Ioannis Mandafounis was born in 1981 in Athens and now lives in Geneva, when, he says «not travelling the world to dance». He studied at the Greek National School of Dance in Athens and continued his studies at the Conservatoire national supérieur in Paris (CNSMDP). Before becoming a freelance choreographer, he was a member of the Gothenburg Opera Ballet, the Nederlands Dans Theater II, and the Forsythe Company (2005-2009).

In parallel, he started creating his own work, in Athens with Lemurius Company (since 2005), in Geneva with Fabrice Mazliah and their Cie Projet 11 (since 2007), and in Frankfurt with May Zarhy and Fabrice Mazliah and their MAMAZA collective (since 2009). Since 2015, Ioannis he is the artistic director of his Geneva-based company Cie Ioannis Mandafounis, inviting various artists to collaborate with him in each project. He has received commissions to create original works for internationally renowned theatre and dance companies, such as the Ballet of the Greek National Opera, the Grand Théâtre de Genève, The National Theater of Greece, Corpus (Royal Danish Ballet), the Lyon Opera Ballet in France, Norrdans Sweden.

Ioannis also teaches improvisation workshops, and classical ballet classes from his specific approach as a Martial Arts (Budo) practitioner. He has been a guest teacher in the most famous dance institutions in Europe.

In 2015, he received the Swiss Dance Award, in the category of Outstanding Male Dancer.

At the FIT Festival, he presented Sing the Positions (2017) an interesting result of his work with dance improvisation tools to music by collaborating with dancer/musician Manon Parent.

< photo Gregory Batardon

@ FIT

Sing the positions
2018 Edition
26.09 – 07.10