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 twentieth-century choreographic revolutions, Loïe Fuller, was the subject of her graduation thesis.
From a young age, she trained in artistic gymnastics and classical dance, later deepening her study of contemporary dance in Italy and in several other countries, including France, Spain, Belgium, and England. She has collaborated extensively as a performer, among others with choreographer Tomas Aragay (cia Societat Doctor Alonso – Spain) and, from 2005 to 2010, with Virgilio Sieni. She began her activity as a choreographer in 2005, developing a path of research and production working with professional dancers and performers, as well as with children, adolescents, amateurs, asylum seekers, and second-generation young immigrants.
Simona Bertozzi practices a form of dance in which choreography becomes 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 (Giovani Danzautori dell’Emilia-Romagna) choreographic competition, and in 2008 she founded Compagnia Simona Bertozzi | Associazione Culturale Nexus.
Over the years, her projects have received support and hosting from major regional, Italian, and European networks through co-productions and choreographic residencies, with national and international touring. In 2008, she was the Italian choreographer selected for the Aerowaves festival at The Place Theatre (London), and in the same year, with the solo Terrestre, she took part in the international project Choreoroam, 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 Il Coreografo Elettronico 2009 for Best Independent Production with the video-dance work Terrestre – movement in still life. In 2012, the collective created I was wondering, a video-dance work produced for the centenary of the birth of Michelangelo Antonioni.
Over the years, significant collaborations have developed 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, with whom she co-created This Is My Last Dance, a work that toured extensively across Europe, including the Swiss Dance Days.
