Giovanni Rotolo

Biography

Italian dancer Giovanni Rotolo (b. 1990, Florence) is one of the Czech National Ballet’s leading men. He began training relatively late, at fourteen, at the Accademia Internazionale Coreutica under Elisabetta Hertel, yet within two years he was winning prizes: third place at the Rieti Danza Festival 2008, bronze for senior contemporary dance at the Settimana Internazionale della Danza (Spoleto 2011) and a World Ballet Competition bronze medal (Orlando 2011). During a summer course in Prague that same year he was spotted by artistic director Petr Zuska and invited to join the Czech National Ballet in August 2011.

His rise through the ranks was swift—demi-soloist in 2013, soloist in 2015 and, at the start of the 2016/17 season, Principal Dancer. At twenty-five he tackled the title role in John Cranko’s Onegin, praised for combining psychological nuance with heroic partnering. Signature classical roles soon followed: Prince Siegfried in Swan Lake, Solor in Javier Torres’s La Bayadère, *Prince Desiré and the Prince of the West in Márcia Haydée’s The Sleeping Beauty, the Nutcracker and the Old Money-lender Scrooge in Vámos’s Christmas version, and the comic tour-de-force Mother Simone in Ashton’s La Fille mal gardée. Cranko’s Romeo and Juliet brought him both Tybalt and *Mercutio—his Tybalt earned a first Thalia Award nomination (2014).

On the contemporary front Rotolo excels in William Forsythe’s vocabulary, dancing both In the Middle Somewhat Elevated and The Second Detail. Jiří Kylián’s masterpieces (Petite Mort, Bella Figura, Gods and Dogs) are also central to his repertory. He originated the title role of Josef K. in Mauro Bigonzetti’s Kafka: The Trial (2018) and created King Shahryar in Bigonzetti’s Scheherazade (2024). February 2025 saw him add Monsieur G. M. in Kenneth MacMillan’s L’Histoire de Manon, confirming his dramatic stature.

Beyond the National Theatre Rotolo is a frequent guest at international galas—in Salzburg, Munich, Stuttgart, Bratislava and elsewhere. At Prague’s 2019 Velvet Ballet Gala he partnered principal ballerina Nikola Márová in Douglas Lee’s Mask Duet. A core member of DEKKADANCERS since 2013, he contributed his own piece A Little Extreme (2018). In 2017 he received the National Theatre Director’s Prize for artists under thirty-five and was short-listed for another Thalia nomination in 2016 for In the Middle Somewhat Elevated. 

Classical repertoire

• Swan Lake – Prince Siegfried (John Cranko)

• La Bayadère – Solor (Javier Torres)

• The Sleeping Beauty – Prince Desiré; Prince of the West; Carabosse (Márcia Haydée)

• The Nutcracker – A Christmas Carol – The Nutcracker; Old Money-lender Scrooge; Arab Dance (Youri Vámos)

• La Fille mal gardée – Colas; Mother Simone (Frederick Ashton)

• Onegin – Onegin (John Cranko)

• Romeo and Juliet – Tybalt; Mercutio; Friar Laurence (John Cranko)

• La Sylphide – Madge (Johan Kobborg)

• Coppélia – Dr Coppélius (Ronald Hynd)

• The Snow Queen – Wolf (Michael Corder)

Contemporary & Neoclassical repertoire

• In the Middle Somewhat Elevated; The Second Detail (William Forsythe)

• Petite Mort; Bella Figura; Gods and Dogs (Jiří Kylián)

• Valmont – Vicomte de Valmont (Libor Vaculík)

• Leonce & Lena – Valerio (Christian Spuck)

• Moving Rooms (Krzysztof Pastor)

• Fly Paper Bird (Marco Goecke)

• Bill (Sharon Eyal) | Artza (Eyal Dadon)

• Handman (Edward Clug)

• Prelude und Liebestod; Puppet (Cayetano Soto)

• A Streetcar Named Desire – Stanley Kowalski (John Neumeier)

• Kafka: The Trial – Josef K. (Mauro Bigonzetti)

• L’Histoire de Manon – Monsieur G. M. (Kenneth MacMillan)

• The Sun-Bearer, Moon-Bearer and Wind-Bearer – Sun-Bearer; Fly (Viktor Konvalinka)

• Scheherazade – King Shahryar; Loyal Courtiers (Mauro Bigonzetti)