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Aurora’s wartime lie kept her alive.

    Now, it might destroy her.

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Florence, 1967: A pre-World War II photograph captures flamenco dancer Aurora Morelli mid-spin: glamorous, bold, alive. Her skirt flares like a poppy; her blouse clings like a second skin. But the woman her twenty-one-year-old son knows is someone else: stiff, quiet, diminutive, always dressed in ill-fitting black. Since he was ten, he has asked about her transformation. Why don’t you dance anymore? How did you survive the war? Why don’t you and Papa hug? At last, Aurora tells him the truth—knowing she will destroy the life she built to survive.

 

Trieste, 1943: Eighteen-year-old Aurora can’t imagine not performing, even though newly arrived Nazis fill the cabaret. Her decision to dance leads to an assault that tears her family apart, forcing her to lie about her identity.

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Her story unfolds alongside those of two other young artists. In Rome, Ruth, an aspiring Jewish writer who grew up in a bookstore, chases danger. She crafts an anti-Mussolini leaflet, but a mistake endangers her loved ones.

 

In Paris, Black jazz pianist Paul, bullied as a child, joins the Resistance following a Nazi attack on his family’s club. After he beats a Wehrmacht soldier to protect a friend, he flees, leaving evidence that will lead the Nazis to him.

 

Aurora, Ruth, and Paul’s choices draw them into cycles of capture and escape before their paths converge in a Resistance cell in the Apennine Mountains—and later, on more dangerous ground. The lie that saved Aurora becomes the thing that imprisons her. Ruth and Paul, armed only with words and music, help her break free. 

 

This new work channels my 50-year career as a dancer, artistic director and teacher into its pulse—from the rhythm of flamenco echoing in Trieste’s Jewish Quarter to the defiant jazz of Paris’ underground clubs. 

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Over the years, I've been fortunate to travel to most of the European destinations the characters inhabit —Rome, Trieste, Florence, Paris—and have carefully followed their steps. After flawed directions and the resulting train ride to the wrong side of the Apennine Mountains, I even explored the beautiful hamlet of Sperticano, high on a hilltop. 

       

I hope the blend of moral complexity, wartime resilience and the transformative power of art will resonate with you.