Gaia Gonnelli (Italy 1971) is a dancer, dance maker and dance teacher. She studied Modern Dance at the Amsterdam School of the Arts in Amsterdam. After her training, Gaia danced in choreographies by Feri de Geus, Joseph Tmim, Shusaku Takeuchi, Wies Bloemen, Krisztina de Châtel, Min Tanaka, Het Hans Hof Ensemble and Giulia Mureddu, among others. During her studies she started to develop her own work, in 1992 she received the Ineke Sluiter Incentive Prize.
Gaia made performances at Cadance, Danswerkplaats Amsterdam, I like to watch too and De Stilte. In 2009 she created Performance Wanted (6+), her first performance for children, i.c.w. Isabella Steenbergen. Since then she has focused on creating youth performances.
Until early 2016, Gaia was artist in residence at Dansmakers Amsterdam, where she produced Kleur (2+) in 2013 in co-production with Festival 2 Turven Hoog. In 2014, Gaia founded her own Dadodans foundation. With this she produced Ondersteboven (2014) and Kokers (2016), both co-productions with Dansmakers Amsterdam.
Gaia’s performances are successful at home and abroad. Her work has been shown at festivals in Italy, Turkey, Germany, Poland, Spain, Romania and Finland. In Romania, Kleur received the prize for Best performance for young audience during the international festival 100, 1000, 10000000 stories.
Gaia Gonnelli also develops educational projects for primary school children, which may or may not be related to her performances.