Rafaële Giovanola

Swiss, born in the USA. Rafaële Giovanola has a long career as a soloist with various companies, including William Forsythe’s Frankfurt Ballet. In 2000 she founded CocoonDance together with the dramaturg Rainald Endraß. Since 2004 she has created over forty productions and is co-curating the dance programm of the Theater im Ballsaal (Bonn). CocoonDance has established itself as a leading dance institution with an extensive network not only within the artistic world but also in the field of cultural education. The company has toured on five continents and has performed in festivals such as GermanDance Platform, STEPS, Rencontres Chorégraphiques internationales de Saint Denis, Les Hivernales, Antigel, Coda Festival, Milanoltre. She has been awarded numerous prizes. Her commissioned work SPHYNX with TanzMainz was honoured with the Faust 2022 prize. The engine of CocoonDance’s is improvisation, a strong dramaturgic approach that looks predominantly at perception of the body and a constant teamwork. 

In the search of your personal movements.
“ Through years of experience as a dancer and choreographer, I developed a practice that is predominantly focused on the perception of the body and its narrative, emotional and physical potential. I call this research the search of the “unthought body”. A body that arises out of the research, the work in the studio with the team. I would like to propose an exploration of the boundaries of the body with existing tasks and introduce my working methods, developed together with our collaborators, and particularly our glossary work. It is a way of describing movement with words, sounds or drawings in to share and generate new movements. ”