Massimo Gerardi

He received his artistic training at the Scuola di Danza Ceron in Udine and later attended the Advanced Training Program at Aterballetto in Reggio Emilia. In 1986, he began his professional career at the Teatro Comunale di Firenze and with the company of Carla Fracci. He later moved to Germany, where he joined the Teatro Comunale di Augsburg. Returning to Italy, he collaborated with the Compagnia Aterballetto directed by Amedeo Amodio and with the Balletto di Venezia directed by Giuseppe Carbone. Back in Germany, over the course of ten years he performed as a soloist dancer at the Ballett Nürnberg, Ballett Dortmund, Ballett Linz and Staatstheater Oldenburg

He performed numerous leading roles in choreographies by William Forsythe, Amedeo Amodio, Giuseppe Carbone, Birgit Cullberg, Amanda Miller, Jacopo Godani, Rui Horta, Gregor Zoellig, and others. He also created several choreographies within the companies in which he worked as a dancer and received awards at the international choreography competitions of Florence, Düsseldorf, Treviso, and Hannover.

In 2000, he received a scholarship from the “Kunst und Kultur” Foundation in Düsseldorf for a choreographic master program at the Nederlands Dans Theater with Hans Van Manen, at the Icelandic Dance Company in Reykjavík with Jorma Uotinen, at the Balletto di Göteborg with Jacopo Godani, and at the Komische Oper Berlin with Richard Wherlock. He was later selected for an advanced choreography course in Zurich (SiWiC) and for a video-dance course at the Centro Coreografico di Essen with Philippe Decouflé and Thierry de Mey.

He subsequently dedicated himself to both teaching and choreography, creating works for the Staatstheater Oldenburg, Theater Vorpommern Stralsund–Greifswald, Theater Kiel, Théâtre de Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, Stadttheater Gießen, Theater Bielefeld, Landesbühnen Sachsen, Theater Aachen, Teatrul Odeon București, Taneční konzervatoř hl. m. Prahy (Prague Conservatory), Liceul de Coregrafie „Floria Capsali” București (Choreographic School Bucharest), and the Palucca Hochschule für Tanz Dresden. He also taught contemporary dance for two years at the Hochschule für Musik und Tanz Köln and for one year at the Palucca Hochschule für Tanz Dresden, where he still collaborates today as a choreographer.

He first founded the collective “movingtheatre.de/Tanz” in Cologne and later the freelance company “subsTANZ” in Dresden, where he continues to work actively. The Region of Nordrhein-Westfalen, the City of Cologne, the City of Dresden, and several cultural foundations have funded his numerous creations within these companies, which have been invited to festivals throughout Europe (Bolzano, Mittelfest, Catania, Barcelona, Vienna, Bucharest, etc.) and received the Teatro-Danza Award of the City of Cologne in 2006 and 2009.

In 2012-2013 he was faculty teacher for contemporary dance at Palucca Hochschule für Tanz in Dresden. In 2014/2015 he has been a guest teacher at Theater Heidelberg/Nanine Linning Dance Company, guest choreographer at Palucca Hochschule für Tanz Dresden, at Theater Bielefeld, at Landesbühnen Sachsen, and directed an Opera at Staatsschauspiel Dresden.

In 2016 he created a Concert-Performance with musicians and dancers for Lucerne Festival taught in the didactic Project "Apprendre a Danser" in Tunis and was guest teacher at the Korean National University of Arts in Seoul. In 2017 Interim Director at Accademia dell'Arte in Arezzo and Guest Choreographer at Theater Giessen.

In 2018, together with the choreographer Claudio Cangialosi, he created the piece MANkind in co-production with the Centre Choréographique National de Danse Mulhouse and choreographed BREAK // DANCE for the Leipzig Dance Theater. Later he choreographed the performance on post-colonialism CLASH at Deutsche Hygiene Museum Dresden, which was presented in 2019 at the Festival Journée Choréographiques de Carthage, in collaboration with the Association Hayyou'Raqs (Tunis). In 2019, he taught at SEAD Salzburg, and in 2020 he worked as assistant to Jacopo Godani at the Frankfurt Dresden Dance Company.

In 2021, he became General Manager at the Theater Giessen in Germany, and from September 2022 to June 2024 he served as Rehearsal Director and teacher of contemporary technique at the Ballet Academy of the Vienna State Opera.

Since September 2024, he has been Dance Director at the Stadttheater Goerlitz-Zittau in Germany. He collaborates continuously with the Scuola di Danza Ceron, overseeing the professional training of advanced and pre-professional level students.