Tramontano: “The legend of Jia Ruskaja on display at the Fashion Museum”

“A woman of great charm, an intellectual who deeply loved art and culture, revolutionary, far-sighted, very modern. She used her charm to successfully redesign the dance universe of the ‘900”. This is what Giuseppe Tramontano, costume designer and film and theater stylist told Adnkronos, announcing the exhibition ‘Jia Ruskaia. Danzò e piacque ‘, which he curated for the Dance Academy Foundation at the Boncompagni Ludovisi Museum for Decorative Arts, Costume and Fashion of the 19th and 20th centuries. Inauguration in the capital on December 16 (open to the public until March 20). The exhibition offers an unprecedented and fascinating story for stage clothes worn by Jia Ruskaja herself, Russian origins, soul and founder of the National Dance Academy, the first and only public school, clothes born or made for her productions and shows. Also exhibited unique documents and photos (Carlo Ludovico Bragaglia, Ghitta Carrel), portraits above all, but also shots that immortalize her as queen of the scene or teacher in the dance hall. Rare images, often in black and white, precious materials never exhibited, real pearls of an unpublished story, often misunderstood, which relives thanks to Giuseppe Tramontano, the foresight and passion of the young Gianluca Bocchino, scholar, researcher, archivist in the field dance and music. Dresses, tunics, corsets and skirts, as well as letters, writings and images en noir will be the protagonists of this seductive journey able to retrace the main stages of a period of great artistic ferment, sometimes able to evoke even the myth of classicism, whose codes and aesthetic values ​​are found in the Orchestica. Visitors will be led on a real, highly immersive path, in which every dress or element connected to it is exhibited as an authentic work of art capable of telling infinite stories. “My goal was to identify for the visitor an emotional path, of profound suggestion. ‘Telling’, in short, even what was hidden behind a dress. The creation, the exquisite workmanship, the quality of the fabrics, silks, chiffon alongside some objects that belonged to Ruskaja herself, with her very personal logo. And each dress will have the perfume that the great dancer and choreographer loved to wear, Arpege by Lanvin. A fragrance that will flood the halls of the Museum, accompanied by music, by Strauss and Liszt, among his favorite authors, the dance of Michele Pogliani, a video with the voice of the étoile Eleonora Abbagnato who will guide us to the discovery of the National Dance Academy in a collage of vintage films “. The exhibition was born also thanks to the collaboration with the direction of the State Museums of the City of Rome, under the aegis of Mariastella Margozzi, avails itself of the financial support of the Ministry of Culture, as part of the Fondo Unico dello Spettacolo (Fus) and the patronage of Confcommercio Imprese per l’Italia – Tertiary Woman Rome.