Rafaële Giovanola

The Swiss choreographer was born in Baltimore, USA, and studied dance with Marika Besobrasova in Monte Carlo. After her first engagement as a soloist in Turin, Egon Madsen asked her to join the Frankfurt Ballet. There she danced the classical repertoire and worked with various modern choreographers such as Jiri Kylian, Uwe Scholz, Daniel Larrieu, Stephen Petronio, Christoph Nel and William Forsythe, the house choreographer of the Frankfurt Ballet. Under his direction, she remained with the Frankfurt Ballet for eight years and participated in all the major productions of this important substantial era.

She then went on to work with Pavel Mikuláštik’s Choreographisches Theater from 1990 to 2003. In 1995 Rafaële Giovanola was mentioned in the annual poll of critics of “ballett international/tanz aktuell” in the category “exceptional dancing personalities”. Since March 2000 grounded together with Rainald Endraß the Freelance Group CocoonDance. For her debut “Jigaboo” Rafaële Giovanola got the award of the Patrizia-Van-Roessel Foundation (NL), in 2007 she won the international internet-dance festival SideBySide-net, in 2010 the sponsorship grant from the canton of Valais and in 2021 she received the cultural award of the city of Monthey. In 2017 she established a junior company in Monthey (CH) and before 2012 in Bonn, which have been awarded numerous prizes like “Kinder zum Olymp”, “Auf dem Weg zum Kinder- und Jugendkulturland NRW” and was invited in both 2016 and 2019 to “Tanztreffen der Jugend” as part of the Berliner Festspiele.

In addition to her own choreography and numerous commissions, including works for Dance Company at Theater Osnabrück, Zentrum für Zeitgenössischen Tanz (ZZT) in Cologne and tanzmainz during the 2021/2022 season, she also gives lessons, for example at tanzhaus nrw in Düsseldorf, Theater St. Gallen, Staatstheater Nürnberg, Ewgenij Panfilow Company, the Perm Ballet School (Russia), the choreographic centre Donko Seko Bamako (Mali) and at Attakkalari Centre for Movement Arts in Bangalore (India).

As of August 2022