Bruno Ligore is a PhD candidate in dance studies at Université Côte d’Azur, a freelance ballet teacher and a librarian at the rare books department of the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF) in Paris.

Born in 1986 in Olavarria, Argentina, Bruno is a descendant of Italian, Spanish, and Prussian emigrants who arrived in Buenos Aires between the end of the 19th century and 1909. At the age of six he moved with his family back to Europe, where he was raised in Porto Recanati in the Marche region of central Italy.

Bruno studied ballet and jazz dance at the Salus et Gratia dance school in Ancona, Italy, before then moving to Rome, where he received in 2009 a Bachelor of Arts degree in contemporary dance from the Accademia Nazionale di Danza, particularly applying himself in dance history and theory with Claudia Celi and Francesca Falcone. He danced at the Swedish NorrlandsOperan and practiced Renaissance dance with the Tres Lusores Company. He has also danced with the latter in Hangzhou, China. In 2008, he settled for some months in Buenos Aires, where he studied ballet at the Julio Bocca Foundation.

In 2010, Bruno moved to France, where he performed at Disneyland Paris and began to focus on dance research at Université Paris 8, receiving a Master of Arts degree in dance research in 2014 with a thesis on ancient authors’ status and the rise of archaeological references in dance books between the 18th and 19th centuries: “Visions de la danse gréco-romaine antique. Différents statuts de l’archéologie et des auteurs anciens dans les historiographies (1779 – 1813)” (supervisor: Isabelle Launay).

Bruno received professional training in Baroque dance with the Divertimenty Company between 2014 and 2015, carrying out extensive archive research for Madison U. Sowell, Patrizia Veroli, and for David J. Popalisky.

In 2015, Bruno found the original manuscript of Marie Taglioni’s memoirs in the library of the Musée des Arts décoratifs in Paris (Souvenirs, Gremese, 2017). Since then, he has participated in and co-organized national and international conferences, writing articles and editing works on dance history and theory.

He is a member of AIRDanza and of the aCD. He was also a board member of aCD between 2017 and 2020.

In 2019, Bruno passed the civil service examination and started working as assistant librarian at the Bibliothèque nationale de France, cataloguing rare books from the 16th century to the present, as well as supervising the installation of documents during loans for exhibitions, both in France and abroad. In 2021, he became co-curator, together with Marie Minssieux, of the exhibition “Jean Cortot le peintre des mots.” In 2022, he co-organized with Louise Amazan the first Autumn School on printed books for young scholars (16th to 21st centuries) at the BnF.

In 2021, Bruno collaborated with Pauline Chevalier and Irène Feste in the reconstruction of Jean-Etienne Despréaux’s quadrilles, also dancing with the Danses au Pas(sé) Company.

After having gradually returned to intense practice after several years of archive and bibliographical research, Bruno obtained the Diplôme d’État de professeur de danse at the Centre national de la danse (2024).

Bruno is currently completing his PhD dissertation “La corporéité archéologique : danser d’après l’antique (1786-1826)” (supervisor: Marina Nordera).