Francesco Simeone
As a baby, Francesco Simeone is already a little headbanger. As soon as music comes on, he shakes his long dark curls back and forth eagerly. When he is three and his niece starts toddler dance classes, he wants to come along. But his mother thinks: he probably just wants to copy her, so she suggests judo or swimming lessons. Also because in Italy, especially in the south, where he comes from, dancing is seen as a “girl's sport. “However, I had a strong will of my own. Although I tried other things, I told my mother, 'I'm only doing this to make you and Daddy happy, because what I really want is to dance!' Eventually she understood that the passion really came from me.” A passion that in the meantime had been further fueled by the dancers and singers in the Italian TV talent show Amici di Maria de Pilippi. So when Francesco was six, his mother thought it was time: he was allowed to take ballet lessons. “Since then, my parents have been my biggest fans. My father would prefer to come to every performance. And my younger brother doesn't miss a production either. He and I are like the moon and the earth: he's a soccer fanatic, I'm a dance fanatic, but we have a great bond. I couldn't live without him.”
'The happiest man on earth'
After taking classes at the amateur school in his hometown of Andria, he always comes home overenthusiastic: “Mommy, I learned this, and that, and that.” And soon he takes classes in every dance style the school offers. He stays there for ten years. “Partly because there is nothing in southern Italy outside the amateur schools, but also because I had a great teacher, Ilde Inchingolo.” At seventeen, he left for Siena, a nine-hour drive from home, where from 2020 to 2023 he attended the Ateano della Danza program, a training program affiliated with the Balletto di Siena. “That transition was very tough at first. I was suddenly living on my own, missing my family and friends, making long days, having to take care of myself, turning out to have to catch up on three years of German at my regular school in a short time, and then there were all the corona restrictions.” But the dance education there, he says, was, in a word, wonderful. “I loved it.” Laughs, “Otherwise, of course, I would have gone right back home.” Then, serious again: “I will always be grateful to Marco Batti, director of the school and company, and choreographer Camille Granet for all the opportunities they gave me.”
Curriculum Vitae
Born
2003, Andria (Puglia region), Italy
Education
Ateano della Danza, Siena, Italy
Danced previously at
Ballet Siena, Italy
Ballet Preljocaj Junior, France
Ballet Preljocaj, France
At Scapino since
2024
Scholarships, nominations and awards
First prize in the 'contemporary male solos' category, PID-Premio Internazionale di Danza in Rieti, Italy - 2022
Second prize in the 'contemporary duos' category with Chacapum by Camille Granet, PID-Premio Internazionale di Danza in Rieti, Italy - 2023
Olympic Games
It is his curiosity that takes him to France after an internship year with the Balletto di Siena, where he dances for a season with Ballet Preljocaj's junior group and is soon allowed to tour with the “main company” as well. “It was wonderful to be able to work with one of the greatest choreographers in the world, Angelin Preljocaj, about whom I had already heard in Siena in my dance history classes.” But surely the highlight for Francesco is his performance at the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris, where he and his colleagues perform parts of Preljocaj's Swan Lake on a catwalk in the Jardins du Trocadéro on two evenings, as a tribute to the medalists. “To be allowed to perform there at the bottom of the Eiffel Tower in front of 13,000 wildly enthusiastic, screaming people was overwhelming.”
Curious, as a dancer and as a person
Dancing at Scapino is the next phase in Francesco's development that he so much desires.
“I auditioned with a solo I had made for my grandfather. While performing it, I also really felt that he was with me, that he supported me.” He calls himself above all a curious dancer, eager to discover everything, get to the bottom of every detail and get to know every style of dance. “I would like to dance every performance there is. To get every possible choreographic style and language into my body. As a dancer, you never stop learning. And the same is true in 'normal' life. For example, I am very interested in history and often visit museums. I find it fascinating to explore where we humans came from, how we used to live, why we talk the way we talk, do the way we do, how important art is to us, how we managed to build skyscrapers and why we did that.”
Text: Astrid van Leeuwen