Italian ballet star Roberto Bolle
is to receive a UNESCO Medal for Cultural Diversity at the UN
agency's Paris headquarters on Tuesday, Italy's foreign ministry
made known Monday.
A principal dancer with the American Ballet Theater holding
guest artist status at La Scala Theatre Ballet, 39-year-old
Bolle was accepted at Milan's La Scala theatre ballet school at
the age of eleven.
Rudolf Nureyev then chose him to interpret Tadzio in the
ballet Death in Venice.
Since then, Bolle has performed with ballet companies
worldwide, for Queen Elizabeth at Buckingham Palace, for Pope
John Paul II in St. Peter's Square, and at the opening ceremony
of the 2006 Turin Winter Olympic Games in a ceremony seen by 2.5
billion people around the world.
Becoming a UNICEF goodwill ambassador in 1999, he visited
schools and hospitals in Sudan, eventually raising more than
$655,000 for education and health projects in the war-torn,
impoverished African country.
Last year, Bolle was awarded what is Italy's highest
ranking honour, the Order of Merit knighthood.
UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova will award him the
medal in recognition ''of his contribution to UNESCO's ideas
through dance as a living cultural expression and as a vector of
dialogue''.
Bolle and other internationally renowned artists will
perform in a series of pas de deux from the classical as well as
the modern repertoire for the occasion.
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