Emanuele Soavi

Emanuele Soavi started his career at Opera Roma and Teatro La Fenice in Venice. Engagements at Ballet Dortmund the Dutch company Introdans followed, during wich he worked with Jiří Kylián, Hans van Manen, William Forsythe and Mats Ek. Since 2016 he has been working as a freelance choreographer for independent ensembles, companies, theaters and universities, among them Staatstheater am Gärtnerplatz in Munich (current production PETER PAN in 2016), Theater Aachen, Hochschule für Musik und Tanz in Cologne, ARTEz Dance Academy Arnheim, Zürcher Hochschule der Künste, MMcompany and Agora Coaching Project Reggio Emilia. As part of movingtheatre.de he has been nominated for the Cologne Dance Award multiple times and was awarded with this prize in 2009.

Soavi’s works have been invited for numerous guest performances and international festivals in Austria, Belarus, Croatia, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, South Korea, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland.

Emanuele Soavi incompany
In 2012 Soavi founded his own label Emanuele Soavi incompany. Focussing on local and international cooperations, the company develops myriad formats in order to enhance its network for collaborations with various art institutions and artists from all disciplines.

The so-called Myth Project SEDUCED AND SEDUCER was one of the most prominent projects of the company’s first years. Three major productions, co-produced by schrit_tmacher Festival Aachen/Heerlen, Dansateliers Rotterdam, Festspiele Ludwigshafen/Theater im Pfalzbau, a youth production in collaboration with educational institutions and museums in Barcelona (Institut del Teatre/Fundaciò Antoni Tápies), Reggio Emilia (AGORA coaching project), Rotterdam (Codarts University) and Cologne (Römisch-Germanisches Museum) as well as a symposium in collaboration with the University of Cologne and Deutsches Tanzarchiv/Tanzmuseum Köln were realized. In 2014 all three productions were shown during one evening and due to an exceptional cooperation with the Duisburg Philharmonic Orchestra and Theater Duisburg.

The collaboration with large music institutions, orchestras and electronic composers has been continuously expanded since then. For the first time in cooperation with the Cologne Opera, the RELICS project was created in autumn 2017 together with the Duisburg Philharmonic, the Lehmbruck Museum, the electronic composer Wolfgang Voigt and sound designer Stefan Bohne. Also for the first time in autumn 2018, the Cologne Philharmonic was a partner for the choreographic concert #auferstanden together with conductor Konrad Junghänel and the singers and musicians of the Cantus Cölln ensemble.
In 2021, as part of BTHVN2020, the triptych FLUT, a co-production with the Cologne Opera and the Duisburg Philharmonic, will have its world premiere.

In addition to the choreographic work for his ensemble, Emanuele Soavi continually develops his standing as a solo performer. Following PANsolo, for which he was awarded the Cologne Award for Best Performer, and BLACKBIRDBOY, he created AUREA, a cooperation with Susanne Linke. This solo also marked the beginning of the so-called „Habit Cycles“, a production series focussing on collaborations with national and international artists only. In 2015 PARADISUS? was developed, a production with Cologne director and actor Daniel Schüßler and his label ANALOGTHEATER. In 2016 LVMEN was developed in collaboration with the Dutch photographer Joris-Jan Bos and choreographer Cora Bos-Kroese. In 2017 the series came to an end with ANIMA, a production realized in cooperation with Spanish video artist Meritxell Aumedes Molinero.

The ATLAS series started in 2018. In the first project, ‘Any Body Sounds’, which premiered at tanzhaus nrw, Emanuele Soavi met longtime Forsythe dancer Jone San Martin and sound expert Mikel R. Nieto. In 2019, the second part, ‘Dialog of One’, was developed in cooperation with the Center for Contemporary Dance – University of Music and Dance Cologne, the Institute for Contemporary Dance – Folkwang University of the Arts, the Zurich University of the Arts, the Institute for Gender Studies – University of Cologne and the German Dance Archive. The third and last part, ‘Blu Blu Blu’, co-produced by and 2020 premiered in LOFFT – DAS THEATER in Leipzig, led music – with baroque violinist Nadja Zwiener and sound artist Johannes Malfatti – dance and judo into one.

Initiated by an institutional funding program of RheinEnergieStiftung Kultur (2016-2019), Emanuele Soavi incompany established a mediation format that both conveys as well as emphasizes ideas and approaches in the field of dance. The format accompanies new productions and consists of four parts. The all center around the so-called Soavis LIVING ROOM which takes place at the Cologne gallery Freiraum, in other parts of the city and, most recently, digitally and enables artists and audience to get together on a regular basis and discuss current stage productions as well as general issues concerning contemporary art.

Emanuele Soavi incompany receives concept funding from the City of Cologne since 2018 and the three-year concept funding from the State of North Rhine-Westphalia since 2020. The individual projects are also regularly funded by the Kunststiftung NRW.