4 tempos

4 TEMPOS was originally drafted (but not completed nor performed) in 2019, while Cristiano attended the second edition of Dutch National Ballet's Choreographic Academy, a three weeks studio workshop where young makers get to chance to create with the dancers of DNB Junior Company.

During this workshop, besides the studio choreographic practice, Cristiano also attended theoretical conferences that gathered several choreographers, leaders and composers (lead by Peggy Olislaegers, freelance dramaturg and Associate on Research and Development at DNB).

In 2022, the draft initiated during the Choreographic Academy was completed and performed by the ten ballerinas of the 2022 graduating class of the Estonian National Ballet School, together with four male dancers from Estonian National Ballet.

The piece was performed twice at the school's Annual Closing Performance on the stage of the Estonian National Opera.

This neoclassical work on Bach's music is made of four movements, each of them taken from a different Bach's concert and each of them with a different solo instrument

(piano for winter, double harpsichord for spring, oboe for summer and double violin for autumn).

Winter and summer are two duets danced by the principal couple and they abstractly explore the relationship between the powerful mother Earth (woman) and mankind (man), in which, first with cold and then with warm passion, nature will always overpower humans at the very end of time.

Spring and autumn are groups dances and they explore the very different temperaments of these two seasons over the course of the year: first with the thrill and lively excitement that comes at the rebirth of nature after a long winter, and lastly with the nostalgic and most stunning colours that nature reveals at its most dramatic and sad moment of existence.

Autumns is intentionally placed at the end of the piece in order to encourage humanity to entirely grasp the present moment and live it to the fullest, before it is too late.

All we have is now.