th anniversary celebrations of the poet’s death, Dante’s epic journey through the afterlife, The Divine Comedy, is realised in a major artistic collaboration between trailblazing forces of the contemporary arts scene.
“In an inaugural co-production with Paris Opera Ballet and music co-commission with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Wayne McGregor’s groundbreaking choreography comes together with a virtuoso new score by one of the most influential musicians of the 21st Century, composer-conductor Thomas Adès, and designs by the acclaimed artist Tacita Dean, celebrated for her pioneering and poetic work across film and other mediums. With esteemed lighting designer Lucy Carter and dramaturg Uzma Hameed, the creative team unite in this three-part work for the full Company to illuminate the extraordinary vision of Dante.” —The Dante Project, Royal Opera House
Book tickets here (runs from October 14-30, 2021).
Stream the ballet here (from October 29, 2021).
A couple of teasers! Watch principals Francesca Hayward and Matthew Ball rehearse Inferno 5 (Paolo and Francesca in the whirlwind), with direction from Wayne McGregor, here.
And watch principals Edward Watson and Sarah Lamb rehearse the meeting with Beatrice in the Earthly Paradise here.
Sarah Crompton, writing for The Guardian, calls the performance “bold, beautiful, emotional and utterly engaging. The opening section, Inferno, where Dante (Watson) journeys to hell in the company of Virgil (Gary Avis), all but blows your socks off.” Read the review here.
“TSVI & Seven Orbits debut their Paraadiso* project with a whorl of sweeping choral arrangements and staggering rhythms for Shanghai’s SVBKVLT powerhouse. Inspired by Italian folk music, noise, ancient compositions and rituals, the result is a sort of widescreen 4D soundworld, something like Enigma/FSOL’s Lifeforms bolstered by smashed/syncopated hard drums and emo arpeggios rendered in slow motion.
“Unison is the duo’s conception of ritual music for contemporary, collective physical experience, aka the rave. With a masterful grasp of technoid dramaturgy, its 10 tracks draw on ancient choral traditions as much as up-to-the-second rhythmic diffusion styles to suggest new ways of moving and being moved, with a pointed focus on synchronising social action and reaction.
“Following their 2020 debut, Seven Orbits approaches the project from an audio-visual background, bringing a highly animated structure to TSVI’s rugged rhythmic proprioceptions. Unison was created by the pair to be performed in live context with visual accompaniment, and clearly conveys a strong sense of movement through the audio alone, coming close to the kind of balletic dynamics of Jlin and Second Woman.
“For the strongest examples we advise checking the lush choral lather and polymetric slosh of ‘Liquid Matter’ finding the duo at their most uplifting, the knuckled scuzz of ‘Berserk’ for their rudest workout, or the killer arrangement of haunting ancient chorales and bombed out dembow swag in ‘Riflesso,’ coming off like Laszlo Hortobagyi meets Paul Marmota at their darkest and most theatric.” —Boomkat, see also their artist statement on bandcamp
The final track is titled “Paradiso terrestre.”
* The spelling of the group’s name as ‘Paraadiso’ is intentional
“I stumbled upon this image, titled ‘Hypnosis’, while looking through a fashion editorial earlier this week. The shot features model Jourdan Dunn dressed in Iris Van Herpen. It was lensed by Nick Knight and styled by Edward Enninful. The image will be included in British Vogue’s current November issue [2019].
“The shot immediately reminds me of Dante’s entrance into earthly Paradise (in particular, it reminds me of Amos Nattini’s rendition of the scene). The similarity between the colors used, compositions of the frames, and the depictions of Beatrice is, to me, undeniable.” –Contributor Wade Pryor
Contributed by Wade Pryor, Harvard ’20
Matelda, too!
All submissions will be considered for posting. Bibliographic references and scholarly essays are also welcome for consideration.
Coggeshall, Elizabeth, and Arielle Saiber, eds. Dante Today: Citings and Sightings of Dante’s Works in Contemporary Culture. Website. Access date.