Vittoria Ottolenghi, who passed away last December, was much more than a dance critic (the best known, praised or discussed in the last 40 years). Appearances on television, in her "mythical" Marathon of Dance on RaiUno that converted entire generations of Italians to ballet, had made her a true star. But it would not have been enough, without a very special personality, an unquestionable authority, and an originality of ideas often asserted with partisan passion.She had contributed to the rebirth of dance in Italy in the 1980s, with her popularizing and also organizing work, based on the attention to every choreographic genre and the proud affirmation of the value of dance and its cultural dignity, misrecognized or denied at the time, which she had been able to impose also on television and in the festivals or theaters of which she had been in various ways a collaborator. Among them was the Spoleto Festival, which remembers her today.