Liliana Cosi

Liliana Cosi (born August 15, 1941 in Milan ) is an Italian ballet dancer and former prima ballerina of La Scala in Milan .

Life

By chance, her neighbor was a ballet teacher, she came to dance. Since her parents had no money to send her to a private dance school , she took the entrance exam at the La Scala ballet school in Milan. There she graduated in 1958 as the best of her year with a personal award from Wally Toscanini, Arturo Toscanini's daughter . The following year she took part in a cultural exchange between La Scala in Milan and the Bolschoitheater in Russia. She celebrated her breakthrough as a dancer in 1965 in the Kremlin Congress Palace as Odette / Odile. Further appearances and tours followed in the Soviet Union, including as Giselle, before Liliana Cosi finally returned to La Scala in 1968 as prima ballerina. Her dance partners included u. a. Paolo Bortoluzzi , Wladimir Wassiljew and Rudolf Nurejew .

In 1972 she met the Romanian ballet dancer Marinel Stefanescu , with whom she founded the independent dance group Compagnia Balletto Classico Cosi-Stefanescu in 1977 . It primarily includes the company, but later also its own private ballet school for young dancers. The lessons of the Eleven are designed in such a way that not only the performance plays a role, but also the development of one's own personality while dancing. The company's repertoire mainly includes classical and neoclassical works, choreographed by Marinel Stefanescu. In addition to appearances in the USA, China, Morocco, Tunisia, Austria and the Vatican, she mainly tours Italy.

Although Liliana Cosi grew up in a secular family in which religion did not play a special role, she began to discover faith for herself in her youth. The decisive factor was reading the “Dialogues of Divine Providence” by St. Catherine of Siena . Fascinated by the idea of ​​being able to communicate with God as with any other person, she developed a very personal and intimate relationship with him. Through her sister she got to know the Focolare Movement , a community within the Catholic Church . Followers of the movement try to live the gospel as lay people in the world.

Fonts

• Cosi, Liliana: Étoile, la mia vita , Città Nuova, 2006

Web links

• Official website of the Compagnia Balletto Classico Cosi-Stefanescu
• Liliana Cosi in the Internet Movie Database (English)