TONY RIZZI

Work Hard, Don't Lie, And Try Not To Hurt Anybody

Tony Rizzi, born in 1965 in Dedham, near Boston, trained at the Boston Ballet School under, among others, the legendary dancers Violette Verdy and Bruce Wells, both from the New York City Ballet. In 1985, he moved to Frankfurt, where he was a dancer and close collaborator with William Forsythe at Ballet Frankfurt for over 20 years, performing many of leading roles.

At the same time, he developed his own choreographic work: in 1995, he created “Firstext” for the Royal Ballet in London together with Forsythe and Dana Caspersen; further choreographies were created for the Bavarian State Ballet and the Gärtnerplatz Tanztheater in Munich, among others. From 1999 to 2023, he performed as a principal dancer in numerous productions by Troubleyn / Jan Fabre, including the 24-hour performance “Mount Olympus.” In 2012, he played the young Marina Abramović in Robert Wilson’s “The Life and Death of Marina Abramović” on an international tour.

With his own company, ‘Tony Rizzi and the Bad Habits,’ he has been developing his own dance productions since 2000, which regularly premiere at the Mousonturm in Frankfurt and the Gallus Theater. International tours have taken him to Montreal, Vienna, Tokyo, New York, and Oslo, among other places.

Since the late 1980s, Rizzi has been active as a photographic artist. His works have been exhibited at venues including the Frankfurter Kunstverein, Oper Frankfurt, Künstlerhaus Mousonturm, the Kunstverein Hamburg, Platform Sarai in Frankfurt am Main, MUMOK in Vienna and the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo, and are held in international collections.