MAB15: A legacy that is future

MAB was born in the perspective of “transformation”, “evolution” and “looking ahead”. It does so from the very moment in which it sublimates the human experience of a far-sighted Woman, prematurely deceased and always in love with Life, young people and Ballet, in a project that serves the new generations and Classical Dance, for fifteen years, celebrates the idea that Art is a clear expression of the most precious values of existence itself.

This is a legacy, gathered with visionary strength by Maestro Roberto Fascilla, founder of the event and translated into a precise programmatic dimension by General Manager Gisella Zilembo, who was the creator, at the request of President Silvio Andrea Beretta and his family. It is a project, celebrated by “his city”, the Milan in which he was born and which has awarded him the highest civic honor, The Golden Ambrogino, and today known and appreciated worldwide.

MAB is the son of a great dream and the tireless work of many, to make it true.

MAB’s synergy and understanding with the iconic personalities of the International Ballet (which have always been recognized and gathered in the name of Mrs Etta, committing themselves as jurors in the different stages of the competition, with the responsibility to accompany with rigor and honesty the path of those who, over time, have ventured on the stage of the Teatro Manzoni) has built the future of many current stars of the ballet scene, which at MAB owe their debut and, as they often say, their own “luck”.

Among the finalists and winners, to give some examples, Nicoletta Manni and Timofej Andrijashenko, Emma Mardegan, Angelo Greco, Antonio Casalinho, Rebecca Storani, Linda Giubelli, Claudio Coviello, Oscar Valdez… among them also how many, from an idea of the outgoing director Julio Bocca, shared with the MAB management and welcomed by the 2024 board, one of the personalities called to succeed him at the head of the artistic committee of the fifteenth edition : Salvatore Manzo (First winner of the MAB Prize and now winner of the San Carlo in Naples). At his side in the jury, for the final 2024: Giuseppe Bausilio (whose podium of MAB earned the opportunity to fly to NY and become the first Billy Elliot in the history of Broadway, inaugurating a career admirable worldwide), Flavia Stocchi (first to win the title in the junior category and now professional in strength at the Teatro dell’Opera in Rome), etc…

The idea of the Maestro Bocca, fully in line with the nature of MAB is that the Dance is such if alive and vital, deeply rooted in tradition to be able to project courageously into the future: for the fifteen years of the Prize, which bases its DNA on Classical and Neoclassical Dance, “looking ahead” means declaring the deep sense of the legacy of the Great Ones who made its history and reading its dynamic power.

The Ballet remains an intrinsic and essential object of the event, the Great Masters remain points of reference in the various stages of the event, which during the final celebrates the invaluable contribution, with a Lifetime Achievement Award and a passing of the baton to the winners of the first editions.

Not only that: the artistic direction duplicates and consolidates the founding idea that DANCE is ONE and that CLASSICAL is the essential basis, as such capable, with its lexical rigor and its precise poetic quality, to create avant-garde.

Thus, according to a vitalistic principle that intertwines tradition and innovation, roots and perspectives in line with the world of the current scene, is entrusted to a young étoile (Salvatore Manzo, in fact), exponent of the “pure classical world” and to an artist worldwide known for having practiced the contamination stage as the key to an extraordinary choreographic language, unthinkable regardless of a solid technical basis matrix Classical: Lizt Alfonso.

Classic is, in itself synonymous with universal: something that is able, in its titanic essence, to survive time and space, declining to the folds of human experience without losing its identity, able to evolve precisely in the name of the ability to “speak” outside and above circumstances.

MAB Award, for fifteen years it intends to support young people, promotes the Ballet and, for this, remains strictly focused on the Classical and Neoclassical world: foundations and springboard of a living legacy, which is itself, future.