Dancing Dante's La Vita Nuova : The task of the translator–choreographer.

This article examines the choreographic process as a form of prismatic translation, applying translation theorist Matthew Reynolds's concept to the embodiment of Dante Alighieri's *La Vita Nuova* through dance. The author choreographs three passages from the text, centering on Beatrice, Dante's muse, to explore how dance can offer new interpretive possibilities and give voice to perspectives marginalized in the original literary work. Drawing on Walter Benjamin's theory that translation breathes new life into a source text, the project uses modern and classical dance vocabularies to translate Dante's poetry and prose into movement, emphasizing the transformative and multilayered nature of translation across mediums. The work highlights how dance as translation can expand literary scholarship by embodying and reimagining historical texts, inviting further exploration of performance as a mode of critical inquiry.