Gaetano Posterino

Gaetano Posterino is Italian and a freelance dance director, choreographer and ballet master. He completed his dance education at the National Ballet School of Canada in Toronto. After a first engagement at the Balletto di Toscana Florence he danced for a variety of companies as soloist in Italy (e.g. Ballet L'Ensemble de Micha van Hoecke), Argentina (Teatro San Martin), the United States (San Francisco Ballet), the UK (English National Ballet, Birmingham Royal Ballet), Switzerland (Lucerne Ballet, Ventura Dance Company, The Orma Dance Theatre) and as first soloist at Peter Schaufuss Ballet (Denmark) and for many years as first soloist at the Hessian State Ballet in Wiesbaden.

At an early stage he discovered his talent for choreography. Parallel to his dance career since 1995 he created a large number of most versatile, international choreographic works. Among his today over 70 works are full evening story ballets, dance theatre pieces, pas de deux and solos as well as operas and films.

Gaetano Posterino choreographed among others many years for Hessian State Ballet Wiesbaden as house-choreographer, International Dance Theater Reutlingen as artistic director and principal choreographer and State Theatre Ballet Augsburg as house-choreographer.

Numerous engagements as guest choreographer lead him to Ballet Istanbul, Ballet de Santiago de Chile, Pennsylvania Ballet, Lucerne Ballet, Semperoper Dresden, State Theatre Neustrelitz, Teatro Massimo di Palermo, Theatre Hagen and Mainfranken Theatre Wuerzburg. Since 2002 he is heading his own Posterino Dance Company as artistic director and choreographer.

Gaetano Posterino has been invited with several creations to international festivals, including Aarhus Dance Festival, Bilbao Dance Festival, First Dance Festival Fürstenfeldbruck, International May Festival Wiesbaden, Lisboa Dance Festival, Marata de l'Espectacle Barcelona, Manifestation d'Art Contemporain Paris, TanzArt Ost West Gießen, Tanzfestival Bielefeld and International Festival Kultur vom Rande Reutlingen or galas, including Gala of Stars XXI. Century Metropolitan Opera New York, Gala of Stars XXI. Century G.B.C. Montreal, Gala Tanzhaus NRW Düsseldorf or Gala Theater Hagen.

Gaetano Posterino received 13 international awards for his choreographic works and dance performances. His work is supported by state and municipal institutions, companies and foundations and has received excellent reviews in important newspapers and dance publications.

With his art he supports also social projects. Objectives are mainly fundraising or the involvement of mentally retarded or physically disabled people into the creation of art with inclusion performances.

Artistic Collaborations

In many productions Posterino collaborated with other artists:

• theatre directors like Inbal Pinto and Avshalom Pollak (Armide), John Dew (Platée), Stefan Huber (Carmina Burana), Axel Köhler (Švanda dudák, Das Land des Lächelns) or Max Hoehn (Die Fledermaus)
  
• dramatic advisers like Nora Schmid (Švanda dudák)
• conductors like Mikhail Agrest (Švanda dudák), Sébastien Rouland (Armide, Platée), Toshiyuki Kamioka (Carmen), Kevin John Edusei (Das Land des Lächelns) oder Daniel Geiss (Die Fledermaus)
  
• live musicians like Tim Raschke, Roman Rindberger and Roland Vanecek (Operalectric), Heiner Rekeszus (Stimmungen eines Fauns, The Mime – Hommage an Charlie Chaplin), Thomas Lambrecht (Einfach so) or Chamber Orchestra City Theatre Augsburg (Pulcinella, Geschichte des Soldaten, Les Noces)
• composers like Jan Paul Werge (Olymp Express, Der Soldat – Molotov Soul) or Ilse Fromm-Michels (Stimmungen eines Fauns)
• costume designers like Angelo Alberto (Pulcinella, Geschichte des Soldaten, Les Noces), Lana Lafer (Chronos), Katharina Weißenborn (Das Land des Lächelns) or Adriana Mortelliti (ViceVersa),
• actors like Kristina van Eyck (Operalectric), Galina Freund, Yvonne Lachmann and Rüdiger Götze (Einfach so, Die Zofen) or Christiane Schoon (Weil ich Dich brauche)
  
• film directors like Frank Bäumer (Chronos, Four Choreography Moods) or Naira Cavero (Entfremdung),
• visual artists like Kathleen-Vanessa Daniel (pERFECT aDDICTION),
• stage designers like Marcel Keller (Pulcinella, Geschichte des Soldaten, Les Noces), Arne Walter (Švanda dudák) or Frank Philipp Schlößmann (Das Land des Lächelns)
  
• make-up artists like Olesia Pantchenko (Chronos).

Choreographic Handwriting: 360° Compass and Interdisciplinary Work

Gaetano Posterino has his very own signature in the composition of aesthetic and expressive movements. He has developed his versatile style with a 360° compass and interdisciplinary work based on historical influences over many years.

In his work today, highly agile dance theatre meets modern, expressive choreography: his works are held in an avant-garde experimental style that combines flowing contemporary movement vocabulary, denial of gravity, modern intensive floor work, speech, singing and dance theatre, and enriched with almost acrobatic and humorous elements. The audience is offered an intensive insight into the spectrum of the modern world of dance theatre, its forms, perspectives and contents. In dance, he uses a reflective introspective search for movement, which in its questioning is industrious about exciting and innovative forms of expression of a modern diction, in order to open up new spaces for dance - flowing, faltering, sensitive, but also rough and dirty. Gaetano Posterino conveys his artistic development through a dynamic choreography that works interdisciplinarily and draws on literary, performative and sociological approaches. And who focuses on perfect body control in dance as well as strong expression in gestures and facial expressions.

Choreographic work

Dancing career

Awards

Social Commitment