Rodolpho Leoni
Rodolpho Leoni was born in Campo Grande (Brazil) in 1963 where he started to study dance in 1978; in 1981, together with eleven other dancers, he founded the first modern dance company in this region.
He went to São Paulo in 1983 to study the Graham technique and spent the next two years dancing at the Teatro Brasileiro de Danca. A grant brought Leoni to the “Martha Graham Center for Contemporary Dance” in New York in 1985.
Rodolpho Leoni has lived and worked in Germany since 1988. He has been creating his own choreographies since 1992 and founded the company “Rodolpho Leoni dance” in 1996 with the production “Foggy”.
His choreography “Speak” was awarded the Deutsche Produzentenpreis für Choreographie (German Producer Award for Choreography, DPC) 2005/2006. He created numerous choreographies for various dance companies including the Ballet Nürnberg, the Tanzkompanie St. Gallen (Switzerland), the Tanztheater Bremen and in 2006 the Folkwang Tanzstudio.
In December 2006 Rodolpho Leoni was appointed professor of modern dance/dance choreography at the Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen. Since October 2008 he is artistic director of the Folkwang Dance Studio, along with Pina Bausch until her death in June 2009, since July 2009, together with Lutz Förster.