"He is definitely a very talented choreographer, and because of his very solid and lovely knowledge as a classical dancer, the movements he creates for the dancers are really interesting and beautiful to look at."

Violette Verdy for NYCI/NYCB

“The Levaggi-Stella duo has chosen to play with the dialogue that Mapplethorpe's images has always tried to deal with classicism and in particular with the "classical symmetry" of art. In their performance you can find David Lynch's cinema suggestions and themes very close to Levaggi-Stella as that of the comparison between eternity and caducity, good and evil.” Mapplethorpe: bodies become dance bodies, Stefano Bucci, La Lettura -

Il Corriere della Sera (IT)

"It is a rare choreographer who makes you feel you are not waiting for anything to happen, because it already is happening – every moment “a visible action of life”, as Merce Cunningham once put it. In Balletto Teatro di Torino’s New York debut on Tuesday night before a small but enthusiastic audience, 31-year-old Matteo Levaggi proved to possess that elusive talent. For Primo Toccare (First Touch) – the first of two programmes of his work at the Joyce this week – he hedges his bets, allowing himself and his collaborators to stuff the dance with accessory meanings. Art-fashion team Corpicrudi lays the vanitas on thick with a coffin-shaped vitrine that displays first a skull and lilies, then two motionless models standing while staring blankly out at us. The sound score denatures the heavy breathing of lovemaking so it turns into white noise; on the other hand, it blasts churchy organ at such high decibels, you pray for earplugs. Yet Levaggi – a pure product of Turin Ballet whom long-time director Loredana Furno designated resident choreographer at the tender age of 23 – is so engaged in the essential choreographic questions of timing and juxtaposition that the Euro-angst pretensions do not stick. Primo Toccare’s confidence in dance as an end in itself carries us through on a serene pulse of attention." Apollinaire Scherr

"Sublime Gentleness" The Financial Times NYC

“Slippery, Friction, Skipped and Stretch” is a dance that is born open in space and time. Each performance is thus a premiere in which dance and music meet and change, creating situations that are different from time to time. Levaggi here demonstrates his ability to construct, albeit abstractly, a series of pictures of great visual impact.” Sonia Schoonejans - Ballet2000