On December 9th, Bocconi University hosted DYNAMIC EQUILIBRIA, a groundbreaking event featuring ballet dancers from Teatro alla Scala performing for the first time on the Aula Magna stage. 
Organized by the Department of Decision Sciences, the event bridged the worlds of dance, music, art, and mathematics. 

There is a strict link between music and mathematics, a link that goes back to the ancient Greeks (Pythagoras) who uncovered the harmonic ratios at the basis of sound, said Professor Emanuele Borgonovo, director of the Department. 
These harmonic ratios are also at the basis of paintings and architecture especially in our Renaissance. Leonardo da Vinci in his “Trattato della Pittura” wrote: “No human investigation can be called real science if it cannot be demonstrated mathematically.” And mathematical calculations are at the basis of the choices that the ballet dancers and choreographers make to carefully plan distances and trajectories. 
The performance consisted of three captivating pieces: ALONE, l’ ALTRO CASANOVA and DYNAMIC EQUILIBRIA. The third ballet, Dynamic Equilibria was a “Prima assoluta”, a choreography created on purpose for this event by Gianluca Schiavoni. 
Mathematics - said professor Borgonovo - enters music through fractions, sums and distances that need to unite melody and harmony and to create polyphony. Take a bar in a music score and look at it vertically: the notes must sum to a chord in a constrained optimization problem, where the constraint is that “No note must ever hurt the listener’s ear”, as Mozart said. While this is subjective, from a Bayesian (a posteriori) perspective we cannot but agree with the great Austrian composer. Moreover, music composition is a sequential decision process, in which the next bar needs to keep memory of the bars before, otherwise the piece would be a random chaos. And to create emotions, the composer needs to bring the piece through a series of Dynamic Equilibria. This is what we discussed with the choreographer when thinking about the ballet DYNAMIC EQUILIBRIA. 

The interpreters were Frank Aduca, Marta Gerani, Eugenio Lepera, Benedetta Montefiore and Gioacchino Starace, whose passionate performance again won the hearts and minds of the many students, professors and colleagues filling the Aula Magna. All the ballet pieces were directed and created by Gianluca Schiavoni, renowned international choreographer and former ballet dancer of Teatro Alla Scala. The scenography was by Anna Ceppi, architect and artist, who designed the immersive paintings projected on screens, blending the arts into a cohesive experience. The event was a breathtaking celebration of the harmony between art and science, leaving the audience of students, professors, and colleagues deeply moved.