Fondazione Nazionale della Danza / Aterballetto is the only fully public dance production centre in Italy.
Our underlying objective for the three-year period 2018-2020 is clear: to pursue a cultural policy and not only an artistic mission. The aim is to act on the investments made by MiBACT (Italian Ministry of Culture and Tourism), the Regional Government of Emilia-Romagna and the Municipality of Reggio Emilia with a strategic vision encompassing the local, national and international level. The idea is to create a new institution, able to fulfil the task of promoting and developing dance in Italy and of projecting the image of Italian dance and its artistic talent internationally.
The cultural policy we pursue at every level is based on integration and collaboration. We are always open to ideas, but our efforts are mainly focused on developing platforms for projects in which we can bring fellow travelers on board, whether they are organizations connected with dance, theatre, art, music or social thought.
Our conceptual approach always takes the project as its starting point and aims to set up experiments in multidisciplinary collaboration. To this end, we define shared initiatives with the world of theatre and art, we deepen our relationship with the music world, and we open ourselves up to “silent” categories (like children or vulnerable individuals), with their unique and higher sensibility, integrating them into our creative dimension and our productions.

Gigi Cristoforetti
Managing and programming director


FONDAZIONE NAZIONALE DELLA DANZA was founded in 2003. The Foundation's two members are the Emilia-Romagna Region and the Municipality of Reggio Emilia.
Fondazione Nazionale della Danza develops its producing and touring activity under the name Aterballetto, the leading contemporary dance company in Italy and the first permanent ballet-producing organization apart from Opera House companies.
Founded in 1977 as Compagnia di Balletto dei Teatri dell’Emilia - Romagna and directed by Vittorio Biagi, since 1979 the company has known as Aterballetto and been under the direction of Amedeo Amodio. Composed of soloist dancers capable of performing in every dance style, Aterballetto has gained wide recognition in Italy and on the international scene thanks to the high quality of its performers and artistic directors: Amedeo Amodio (1979-1997), Mauro Bigonzetti (1997-2007, until 2012, principal choreographer) and Cristina Bozzolini (2008-2017).
Many acclaimed Italian and international choreographers have worked with the company, including Mauro Bigonzetti, Michele Di Stefano, Andonis Foniadakis, William Forsythe, Johan Inger, Jiří Kylián, Cristiana Morganti, Jiří Pokorny, Cristina Rizzo, Hofesh Shechter, and Giuseppe Spota.
Fondazione Nazionale della Danza received recognition as Production Dance Centre in 2015, in this way enabling artist residencies, hospitalities, and performances by Italian and international companies. The significant dance projects its offers at regional and national level make it unique in Italy. The Foundation organizes events, dance seasons, and a variety of projects that promote wider public interest and awareness of the world of dance.
Thanks to Gigi Cristoforetti, director since September 2017, the new course that Fondazione Nazionale della Danza – Aterballetto has embarked is driven by renewed guiding principles: to produce performances belonging to diverse artistic and choreographic universes, targeted at different audiences and individually designed to suit all kinds of theatre spaces. While keeping up and developing its widely recognised standing, it aims to turn its attention to both the national panorama and the international one, and broadening the scope of Italian dance beyond the boundaries. Creating a dialogue with the visual arts, the music, the theatre and the education, the Fondazione Nazionale della Danza initiates partnerships and collaborative projects, playing a key promotion and programming role within them, independently of works from its own repertory.

Fondazione Nazionale della Danza/Aterballetto activities are supported by the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs through the Italian Institutes of Culture and the Italian Embassies.

