Cristina Kristal Rizzo is a dancer, performer, and choreographer based in Florence, active in the performing arts scene since the early 1990s. She is one of the founders of the historic Kinkaleri collective, with which she has collaborated extensively, engaging with the contemporary international choreographic scene and receiving numerous awards, including the Premio Ubu and the Premio Lo Straniero.
Since 2008, she has pursued an independent path in choreographic production, directing her research toward a highly dynamic theoretical reflection, aimed at regenerating the very act of creation and raising questions about the present. Today, one of the leading figures in Italian choreography, her work is regularly presented at international events dedicated to contemporary dance, performance, and interdisciplinary research in the contemporary arts. In addition to touring, she maintains an intense program of continuing education, lecturing, workshops, and theoretical writing. Her recent creations include: the project Monumentum the second sleep, ECHOES, TOCCARE the white dance (Danza&Danza Award for contemporary choreography 2020), ULTRAS sleeping dances, VN Serenade, Prélude, IKEA, and BoleroEffect.
As a guest choreographer, she has created works for major opera houses and institutions in Italy and abroad, including the Teatro Comunale di Firenze – Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, Aterballetto, Balletto di Toscana Junior, LAC Lugano, MACRO Rome, MUSEION Bolzano, Museo Pecci Prato, Museo del Novecento Florence, and MASI Museo Lugano. She contributed to the special project The Platform of Balinese Dance for the Santarcangelo Festival 2014 and 2015 and to the 2021 edition of LiveArtsWeek with Xing.
Since 2019, she has been actively involved in Sup de Sub, a project for young non-professionals from the suburbs of Marseille and Paris.
In October 2021, she was a guest artist at the Juntarte / La Escena Inclusiva project in Havana, Cuba, and curated the Cuba>>Firenze 2032 project for the Fabbrica Europa Festival. In 2026 she is fellow artist in residence at Scuola Piccole Zattere of Venice.
Her work is supported and produced by Fuori Margine, the Dance and Performing Arts Production Center of Sardinia, and she is an artist in residence at PARC/Fondazione Fabbrica Europa for the three-year
Diana Anselmo (Palermo, 1997) is a queer and Deaf performer, visual artist, and improvised human being. His practice intertwines an-archival documentary research with an anti-historical investigation into the oppression of the Deaf community. Bilingual in LIS and Italian, Diana debuted with his lecture-performance Autoritratto in tre atti (2021), presented more than 40 times across Italy and internationally at venues including Culturgest, Casa da Música, and Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève. In 2022, he performed in Xavier Le Roy’s Le Sacre du Printemps in Berlin and created You Have to Be Deaf to Understand, a Visual Sign performance presented in Deaf contexts in Lisbon, Edinburgh, Stockholm, and Paris. In 2024 he co-authored Monumentum DA with the dance-maker Cristina Kristal Rizzo, presenting the pièce at TorinoDanza, Triennale Milano and internationally.
That same year, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo invited Diana to develop the research behind Je Vous Aime into a solo exhibition curated by Bernardo Follini, marking an important expansion of his practice into the visual arts.
In 2025, he developed the second chapter of his research, Pas Moi, at Scuola Piccola Zattere in Venice as both an exhibition curated by Irene Calderoni and a performance co-produced by international partners including Santarcangelo Festival and Theaterformen Festival. The same year he became artistic director of Repubblica Sorda, Italy’s only professional festival dedicated to Deaf arts and sign language.
In winter 2026, Diana will premiere Les Enfants Sauvages – al museo, co-produced by MUDAM and Triennale Milano.
He is represented by Galleria Eugenia Delfini in Rome, where he exhibited deafnotdead – reviewed in Artforum by Ida Panicelli.