David Russo

David Russo is an internationally experienced dancer, choreographer, and dance educator. His training began in Turin and Genoa with Carmen Novelli and Pertti Virtanen and continued at the John Cranko School in Stuttgart under Pjotr A. Pestov. From 1998 to 2010, he was a soloist at the Saarländisches Staatstheater Saarbrücken and at the Staatstheater am Gärtnerplatz in Munich under Philip Taylor, and he also performed at the Teatro Nuovo di Torino.

Since 2004, Russo has been creating his own choreographies and collaborating with institutions such as btm, TTM, the Birgit Keil Foundation, Ballet Philippines, Universal Ballet Seoul, and Ballet Dortmund. In 2010, his choreography Ein-fluss won second prize at the 2nd International Choreography Competition “Contact Energy” in Erfurt and was restaged in 2011 for the ensemble of Theater Ulm. He is also active in Munich’s independent dance scene and initiates interdisciplinary projects.

In 2010, he completed a postgraduate degree in ballet pedagogy and has been teaching at the Ballet Academy of the Hochschule für Musik und Theater München since then. He teaches classical and contemporary dance techniques, choreographs productions, and contributed to the development of the Bachelor’s program in Dance as well as the 2020 pedagogical framework. In 2019, he founded the initiative TanzQuelle, supporting Munich’s dance scene, and serves until 2025 on the Ethics Committee of the German Dance Association. He has also curated the 8th and 9th Biennale for Dance Education and led workshops at international festivals across Asia and Europe.