M° Gianfranco Pace is the Technical Director of ITKA. His role is to maintain a high standard of practice and teaching within the school, promote ITKA technical programs externally, and oversee the activities of the Technical Committee.

Gianfranco Pace was born on 15 June 1969 and began studying Chen-style Taijiquan when he was little more than a teenager, under the guidance of M. Shi Rong Hua, who taught him according to a family-style tradition. After approximately 10 years, in 1998, he travelled to China to investigate training methods and meet masters considered to be of a high level. At the invitation of his teacher, in 2001 he went to study in Chenjiagou, the birthplace of Taijiquan, living at the home of M. Chen Xiao Xing. After returning from Chenjiagou, he studied with several masters of the 19th generation of the Chen family. In 2003, the ITKA, International Taijiquan Kung Fu Association, was formally established, proposing a complete technical program based on tradition but shaped by his own practice experience. He was invited to teach in several countries for his application skills in Taijiquan, both in Europe and in many Italian cities, as well as in Spain, Germany, and England. For five consecutive years, he taught in New York and held seminars in Florida, Chile, Mexico, the Dominican Republic, and Argentina, where he established an ITKA branch for South America. From 2015 to 2017, he was appointed by the Italian Wu Shu Kung Fu Federation as the Master responsible for the Taijiquan sector.

In 2016, he held a major international seminar together with M. Yang Jun, great-grandson of Yang Cheng Fu and direct descendant of Yang Luchan, founder of the Yang style, the most widely practiced style in the world. The theme of the seminar was “Chen style meets Yang style”.

In 2017, another important meeting between two styles took place: the Chen style, represented by him, and the Wu style, represented by Master Zhou ZhongFu, fifth-generation practitioner of the Shanghai Wu style. The event was held in Genoa in March.

Finally, after already being invited in May 2016 by the Wang Academy—one of the most respected schools in Europe—for his martial skills, to teach alongside the esteemed Master Dr. Wang Zhi Xiang, in July 2017, at the latter’s invitation, Master Pace also taught in China, where he was highly regarded by several Chinese masters for the high level of his Taijiquan. On this occasion, ITKA was recognized as a high-level school which, through its own structured and effective system developed by Master Pace, promotes Chen-style Taijiquan around the world.

It should be emphasized that, despite having been invited several times by various representatives of the 19th generation of the Chen style to represent their schools, Master Pace has never accepted these responsibilities in order to continue developing his own work, the “ITKA” system: a high-level traditional and innovative method, recognized for years in numerous countries around the world and, as mentioned above, from this year also in China.