Biography

Benedetta Capanna is a dancer and choreographer from Rome.
Her choreographic research draws energy and inspiration from her Mediterranean and Baltic roots and from over twenty years of Yoga practice. Through the exploration of the body in its infinite dynamic possibilities inside the small space created by its own limitations, she aspires to embrace the poetry of human fragility, its sacredness and the urgency of its passions.
Benedetta’s dance has deep roots in her past, from which she gets the inspiration and generates her personality, her dance, her growth. A vocation that arises from a therapeutical need of finding, questioning and answering herself whilst she discovers the origin of movement in which she experiments… In absolute silence only her breath, her dance begins and we witness the drama, where the precise execution crystallizes in each single pose; the immobility of the gesture generates snaps, the images stop and the eye embraces her whole body and with trepidation and at the same time with light expectation we are waiting for the next gesture. This is Benedetta’s dance: a visceral, interior, atavic and restless quiver, eager to create while offering at the same time, quietness, tension in balance and in the center, feeling of any centimeters of the body, to enter into contact with it, to be aware.

(Erika Cofone, Tempi Moderni)

Her training began at the National Academy of Dance in Rome and continued at Peridance and at the major dance centers in New York City, and continually supported it with the study and practice of Yoga.

As a freelance choreographer and performer she has been active since 1997 when she was living in New York. From 2009, as an associated choreographer of CORE (Coordinamento Regionale della Danza e delle Arti performative del Lazio) she received grants and residencies to work on her numerous choreographic projects. From 2013 she received the support of MIBACT (Ministry of Cultural heritage and Activities and Tourism) collaborating with the Cultural Association Excursus Onlus, now called PinDoc.

Benedetta has always been very keen on interdisciplinary work, in her capacity of choreographer. She collaborates with Teatro Potlach of Fara Sabina, the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome, Teatro Diana in Naples, the Kairos Italy Theatre in New York, and the Vertical Player Repertory in Brooklyn, with the director Enrico Forte in the projects Mousèion and the director Ubaldo Lo Presti. She works with many musicians and composers; the bass player Matthew Garrison, the percussionist Vittorino Naso, the composer Concetta Cucchiarelli, the cellist Daria Rossi Poisa, the composer Beppe Frattaroli and other artists in music as Mauro Tiberi, Oscar Bonelli and Ivan Macera, and the singer ClaireD. She collaborates with the photographer and director Mauro Raponi for the video projections of her choreographies, Danze Rotte, Mathematics of Resonant Bodies and Saknes Together with Richard Sphuntoff she is co-author and performer of the film “Epiphany of returning” still touring in international festivals.
She performed in international tours both in Italy for Teri J Weikel, MDA, Balletto 90, Mario Piazza, I Danzatori Scalzi, il Teatro Bellini, il Teatro Diana, in France with Compagnie Caroline Bo, in New York with Turano/Ford Dance, DASSdance, Pick of the Crop Dance Company, Poppo and Gogo Boys, Michael Mao Dance Company, John Carrafa, Igal Perry (New York), Myung Soo Kim, Nayo Takasaki and many others.
In 1991, she was awarded a silver medal as young dancer at the International Dance competition of Positano; afterwards The American Guild of Musical Artist recognized her extraordinary ability in the arts as Dancer. In her bachelor essay on Human Studies at the University of Bologna, Maddalena Elisa Chiara (Tutored by Prof. Cervellati Elena) wrote about the influences of Yoga on the work of three Italian dancers. About Benedetta Capanna she says that Yoga has, in fact, deeply affected her artistic choices and influenced the development of her choreographic style. “Her work is about experimenting on various research levels and about cultivating a particular perception of the body. Her dancing is an opening and a concession. Moreover, the continuous study of Yoga in connection with dancing, gives her a unique approach, expressing a freedom and lightness that, at the same time, has intense depth.”

Her last solo Wood, Mù received a special mention at the Festival InDivenire in Rome for: “Its theatrical intensity and its capacity to evoke images and atmospheres of rare sensitivity, through a complete and mature command of the body language in a choreographic project supported by an analytic theatrical work”.

Following are festivals and theatres in which she presented her work: Festival InDivenire 2019, Nuit Blanche in Montrèal 2018, 22 International Baltic Ballet Festival a Riga, TANZRAUSCHEN International Dance on Screen Festival in Wuppertal, Thirteenth Annual Sans Souci Festival of Dance Cinema in Boulder-Colorado, Aprile in Danza at the Teatro Palladium della Terza Università in Roma, Dance History at Burchfield Penney Art Center in Buffalo, ArteScienza 2016- Dono e Relazione at the Goethe Institute of Rome, Crossing Boundaries at Dixon Place in New York City, Dança em foco – International Festival of Vídeo and Dance in Rio de Janeiro, Tanz und Film in Hamburg, National Theatre in Budapest, IN SCENA! Italian Theatre Festival 2015 in New York, Sinema Dans Ankara, INTERNATIONAL DANCE FILM di Bucharest, POOL INTERNATIONALES TanzFilmFestival a Berlin, IDACO nyc – Italian DAnce COnnection, MAXXI in Roma, SAITAMA ARTS THEATER DMJ International VideoDance Festival 2015, ArteScienza 2014 Segno Infinito at the Accademia Nazionale di Danza in Roma, Museo Riso of Palermo, Kyoto Prefectural Centre for Art and Culture, Teatri di Vetro in Roma, Parallel Lives Henry Street Settlement’s Abrons Art Centre in N.Y, TenDance Festival in Fondi and Formia, Theatre of Riverside Church in New York City, Teatro Montevergini in Palermo, Tra Oriente e Occidente del Teatro Potlach in Fara Sabina, New Moves di Buffalo, Teatro Lido of Ostia, Incontri in Scena at Accademia Nazionale di Danza di Roma, The Kitchen in New York.