As it declares in its name, the RomaEuropa Festival aims to bring local talent into the capacious fold of an international scene, and vice versa—to present a vast arena of work through an Italian, if not Roman, lens. Amazingly, the programming bares out this ambitious claim. Among the Italian mainstays are such choreographers as social experimentalist Francesca Pennini and spiritualist Claudia Castellucci, as well as the Aterballetto troupe under the spell of the prolific Spanish choreographer Marcos Morau, who organizes his new work around Ennio Morricone’s iconic film scores (Fistful of Dollars, Cinema Paradiso, etc.). As for the internationalists, look to the Lyon Opera Ballet in Merce Cunningham’s gorgeous, slippery, ghostly Biped; the Brazilian psychoanalyst-turned-choreographer Alice Ripoll’s pieces for astounding young dancers from the Rio de Janeiro favelas; Rachid Ouramdane’s recent, risky Outsider, for the Ballet du Grand Théâtre de Genève, whereby the “outsider” is whichever highflying dancer the large ensemble fails to keep aloft; and Noe Soulier’s mesmerizingly mathematical constructions. Indeed, braininess, together with danciness, runs through the festival’s two-and-a-half months. A rare combination. Another rarity: the dances demonstrate a keen social conscience without succumbing to preachiness. —Apollinaire Scherr