Cirque du Soleil to put on performance tailored to Expo

(ANSA) - Milan, October 3 - The Cirque du Soleil will create a food-themed show to be performed during Milan Expo 2015, the famed Canadian entertainment company and Expo jointly announced this week.
    The colourful artistic circus will employ their graceful, acrobatic dancers to delve into the deep and complex ties between food and human existence at Expo's request. The theme of the Universal Exposition that runs from May to October next year is "Feeding the Planet. Energy for Life," exploring nutrition, food security, sustainable practices and celebrating global cuisines.
    More than 50 Italian and international artists will perform in the Allavita! (To life!) in the Open Air Theatre, which goes on stage from May 6 to August 23, 2015.
    "We are proud to have chosen Cirque du Soleil to represent the universality of the public who will visit Milan Expo 2015.
    Cirque du Soleil is one of the best known artistic companies on an international level, and they create shows that are conceived as unique (pieces)," said Expo Commissioner Giuseppe Sala.
    "The Cirque du Soleil constantly seeks to evoke the unreal, to arouse the senses and emotions of people from all over the world, using a universal language understood by anyone," Sala added.
    Allavita! will allow audiences to "discover the winds that sustain us, and the roots that unite our international family.
    An invitation to nourish our lives with pleasure, enthusiasm and passion," said Yasmine Khalil, event and special projects president for Cirque du Soleil.
    "Allavita! will be a never before seen production that will re-propose the Milan Expo 2015 theme in an innovative, entertaining and stimulating way". Art and food will also co-mingle for Expo in Milano al Bacio (Milan at the kiss), announced this week - a series of initiatives surrounding the celebrated Italian romantic painting, and symbol of the 19th century risorgimento movement that led to national unity, The Kiss, by Francesco Hayez.
    The painting represents a dashing young couple from the middle ages in the act of a passionate kiss, using colours and a presentation that made the painting a symbolic, political celebration of the alliance between the Italian patriotic movement and France.
    Pastry lessons, but also the creation of 20 different versions of the famous painting by as many art students at the Milanese art school Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera - home to the celebrated masterpiece - will be part of the initiative as will a photographs of people posing like the protagonists of The Kiss.
    The students' paintings will be exhibited during the month of October and then, at the end of Expo, auctioned off to benefit Father Virginio Colmegna's Charity House Foundation, which supports troubled people in their effort to acquire autonomy. Milano al Bacio is curated by Flavio Maestrini, a journalist at the Rima publishing house and Pietro Pedroni of the advertising agency Temantica.