Riccardo De Simone
BACKGROUND
Riccardo De Simone (Bologna, 1993) is a dancer and multidisciplinary artist. His training includes contemporary dance (SEAD), picture's book illustration (Ars in Fabula), graphic design (IsArt), and choreography (advanced training course I Corpi e le Voci della Danza). Since 2016, he has worked as a performer with numerous Italian and international artists, including Roberto Castello, Virgilio Sieni, Christoph Winkler, Nicola Galli, Ariella Vidach, Elio Gervasi, Andrea Zardi, Pablo Bronstain, Anna Konjetzky, and Thomas Danielis. David Brandstätter/Malgven Gerbes, Paula E. Paul/Sirko Knüpfer, and Noritoshi Hirakawa. His research primarily merges performance and visual arts through evocative imagery inspired by the relationship between the human body and the object body.
His animated short 1180 and more (2016) was screened at over 40 events and festivals worldwide. It won the Audience Award at Danza in 1 minuto (COORPI) in Turin in 2017, was a finalist at Cinematica Festival (Ancona, 2017) and SzólóDuó (Budapest, 2017), and was later chosen as the official trailer for the Danse Élargie festival (Théâtre de la Ville/Musée de la danse/Fondation D’entreprise Hermès) in Paris in 2018.
In 2023, he was selected by Radic’Arte to co-create the dance film Al Passo coi Tempi with director Robert Girdea for Speed Up Festival (Alessandria).
His first performative project, Angry Butterfly (2024), won the Culture Moves Europe mobility grant, Collagene, and Piattaforma G/NAO24 grants. This was followed in 2025 Everybody Has a Fate, selezionato per la Vetrina della giovane danza d’autore del Network Anticorpi XL, vincitore di DNAppunti coreografici 2025 e nuovamente al bando NAO25. Nello stesso anno inizia anche a collaborare con Laura Cossignani al progetto di comunità in spazi urbani Giardinosofiain urban spaces, recently hosted by Kinkaleri at KLm (Alti Studi Coreografici) as part of Contemporanea/Focus Danza 2025 in Prato.
Nel 2025 Riccardo è inoltre selezionato ai bandi:
– SupportER, azione triennale a sostegno della giovane danza d’autore dell’Emilia-Romagna promossa dal Network Anticorpi in collaborazione con gli organismi di produzione dell’Emilia Romagna.
– Crossing the Sea, an internationalisation programme for Italian performing arts promoted by Marche Teatro and Mosaico Danza.
In 2026 he received the Audience Award at the first edition of Eugenio Barba Prize for the Perfoming Arts at Teatro Comunale of Ferrara.
Parallelamente Riccardo lavora come illustratore di libri per l’infanzia ed è insegnante ospite presso il corso di alta formazione Art Factory International di Bologna, con cui condivide e sviluppa le sue pratiche di ricerca.
Dal 2025 Riccardo è artista associato dell’associazione Cinqueminuti di Reggio Emilia.
Riccardo is a multidisciplinary dancer and artist. His practice mainly integrates performance and visual arts, producing evocative images that explore the relationship between the human body and the body as object.