GIGI CRISTOFORETTI
Managing and Programming Director

Degree in Contemporary History at Università Statale of Milan and Master in management
of performing arts at Agis of Milan

Since September 2017 Managing and programming direction of Fondazione Nazionale della Danza / Aterballetto

• From 2002 to 2017 director of Torinodanza Festival (www.torinodanzafestival.it), which takes place annually between September and December.
• He conceived and directed in Brescia from 1995 to 1997 the Festival Echi del Mediterraneo – Theater, dance and music.
He then conceived and directed Gardadanza – International Festival of Contemporary Dance, an interprovincial and interregional festival (Provinces of Brescia, Mantua and Verona, Regions of Lombardy and Veneto (1998-2000).
• He created and directed in Brescia from 2000 to 2008 the International Festival of Contemporary Circus, the first and most important event in Italy about this language.
• In 2011 and 2012 he edited the Festival of Contemporary Circus Apripista, produced by the Auditorium Parco della Musica in Rome.
• From 2009 to 2012 he curated the performance project of circus site specific Abitare la bellezza, promoted in Capri by Fondazione Capri.
CONSULTANCY WITH PUBLIC ADMINISTRATIONS / INSTITUTIONS
• Since 2011 he was artistic advisor of the French Embassy in Italy for the France Danse project. Until 2008, he was dance counselor for the Fondazione Nouveaux Mécènes in Rome, promoted by the French Embassy in Italy.
• He was a consultant for the live performance of the Mayor of Brescia Paolo Corsini for two terms, from 1999 to 2008.
• From 2003 to 2006 he was part of the Culture Commission of the Executive Olympic Committee for the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin.
• He collaborated with the Teatro Stabile di Brescia from 1995 to 2007, as head of the press office, then head of the Study Center.
• He has been a consultant for various projects of the Metastasio – Teatro Stabile della Toscana and of the Pergolesi di Jesi.
EDITORIAL COLLABORATIONS
• Critics of dance to the Indipendente of Levi since the foundation, then to the Manifesto.
He has also collaborated on Video Music, TeleMontecarlo, RAI-RADIOTRE
• About the theme of the contemporary circus he published two volumes for Marsilio in collaboration with Alessandro Serena (Il circo e la scena; L’arsenale delle apparizioni), and collaborated with the Venice Biennale. For the series Novecento of the Grafo Edizioni, he edited the volume Le stagioni del teatro.
AWARDS
• He won, in particular for the Circus Festival and for Torinodanza, three national awards:
Hystrio, the Theater Critics Association Award and the Danza&Danza Award, all in the category of artistic project.
• On October 28, 2011, at the French Embassy in Italy in Rome, he was awarded the rank of Chevalier des Arts and des Lettres.


SVEVA BERTI
Company Director

She was born in Florence in 1964. She studied ballet with Barbara Baer at Centro Studi Danza in Florence directed by Cristina Bozzolini.
From 1982 to 1984 she danced with the Dance Company of Teatro Comunale in Florence directed by Eugène Polyakov. She afterwards joined Aterballetto under the direction of Amedeo Amodio and for nine years she performed important roles in choreographies by Glen Tetley, William Forsythe, Alvin Ailey, George Balanchine and Amodio. In 1993 she became a dancer of Balletto di Toscana directed by Cristina Bozzolini where she danced works by Mauro Bigonzetti, Fabrizio Monteverde, Cesc Gelabert, Angelin Preljocaj. In 1998 she returned to Aterballetto under the artistic direction of Mauro Bigonzetti, where she performed in masterpieces by Bigonzetti, J. Kylian and I. Galili.
Since 2004 she worked as assistant and répétiteur for Mauro Bigonzetti’s works and she re-staged some of them in important theatres for both Italian and foreign companies: Teatro San Carlo in Naples, Teatro alla Scala in Milan, Ballet du Capitole de Toulouse, Royal Swedish Ballet, Dortmund Ballett, Companhia Nacional de Bailado, Zürcher Ballett, Les Grands Ballets Canadiens, Ballett Basel, Pennsylvania Ballett, Leipzig Ballett.
Since September 2012 she worked as maître de ballet and maître repetiteur of Aterballetto.
Since January 2018 she is the Artistic coordinator of Aterballetto and since July 2019 she is Company Director.

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