Movement and emotion fuse with wide-ranging influences in rising dance artist Sofia Nappi’s unique style
Ahead of a premiere at Ballet BC’s TRILOGY, the Italian-born choreographer reflects on a creative journey that began locally and led her around the globe
Sofia Nappi
Ballet BC presents TRILOGY at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre from November 6 to 8
IN-DEMAND CHOREOGRAPHER Sofia Nappi has a dance resumé that’s as international as they come: training at New York City’s Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, studying Gaga movement in Tel Aviv, and now running her own company, KOMOCO, in Florence, Italy, where she was born. The young artist has had a quick rise, choreographing for companies around the world, from the Netherlands to Mexico, Germany, Sweden, and Scotland.
And so, as she prepares to premiere her first work for Ballet BC, it may come as some surprise to find out that it all started… Here? In Burnaby?
Speaking to Stir on a rehearsal break, Nappi says she was first drawn to the art form at 17, as an Italian high-school exchange student at Byrne Creek Community School, where she joined the dance troupe. The class would take a field trip to New York City, where they had a workshop at Ailey.
“I said, ‘I want to get into that company,’” says Nappi, who explains that she was drawn to the “pleasure to groove” she experienced at the Alvin Ailey Conservatory. Soon she was dancing in its midst. Everything happens for a reason—or more likely, in this case, because Nappi makes it happen.
That was so at Ailey, where the young dance student’s choreographic works were chosen for a showcase two years in a row.
An injury there led her to discovering Gaga as a form of movement therapy—eventually leading to studying Ohad Naharin’s famous core-based form in Tel Aviv and then with Batsheva alumnus Hofesh Shechter in Italy and elsewhere
“I was so hungry for different languages,” she says. “It was really listening to the body. And it was a real discovery for me.”
Those forms—the expressive Ailey technique, with its meld of modern, ballet, and jazz, and Gaga, with its grounded intensity—have allowed Nappi to develop a unique, raw style of her own, one where movement is inseparable from emotion. In the studio, she also draws on her innate openness to new people and experiences. In some ways, the same impulses that brought her here as an exchange student now capture her approach in the studio. When she arrived at Ballet BC, she says, she came in without preconceptions, allowing her to see the individuals in the company with fresh eyes.
Artists of Ballet BC in rehearsal with Sofia Nappi.
“Often, when you’re young and you put yourself in the world earlier than your colleagues, you can feel pressure to enter the room with everything all prepared,” the dance artist reflects. “But you need to take a breath and realize there’s no formula. I’m grateful to come to Ballet BC with a blank canvas—I allowed myself to use what existed in front of me.
“I did not feel one day of my career where I wasn’t challenged,” she adds. “These are all completely different companies with completely different rules. So I try to be fluid and open.”
In fact, she says, the premiere she’s preparing for Ballet BC is in many ways about her first encounter with the company. Her starting point was Italian poet Chandra Candriani’s “Questo immenso non sapere”—which translates as “This immense not knowing”.
The work for 16 dancers, debuting on the TRILOGY program with Medhi Walerski’s SWAY and Shahar Binyamini’s BOLERO X, explores ideas around opening the senses to new experiences.
“Human beings are maybe a bit afraid of that: to see more, to sense more, to smell more,” Nappi reflects. “To deepen senses, where we can go deeper in ourselves.
“There’s a message of inclusivity and community and connection, rather than just creating a ‘beautiful’ piece,” she adds. “Inside the piece there’s a certain physicality and emotionality that brings the group closer together. We are a tribe, a community open to different sensations and stories.”
With work like this, and a tour to Montreal with her own KOKOMO soon afterward, Nappi spends less and less time in her Florence hometown these days. She continues to find her voice in dance around the world—but still loves to have a place to come home to in one of Italy’s most beautiful and storied cities.
“It’s completely changing my work to have a base there, to see the art, to go out into nature,” she says. “My grandparents are still living there—it’s a feeling of being in a nest that recharges me for the next trip.” 
Artists of Ballet BC in rehearsal with Sofia Nappi.
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