Biennale Danza 2025: the winners of the calls for new choreographies

The Nuovo Balletto di Toscana company with the choreographers Philippe Kratz and Pablo Girolami and the Bullyache duo Courtney Deyn and Jacob Samuel are the winners – selected from a list of 361 applicants – of the calls that Biennale Danza issues every year to Italian and foreign artists for the creation of new choreographies.

One of the Italian companies that contributes most significantly to the development of international dance, the Nuovo Balletto di Toscana, founded by Cristina Bozzolini, won the national call with the project Sisifo felice / Smiling Sisyphus conceived for the company by choreographers Philippe Kratz and Pablo Girolami.

Bullyache, a name that unites the multidisciplinary artists Courtney Deyn and Jacob Samuel, won the international call to develop A Good Man is Hard to Find, the first chapter for five dancers in a project titled The Exploration Trilogy.

The two original works will be developed throughout next year before making their world premiere at the 19th International Festival of Contemporary Dance (17 July > 2 August).

“In a thrilling new chapter for Florence-based, Nuovo Balletto di Toscana – Wayne McGregor states – one of Italy’s oldest contemporary dance companies, Biennale Danza 2025 will commission and host new direction of this esteemed entity. Choreographer Philippe Kratz, the new artistic director, will present his first full-length program after a one-year hiatus, titled Sisifo felice / Smiling Sisyphus. Co-created with fellow choreographer Pablo Girolami, the works draw inspiration from the 1950s Theatre of the Absurd, influenced by writers such as Sartre, Genet, Ionesco, and Beckett. The title of the evening refers to Albert Camus’ 1942 essay The Myth of Sisyphus, in which he famously writes, ‘One must imagine Sisyphus happy’. This existential reflection on a doomed identity choosing happiness informs the two independent but interconnected works, exploring the dizzying absurdity of life along with the power of personal choice and resilience”.

The German choreographer based in Italy Philippe Kratz, born in 1985, came to the direction of the Nuovo Balletto di Toscana after prestigious collaborations with the Teatro alla Scala, the Vienna Opera and Aterballetto. Kratz had previously worked with the Nuovo Balletto di Toscana in 2022 and in 2023, and has now authored Sisifo Felice / Smiling Sisyphus in collaboration with Pablo Girolami, an Italian-Spanish choreographer based in Italy and artistic director of Ivona. Born in 1994, he has choreographed for the Oper Graz, Jerusalem Dance Theater, Club Guy&Roni (Poetic Disaster Club), EgriBianco Danza, The LabCollective, and TanzWerk101 Zürich.

A Good Man is Hard to Find is the choreographic project by Bullyache inspired by the 2008 financial crisis and focused on the dynamics of power. “Bullyache (Courtney Deyn and Jacob Samuel) – declared Wayne McGregor - choreograph, direct, score, and conceptualise spectacular original works. They layer, contrast, and move between dance theatre, performance, and live music to construct unforgettable and fresh sequences of images in movement. Our Biennale Danza commission and world premiere, A Good Man Is Hard to Find, is a momentous mix of music, cinematic imagery, songs, and stories that explore institutional exploitation. How can we exist and find/touch humanity in a world such as this, filled with consumerism, race riots, worldwide governmental oppression, war, and financial cuts?”

Trained at the Rambert School of Ballet and Contemporary Dance, and winner of the first prize at the International Diaghilev Competition of Choreographic Art, Deyn, whose roots trace back to ballroom and Latin-American dances, are also an established musician and filmmaker. Samuel are a multidisciplinary artist working mainly on texts and sounds. Together they founded the multidisciplinary project Bullyache. Both a dance company and a musical duo, Bullyache explores the queer and working-class identities of its two founding members in performances that merge dance, music and theatre.