THEfirst memory of snow? «I’m afraid it’s distorted, influenced by a photo of me very small with plastic skis. The one that is certainly authentic, however, is the day in which I had the beginning of frostbite on my toes in Val di Gares, in the Belluno Dolomites, where I would later train cross country for over a decade. I experienced that routine with suffering: something already suggested to that child that his destiny was different.” And indeed Marco D’Agostin – “that child” – at 38 years old he is an internationally established choreographer-performer. And rewarded: he has just added to his collection of Ubu – the 2018 one for best artist under 35 and the 2023 one for Gli anni, with Marta Ciàppina – the 2025 one for best dance show for Asteroid.
First Love and the link with the Olympics
All that pain, however, was useful to him, transforming into creativity. His First Love (First love) – from 4 to 15 February at the Teatro Studio Melato in Milan – is part of the celebrations created by Piccolo on the occasion of the XXV Milan Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic Games together with a special version of Slava’s Snowshow, by the Russian clown Slava Polunin. «At the center of First Love is the exciting race – which ended with the gold medal – of the cross-country skier Stefania Belmondo at the Salt Lake City Olympicsin 2002. I was 15 years old and it is one of the most intense flashbacks of my adolescence” explains he, who is also a teacher (“The more time passes, the more I understand that my future is teaching”), collaborator of theater groups such as the house of clay as well as author, with Alessandro Iachino, of Years, letters and avalanches (The Assayer).
The Belmondo myth and identification
What struck you so much about that event?
Already the underdog, Stefania found herself with a broken stick: bad luck (which had persecuted her a lot in the past) seemed like a kind of evil divinity that was raging against the hero. But then came the formidable final comeback and a sprint highlighted with pathos by the Rai commentator, Franco Bragagna. The most challenging thing on stage is to “double myself”: the gesture replicates the champion’s actions, the acting replicates the commentator’s voice.
Why Belmondo?
She had always been my legend. Perhaps – being small, not having a body “suitable” for competition – in some strange way I had triggered a relationship, an identification with her, which they called “trapulìn”, little boy. She was not “predestined”, her successes were the result of hard work.
Marco D’Agostin is an internationally established choreographer-performer
Family, sport and the first flash of dance
And why had he chosen cross-country skiing?
A passion inherited from dad. I come from a family fascinated by “minor” sports, I was raised with a hatred of football…
No sign of his passion anymore?
Once, when I was five or six years old, I amazed my parents with an exploit: I started dancing to a very unlikely soundtrack, the songs of the Alpine troops. But living in a small village, in Valdobbiadene, I couldn’t even dream, imagine that that was the street.
From bottom to dance: the first big turning point
Maybe there is a relationship between this discipline and dance. Meh…
The fund requires you to learn the technique perfectly before it can be enjoyed, in fact. And when you’re good, you start to slide, to skate: something that has to do with dance enters there, projecting the body beyond itself, beyond its boundaries.
When did you decide: “Enough”?
At 16-17 years old: classical high school was demanding, however I admit that this was the “official” justification. I wanted to enroll in a school, but there weren’t any in the area. The only dance I had access to was the one on TV: Amici di Maria De Filippi, to be precise. At the beginning I found it difficult to talk about it and now I’m proud of it: it seems moving to me the arc that can be drawn in life.
The decisive matches and the sliding doors
And what happened in between?
Amateur theater and a special meeting in high school, the one with Giuseppe Sartori (regular actor of Greek tragedies in Syracuse, ed.): I grew up a bit in his shadow and, after he joined the Piccolo (it was the 2006-2009 course), I emulated him. I passed the first selection, the second, and… I failed the audition with Luca Ronconi.
Curious, for someone who is now an Associate Artist at the Piccolo alongside figures of the caliber of Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker or Tiago Rodrigues.
I also failed in Turin and Bologna… (smiles) In Bologna, however, there was a small school affiliated with the University Sports Center and I went to try a theater-dance lesson: it seemed like the most affordable approach, as I didn’t have a dance training. The teacher – here is the great sliding door of my journey – asked me to come back every day because he needed boys, he wouldn’t make me pay. Overnight I started studying modern and contemporary dance on a daily basis, and over time choreographers started calling me.
Early work and the construction of a language
The subsequent sliding doors?
One summer I volunteered at Kilowatt (the multidisciplinary festival that has been taking place since 2003 in Sansepolcro, Arezzo, ed.), and there I discovered the existence of an award in Veneto for “Young Author’s Dance”. The following year I won it with Viola, my very first work, a 15 minute solo. Pure movement, I forbade myself to use the word: partly due to the sense of inadequacy after the failure with Ronconi, partly due to the impostor syndrome having started late, partly due to the sense of rigor that I derived from sport. Or the body, or the word. Until 2015, Everything is Ok: I felt that project needed the voice. “The urgency” is never mine, it is that of the project from time to time. I have a lot of dislike for the word “artistic urgency”, in the sense that the urgencies are different.
Don’t overdo it with understatement: the artist has creative urgency. (laughs)
But I want to destroy the rhetoric of genius and inspiration: in the end, there is so much craftsmanship in our work, and this is so beautiful.
Dance today: boundaries that are melting
Where is dance going today?
The question is: where is all the research theater going, that which comes out of the consolidated repertoire. It is moving towards the liquefaction of the boundaries between genres and – good God – it will be magnificent: the term “theatre” will once again define the place and not the genre. Perhaps it is also moving towards a “democratisation” of bodies, towards inclusiveness: you yourself consider its non-canonical. To tell the truth, we are already there, but in Italy we will have a setback: the dance commission established by the government is supporting a vision of the body forged by classical music and stating that, if there are disabled bodies, they should not take the money from culture but from welfare… An incredible step backwards which in the sector we are mobilizing against.
Personal gold medals
For Martha Graham, dance is “the hidden language of the soul”. For her?
I would replace “soul” with “thought”: dancing is a pas de deux between body and thought. Not pure physical expression: thought uses the body to enter space, to create a world.
Is there a common thread in your shows?
I try to take something from one’s life and make it available to anyone. I use the extraordinary nature of a biography and translate it into the extraordinary nature of every existence. And I try to renew myself for the romantic date with the public, different every evening with different people. For me the show is truly a blind date: it can go very well or very badly.
His very personal gold medals?
My dad who is touched by First Love. The evening of the debut of Gli anni (inspired by the novel by Annie Ernaux, ed.), because it is rare to collaborate with the person in your life, who in my case is Marta Ciàppina: a sister.
The future: Catalog and the farewell of Marta Ciàppina
You will have other joint projects.
Yes! Catalogo, which will debut on November 3rd at the Roma Europa festival and will represent Marta’s farewell to the stage. We will reflect on the end of things by looking back at a dancer’s last day in the rehearsal room. We asked Emio Greco, Silvia Gribaudi, Sotterraneo, Francesca Pennini/CollettivO CineticO and Adriana Borriello for short choreographies: I will sew them. Do any mantras guide you in life? (smiles) “Remember that you have to die.” He helps me before entering the scene, as soon as I start to get nervous: “What are you worried about? Remember that you have to die!”. (laughs)
