Roots
Luana Pignato is dancer and choreographer, co-founder and artistic director of kalā teatro, a dance-theater company based in Fagagna, Italy. Originally from the southern Italian region of Lucania, she discovered dance as her personal language at an early age. Her passion for classical ballet led her to study at the Ballet School of “Teatro dell’Opera di Roma” where she graduated in 2013.
Upon completing her studies, she moved to Berlin to further refine her skills and embark on her professional career. Among the mentors and teachers who shaped her training in Italy and Berlin are ballet masters and former first dancers Emil Traianov and John Vye.
Professional Career
Luana has danced with ballet companies such as Ballet Magdeburg and Mecklenburgisches Staatstheater Schwerin in Germany, as well as with the dance-theater company White Dance Theater in Poland. She has performed in several opera productions, including L’Aida and La Traviata in Germany, La Clemenza di Tito at Opera Kameralna in Warsaw, and at various dance festivals (Deutscher Schauspielpreis, Berlin Leuchtet) and concerts (Candlelight Concerts Munich) in Germany.
In 2016, Luana presented her first independent dance-theater piece, Sensus, at the Contemporary Dance Festival Città Cento Scale in Potenza, Italy.
In the following years, she collaborated with choreographer and artistic director Marc Bogaerts in organizing artistic and cultural events in Germany. Since 2020, Luana has worked as a freelance dancer and choreographer, dedicating herself to independent projects in collaboration with international artists.
In 2021 and 2022, she directed the participatory theater project Vita mia – canto del ritorno in Basilicata, engaging the community through a series of theater-dance workshops.
In 2022 and 2023, she was funded by the German Ministry of State for Culture and Media through the DIS-TANZ-SOLO program for her choreographic research projects.
During the same period, she co-founded D.A.S. Kollektiv, a freelance dancer collective based in Berlin, and kalā teatro, a dance-theater company that brings together actors, musicians, dancers, and artists from diverse backgrounds, working together with the common goal of taking theater outside conventional spaces and engaging with the community.
Vision
“I dance to capture stories, events, and emotions I have lived. Dance is my way of transforming shadows and fragility into light and strength.”
In her creations, Luana delves into stories from the past, often focusing on the narratives of marginalized individuals, untold truths, and real events intertwined with myths, legends, and local tales. By traversing and embodying these stories, Luana seeks to address the needs of contemporary society.
Her work aims to restore a more introspective and meditative dimension of life, rediscovering past stories and archetypes as tools to confront present-day challenges. This journey is driven by the pursuit of poetic justice for unheard voices and undisclosed truths.