ONDE – SIMONA BERTOZZI/NEXUS

Choreographer, dancer, and performer, Simona Bertozzi holds a degree from the Department of Arts, Music, and Performing Arts at the University of Bologna. One of the pioneers of the revolutions in twentieth-century choreographic art, Loïe Fuller, was the subject of her thesis. At a young age, she trained in artistic gymnastics and classical dance, then delved into the study of contemporary dance in Italy and various countries including France, Spain, Belgium, and England. She has collaborated extensively as a performer, including with choreographers Tomas Aragay (Societat Doctor Alonso-Spain) and, from 2005 to 2010, with Virgilio Sieni. She began her choreographic activity in 2005, embarking on a research and production path working with professional dancers and performers, as well as with children, teenagers, amateurs, asylum seekers, and second-generation young immigrants. Simona Bertozzi practices a dance in which choreography constitutes a territory of events, a complex system inhabited by the body, resulting from practices, thoughts, and disciplines that make creation a layered entity, in dialogue with the present. In 2007, she won the GD’A choreographic competition (Young Dance Authors of Emilia Romagna) and in 2008 she founded the Compagnia Simona Bertozzi | Associazione Culturale Nexus. Over the years, her projects have received support and hospitality from important regional, Italian, and European circuits, through co-productions and choreographic residencies with national and international circulation. In 2008, she was the Italian choreographer selected for the Aerowaves festival, The Place Theatre (London), and in the same year, with the solo Terrestre, she took part in the international Choreoroam project, supported by the British Council/The Place, Dansateliers/Rotterdam, and Bassano Opera Festival. With the collective Gemelli Kessler (Simona Bertozzi, Marcello Briguglio, Celeste Taliani), she won the 2009 Electronic Choreographer award for best independent production with the video dance work: Terrestre-movement in still life. In 2012, the collective was involved in the creation of I was wondering, a video dance piece created for the centenary of the birth of Michelangelo Antonioni. Over the years, important collaborations have been consolidated with artists and scholars including: Francesco Giomi artistic director of Tempo Reale, Enrico Pitozzi and Cristiana Natali professors at the University of Bologna, Egle Sommacal musician and guitarist of Massimo Volume, Angela Baraldi actress and singer, and Tabea Martin choreographer and dancer with whom she co-created This is my last dance, a work that had significant European circulation including the Swiss Dance Days.