Andrea Rizzo participated in the Artists Encounter at Spring Forward 2025

Andrea Rizzo’s artistic path has been circuitous. He completed degrees in classical literature and drama before taking the advice of his dance teacher, Marta Bevilacqua, and dedicating his life to dance at the age of 24. Born in the southeastern Italian city of Lecce, Andrea now lives in Udine where he still collaborates with Bevilacqua, artistic director of Compagnia Arearea.

At the Spring Forward Festival in Gorizia/Nova Gorica, Andrea is participating in the Artists’ Encounter initiative, designed to involve local artists in the festival and provide them with tools to disseminate their work. I caught up with Andrea on the sidelines of the festival to ask him about his life and aspirations.

After finishing high school, you decided to study classical literature in the northeastern city of Udine. How did that come about?

That’s a very important detail in my life. Udine is 1000km from Lecce. I went there because I saw a ranking of universities in Italy, and that year [2009] Udine’s faculty of classics and literature was number one. Something in my instinct said yes, something was calling me to that city. It was a strange place for people from the south to go to but I’ve lived here ever since, for 15 years now.

You studied classical literature but that wasn’t where your true passion lay, was it?

No, it was always my goal, my aspiration to be an actor. I started drama school two weeks before graduating in classics at Udine and it was a completely different world, a completely different schedule, 9am to 8pm every day. It changed my life. I fell in love with cinema.

It was at drama school that you first met the choreographer Marta Bevilacqua who was to have a profound influence on your life. Can you tell us how?

Yes, I met Marta there. After two or three lessons she came to me and said: ‘The sooner you understand that you’re a dancer, the better it will be for you.’ I had never danced before in my whole life, never attended a dance class. She saw in me an instinct, a dancing mindset in the way I approached movement. I couldn’t grasp that initially, but now I’m 34 and I’m a dancer.

When Marta first told you that you were a dancer, how did you feel about that?

My first reaction was no! What does she know about me? I just wanted to be in drama school. But the thing is, she’s a very good teacher and I was fascinated by what she was doing. So, during those three years of drama school, even though I fought against this new idea, I finally began to think maybe she was right. But I was scared. How do you start being a dancer at 24?

Can you explain more about that transformation?

It became clearer to me that my expressive language was in the body – and now I can also see it in others. I can see when somebody is approaching movement from a dancing point of view rather than from an acting point of view. It’s like you’re living in the movement itself and not trying to act it out.

After I graduated, I asked Marta if I could attend her classes to see if it was really something for me. Six months later I had my debut with them in an urban dance festival and it all took off from there. Everybody that had known me before and saw me in the show said ‘This is your place.’ That was a ‘wow’ moment.

After finding your place, where has your career as a dancer taken you over the years?

Since then I have worked with various companies and choreographers such as Naturalis Labor, Le Supplici and Alessio Maria Romano, and with Marta and Compagnia Arearea. We do a lot of urban dance shows and we work a lot with musicians. Last year we did a show based on the Wizard of Oz – I was the scarecrow!

I have also been doing a show for children with two former colleagues from drama school who specialise in puppetry and black box theatre.

Even though your heart will always lie in performance, you went back to university to start a new phase of renewal and transformation in your career.

Yes, I did a master’s degree in performing arts management at the University of Bologna, all about organisation, administration, funding applications, etc., so now I’m working part-time with Marta in this capacity, while also dancing. I have three new productions in development this year but you have to think about what you’re going to do after you’re done being a dancer. Don’t get me wrong, in a philosophical and existential way, you are a dancer forever.