IIrene Russolillo was born in Italy in 1982. As a dancer, performer-actress and young coreographer, since 2013 she creates works as both maker and performer. In her hybrid performances she uses movement, singing and writing to make warm and emotional pieces where music has always a big presence.
The first works she creates are the solos Ebollizione, Strascichi and A loan. In 2016 she creates a fourth solo The speech in collaboration with Lisi Estaras (Les Ballets C de la B) as a result of the international Equilibrio Best Performer prize, directed by Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, won in 2014. In the same year she is also awarded the Best Performer Masdanza international prize of Canary Islands and is put forward as a candidate for the Virginia Reiter prize for the best Italian actress under 35.
In 2015 she is awarded the Prospettiva Danza prize along with the video-artist Davide Calvaresi for their joint project, Map. In september 2016 she is selected as one of the italian artists in residence at the Italian Cultural Institute of Paris, for the program Les promesses de l’art.
As a dancer she worked, among others, with choreographers such as Micha Van Hoecke, Abbondanza/Bertoni, Erdem Gunduz and for a long period with Roberto Castello, She has collaborated in improvisation with Company Blu and Takla Improvising Group, alongside Julyen Hamilton and several musicians, among which her long term collaborators Spartaco Cortesi and Piero Corso. Her nomadic studies allowed her to have a number of important encounters; with Gabriella Musacchio, Marina Van Hoecke and Yoko Wakabayashi in ballet, with coreographers such as Ivan Wolfe, Susanne Linke, Raffaella Giordano, Giorgio Rossi and David Zambrano in contemporary dance, with César Brie and his physical theatre, Javier Cura and his contact-tango, Adi Sha’al Ivan Wolfe and many others in contact-improvisation.
As a choreographer, she has been supported by the Italian Independent Dance Network Anticorpi XL and ALDES, an artists’ association based in Tuscany.
Currently, she is supported by the cultural association VAN, based in Bologna, is associated artist to the Festival Oriente Occidente in Rovereto and to the independent space Garage 29 in Brussels.
