Career support for choreographers

We're teaming up! The St.Gallen Dance Company, Bern Ballett, and Migros Culture Percentage Dance Festival Steps are joining forces to explore new ways of promoting careers in dance. With the pilot project NEXT STEPS, we aim to provide emerging choreographers based in Switzerland with ongoing collaborations with larger professional companies and present their works to a wide audience. Over a period of three years, we will accompany two artists in their creative process.

Marioenrico D'Angelo and Rachelle Anaïs Scott are the first NEXT STEPS Artists to create for Bern Ballett, St.Gallen Dance Company and Steps. We are pleased to introduce them.

Further information on NEXT STEPS can be found in the project description (PDF).

What is NEXT STEPS?

Marioenrico D’Angelo

Marioenrico D'Angelo comes from the Italian region of Abruzzo and is a freelance choreographer and dancer based in Bern. With his choreography for the triple bill “Zwielichter” by Bern Ballett, he will open the NEXT STEPS cycle: The evening featuring works by Lesley Telford, Marioenrico D'Angelo, and Xie Xin will premiere on April 26, 2025, at Vidmar 1, Bühnen Bern. In the 2026/27 season, he will create for the St.Gallen Dance Company.

As a choreographer, he created works for the Daegu City Dance Company from South Korea (2024), the MiR Dance Company in Gelsenkirchen (2023), the Saarländisches Staatsballett Saarbrücken (2022), Frontier Danceland in Singapore (2019), the residency programme “Think Big” of the Staatsoper Hannover and TANZtheater International (2018), and for the Equilibrio Dinamico Dance Company from Italy (2013). Together with Sophie Vergères and Max Levy, he co-created the programme “Dekarnation” (2022) in Bern. With Marguerite Donlon, he choreographed “Medea” for the Theater für Niedersachsen in Hildesheim (2021). He has also choreographed as part of professional development programmes, including the Dance Arts Faculty in Rome (2024 and 2021) and Colab by The Link in Bern (2024). In 2023, his work “Prelude” won second prize at the International Choreography Competition Hanover. In 2022, the duet “Afterthought” was awarded two prizes at the Burgos & New York Choreography Contest.

As a dancer, Marioenrico D'Angelo performed with the Bern Ballett under the direction of Isabelle Bischof until the 2023/24 season. Previously, he danced for the Saarländisches Staatsballett, Spellbound Contemporary Ballet, DaMotus!, Joshua Monten Dance Company, and Donlon Dance Collective, among others. He has performed in works by Stijn Celis, Ohad Naharin, Jiří Kylián, Johan Inger, Alexander Ekman, Anna Konjetzky, Sharon Eyal, Mauro Astolfi, Andonis Foniadakis, Caroline Finn, Estefania Miranda and Cathy Marston among others. For his performance in “Your Passion Is Pure Joy to Me” by Stijn Celis, he won the SponsorClub Prize of the Saarländisches Staatsballett as best performer in 2018. Artist’s website

Photo: Yaiza Davilla Gomes

Rachelle Anaïs Scott

Rachelle Anaïs Scott will create for the St.Gallen Dance Company in the fall of 2025 and for Bern Ballett in the spring of 2026. The French-American contemporary choreographer and performing artist is originally from New York and resides in Basel.

Her first choreographies were shown at Cedar Lake, Staatstheater Nürnberg and Theater Basel as part of platform events for emerging artists. In 2022, she worked with renowned artists from the Paris Opera, creating contributions to the international dance collection “Room to Room”. In the same year, she created "Hidden Matter”, a multimedia dance performance for the “Picasso/El Greco” exhibition at the Kunstmuseum Basel, a collaboration for Ballett Basel. Rachelle Anaïs Scott’s duet “Us” was invited to the International Choreography Competition Hannover in 2023. Her latest choreography premiered at the NUTIDA Nuovə danzatrici/ori Festival in June 2024. In 2024/2025, she will be a participant in the Migros Culture Percentage mentoring programme “DoubleTanz” and will be coached by Ihsan Rustem.

As a dancer, following her training at the Juilliard School, she was a member of the Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet in New York City and a solo dancer with the Staatstheater Nürnberg Ballet. Scott is currently a member of the Ballett Basel ensemble. She has danced in works by Hofesh Shechter, Sharon Eyal, Alexander Ekman, Richard Wherlock, Ohad Naharin, Crystal Pite, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, Andonis Foniadakis, Goyo Montero, Johan Inger and Jiří Kylián among others.

She was awarded the Princess Grace Award in the USA and the Bayerischer Kunstpreis in Germany for her achievements in dance and the performing arts. She has won prizes at the Dare 2 Dance Film Festival and the Kunst- und Filmfestival Mannheim. Artist’s website

Photo: Christian Knörr