Spellbound Contemporary Ballet, produced by Associazione Spellbound, was founded in 1994 by the choreographer Mauro Astolfi, who was joined at the helm two years later by Valentina Marini, with whom the company started an intense internationalisation activity. Today, Spellbound ranks among the most competitive Italian proposals on an international level, convincing audiences at the main festivals in Europe, Asia and the Americas. The experience of over 25 years in the professional field has strengthened the know-how of a consolidated team of professionals capable of hosting production and management projects with a marked vocation for internationalisation. Since 2015, the structure has broadened its scope by welcoming other artists into production in a renewed plural vision. Spellbound’s activities in fact, in addition to the authorial centrality of choreographer Mauro Astolfi, main resident choreographer,embrace a series of network projects also with other artists and institutions on an international scale such as the international co-production “Pa|Ethos” by the Tibetan choreographer Sang Jijia in collaboration with Fabbrica Europa, Scuole Civiche Paolo Grassi, Marche Teatro, Bejing Dance Festival, “La Mode”, an installation by Tomoko Mukayiama and Tojo Ito that opened the National Taichung Theater in Taiwan in October 2016, the performance installation “R and Mark” curated by choreographer Sang Jijia in a production network with Fondazione Fabbrica Europa, City Contemporary Dance Company Hong Kong, Versilia Danza, the project “Collapse” by Francesco Sgrò , the co-production in partnership with Grand Theater de Luxembourg in 2019 in collaboration with Jean Guillaume Weis, former artist at Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Baush, Spellbound 25 by Astolfi, Marcos Morau, Marco Goecke on the occasion of its 25th anniversary in 2020 and the recent “We, us and other games” by Dunja Jocic in collaboration with Bolzano Danza. Since 2000, Spellbound’s activities have been supported by the Ministry of Culture and since 2022 it has been accredited in the role of National Dance Production Centre with the larger project
ORBITA|Spellbound co-directed by Astolfi and Marini.

The vision to become a Production Centre stems from Spellbound’s desire, engaged for over 25 years in the fields of production, training and dance programming and circuiting, to make this heritage available to a wider community: a production house that acts as a hinge between the creative resources existing in the Roman territory and the production chain on a national and international scale. Conceived on the scale of a metropolitan city, Orbita finds its heart at the Palladium Theatre and branches out to satellite spaces in the city, different in function and identity, such as the Teatro Biblioteca Quarticciolo and the Teatro Rossellini. The different functions of the Centre converge in the commitment to promote performance languages and dance that find in the dimension of the body, of the political, cultural and health subjectivities embodied therein, a field of exchange of practices, knowledge and skills with social and political spin-offs.