Gaetano Vestris Terrana

Ballet for Dancers

04.09., 06.09. + 08.09.2023, 14:00–15:30
30.10., 01.11. + 03.11.2023, 14:00–15:30

Training for Dancers

Bio

Italian-born Gaetano Vestris Terrana is a dance maker and movement educator, currently based in Berlin.
He is part of the Feldenkrais Teacher Training in Brussels with educational director Alan Questel, and he has recently been accepted in the TPZ dance pedagogical certificate program of the DBfT Deutscher Berufsverband für Tanzpädagogik. For more than a decade, he has danced as a soloist in various companies in Germany and Switzerland, working with choreographers such as Ohad Naharin, Wayne McGregor, Alexander Ekman, Mauro Bigonzetti amongst others. He was trained in Basel in the Vaganova method by Rafael Avnikjian, until he met Mogens Boesen, Linda Hindberg, and Nikolaj Hübbe from the Royal Danish Ballet in Copenhagen who taught him the Bournonville style and the Stanley Williams’ legacy. Later on in New York he became one of the proteges of Willy Burmann’s whose approach to ballet completely changed his way of dancing. From very early on in his dance career, he has shown his love for teaching and coaching other dancers. His aim has always been to provide the dancers with an enabling critical framework through which they could explore movement as a reflection of who they believe themselves to be, as people and artists, and practice new ways of approaching technique that could complement their inner image and their outer goals.

Class description

The main focus of my class is deepening the students’ personality in movement. I love good, honest dancing. This desire drives me forward in the quest for heightened musicality and freedom in movement for dancers. To accomplish this, precision work on technique will allow letting go of control. My mentor and teacher, Willy Burmann once told me: “It’s not about the steps. It’s how you put it to music.” Finding musicality is accomplished through careful attention to phrasing, the process by which a dancer gives more or less emphasis to certain movements. In turn, this shapes the release in such a form that it becomes expressive, beautiful, and specific.