about
Rosanna Terracciano experiments and creates within and around the boundaries of flamenco, dance, contemporary performance and short film, driven by an urgency to expose the introverted and quiet aspects of all that surrounds her in art and life. She has worked professionally as a dance artist for 20+ years, with experience performing for 40+ years.
She is flamenco and she is not flamenco. She is a dancer and she is not a dancer.
Her work has been presented throughout Canada and Europe, including: performances of her solo works at the Bienal de Flamenco (Seville), Coetani Experimental Flamenco Festival (Athens), Flamenco Empirico (Barcelona), National Arts Centre online (Ottawa), Mile Zero Dance (Edmonton), Stream of Dance Festival (Regina), Vancouver International Flamenco Festival and Fluid Festival (Calgary); and short film screenings at the Âjagemô art space at the Canada Council for the Arts (Ottawa), Reeling Dance on Screen (Edmonton), EMMEDIA’s Particle + Wave Festival (Calgary), Prairie Tales (Alberta), Gallery of Alberta Media Arts (Calgary), Festival of Recorded Movement's Moving/Forward (Canada tour), dance: made in Canada (Toronto), Festival of Flamenco Short Films (Madrid/Brazil), Athens Video Dance Project (Greece), Broad View International Film Festival (Edmonton), FAVA Festival (Edmonton), University of Calgary Movement Research Festival and the Breaking Boundaries in Flamenco Symposium at Oberlin College (Ohio).
In 2018, she created the ongoing online short film project, a quiet flamenco. She was Associate Artist at Dancers’ Studio West (Calgary) for the 2020-2022 seasons. Significant recent international collaborations include creation and production periods in Hamburg (Germany), at the Dusseldorf Flamenco Festival (tanzhaus nrw) and at Barcelona’s house of dance, Mercat de les Flors.
She is the 2017 recipient of the Canada Council for the Arts' Jacqueline Lemieux Prize for dance.
About her background...
She first started dancing and performing via Italian folk dancing in Calgary in grade 5.
She spun flags and rifles and sabres as part of colourguards during her teens and early 20s, performing many years with the Calgary Stampede Showband and then with the prestigious California-based Blue Devils Drum Corps for two seasons, touring throughout the United States to packed football stadiums.
She studied contemporary dance through the University of Calgary's program of dance, while completing her Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering (with a minor in Structural Engineering). Her dream was to be an architect. She chose dance instead.
She began her flamenco dance studies in Calgary and throughout Canada, before then returning to Spain regularly to train and artistically and culturally immerse herself. She continues these intensive periods of deep immersion in Spain, as her professional work expands and stays in relationship with flamenco's roots.
She was diagnosed with Level 1 Autism Spectrum Disorder (not to her surprise) at the age of 46. As a result, with her art, she now prefers quieter and more orderly and less hectic things.
“Terracciano’s work is daring. It is powerful. It is feminine. It is poetic…The sensitive balance between past and present is written all over her work.”
- Myriam Allard, Co-Artistic Director of La Otra Orilla (Montreal)
"(Rosanna's) work highlights and also offers contrasts of cultural, political and social content that belong to her and to flamenco itself. Through her work, I have come to know a type of flamenco that — reaching us from another corner of the world — walks in unison with contemporary approaches within the dance and movement arts of today."
- Juan Carlos Lérida (Barcelona)
