SoulEtude: Exploring the Creative Depths of Dance Choreography and Performance

Stefania Ballone discusses SoulEtude with Professor Gerald Cupchik. Watch the recording of the SoulEtude performance prior to their discussion at the Torrance Festival of Ideas (available on YouTube).

SoulEtude is a journey through the landscapes of the soul, memories, experiences, emotions, images and visions of a stratified self. In this solitude, another presence reveals itself as a part of me.

Speakers

• STEFANIA BALLONE Teatro alla Scala theatre, Dancer and Choreographer

In 2014, she graduated with a Master in Sciences of Theatre and Performing Arts at Università degli Studi di Milano, with a thesis on Ballet at the Teatro alla Scala in the Nineties. In 2015, she participated as a choreographer at the Gala des Étoiles at the Teatro alla Scala and started a collaboration with the online dance magazine dreamtimemagazine publishing reviews and interviews. In 2016, Stefania received the Europaindanza Prize for the interpretation of the stepmother role in Mauro Bigonzetti’s Cinderella. In 2017, she created the choreography La Valse for the Teatro alla Scala’s corps the ballet. The same year, her show Alter, interpreted with Massimo Murru, was staged at AterBalletto. In 2018, she was selected for the Choreography Contest’s final in Sens with her pas de deux, Thunders and Lightnings. While dancing at the Teatro Alla Scala, she is constantly involved in choreographic projects for theatre for several and different movement expressions. Since 2020, she is co-artistic director and dance curator of HumanSigns, a participatory global artwork of dance and voice born during the first lockdown for sanitary emergency of COVID-19 with more than 200 artists around the world.

• GERALD CUPCHIK University of Toronto, Professor

Gerald Cupchik has been a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto since 1974. He was president of three international organizations, including: the International Association for Empirical Aesthetics (1990-94), Psychology and the Arts, of the American Psychological Association (1996-97), and the International Society for the Empirical Study of Literature (1998-2000). He received the Rudolf Arnheim Award in 2010 from the American Psychological Association and the Gustav Fechner Award in August 2018 from the International Association for Empirical Aesthetics, both for distinguished research and service. His research interests include: creative imagination in design and the arts, literary and visual aesthetic creation and reception, emotional experience, and social communication. He published 'The aesthetics of emotion: Up the down staircase of the mind-body' in 2016 (Cambridge University Press). This book was accompanied by a series of interviews with artists and lectures related to his book which can be found on YouTube. His research papers are available on Research Gate.