A Family Affair: Son Composer. Father Choreographer.
Fifteen-year-old composer Dante Luna inspired his father Armando Luna, a teacher at Atlanta Ballet, to choreograph a piece set to his son's music for the Centre for Dance Education Spring Concerts.
It took 15-year-old Dante Luna just one month to compose 4elements, a piece that led him to Atlanta for a father-son collaboration that culminated in a performance with the Atlanta Ballet at the Centre for Dance Education.
His father, Armando Luna, a teacher at the Atlanta-based school, choreographed the ballet dancers in the performance at the Ferst Center for the Arts at Georgia Tech on May 22.
Luna, of Hollywood, began writing the piece based on the four elements at the age of 13 while listening to the rain. He fleshed the idea into four parts at the behest of his mentor, Richard Warne, who recently retired from the Hollywood United Methodist Church as music director.
“He really helped develop what I already had," Luna said. "It just helped me bloom. He didn’t help me compose. He just guided me.”
Luna’s father, Armando, choreographed the ballet after being inspired by Dante’s work.
Luna wrote each piece by improvising on the piano.
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