Ivan Cavallari is a dancer and

choreographer Choreography is the art of designing sequences of movements of physical bodies (or their depictions) in which Motion (physics), motion or Visual appearance, form or both are specified. ''Choreography'' may also refer to the design itself. A chor ...

and artistic director. He is currently at the head of the artistic direction of Les Grands Ballets Canadiens de Montréal.

Early life

Cavallari was born in

Bolzano, Italy Bolzano ( ; ; or ) is the capital city of South Tyrol (officially the province of Bolzano), Northern Italy. With a population of 108,245, Bolzano is also by far the largest city in South Tyrol and the third largest in historical Tyrol. The g ...

. He received his initial training at the Teatro alla Scala Ballet School in Milan. His Ballet teachers noticed his talent and awarded him a scholarship to the Bolshoi Ballet School in Moscow. He was with the Bolshoi Ballet School from 1981 until 1983. Cavallari danced with the Teatro alla Scala Ballet from 1984 to 1985. In 1986 he joined the Stuttgart Ballet. He became a soloist in 1991, advancing to a principal dancer in 1994 under the successive directions of Marcia Haydée and Reid Anderson.

Career

Cavallari's repertoire included leading roles in choreographies by Balanchine, Ashton, Fokine, Béjart, Tetley, Kylián, Forsythe, van Manen, Scholz, Mac Milan, Neumeier, Thoss, Spuck and Lee. He worked with international artists such as Massimiliano Guerra, Alessandra Ferri, Alina Cojocaru, Tamara Rojo, Johan Kobborg et Adam Cooper. He danced all the leading roles of John Cranko's ballets and staged regularly the latter's works with companies such as the Royal Ballet Covent Garden in London, the Teatro alla Scala Ballet, the Czech National Ballet, Prague, the Hungarian National Ballet in Budapest, the Opera di Roma, the Swedish Royal Ballet, the National Ballet of China, the Universal Ballet in Corea and the West Australian Ballet. Cavallari also staged numerous works by Uwe Scholz. He choreographed ballets for the Stuttgart Ballet, the State Opera Ballet, Hanover, the Lodz State Opera Ballet in Poland, the Mannheim Ballet, the ballet company of the State Opera in Vienna and the State Gallery of Stuttgart which asked him to create a piece for the opening of an exhibition of paintings by Franz Marc. In 2002 he created 'The Last Emperor and I' with the Liaoning Ballet in Schenyang, China and received several rewards.

Artistic director

Cavallari was the artistic director of the

West Australian Ballet West Australian Ballet (WAB) is the state ballet company of Western Australia and is based at the Western Australian Ballet Centre in Maylands, an inner suburb of Perth. Founded in 1952 by Kira Bousloff (formerly of the Ballets Russes), it i ...

Perth Perth () is the list of Australian capital cities, capital city of Western Australia. It is the list of cities in Australia by population, fourth-most-populous city in Australia, with a population of over 2.3 million within Greater Perth . The ...

, the oldest company of Australia (created in 1952 by Kira Abrissokova (Bousloff)), from 2007 till 2012. In 2008, his choreography of ''

The Nutcracker ''The Nutcracker'' (, ), Opus number, Op. 71, is an 1892 two-act classical ballet (conceived as a '; ) by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, set on Christmas Eve at the foot of a Christmas tree in a child's imagination featuring a Nutcracker doll. Th ...

'' received critical acclaim. Karen van Ultzen, in her article titled "Ivan the Wonderful" (2012), discusses Cavallari's achievement while artistic director of the WA Ballet. In 2013 he left Perth for personal reasons. In 2013 he was appointed artistic director of the

Ballet de l'Opéra national du Rhin Ballet () is a type of performance dance that originated during the Italian Renaissance in the fifteenth century and later developed into a concert dance form in France and Russia. It has since become a widespread and highly technical form of ...

Alsace Alsace (, ; ) is a cultural region and a territorial collectivity in the Grand Est administrative region of northeastern France, on the west bank of the upper Rhine, next to Germany and Switzerland. In January 2021, it had a population of 1,9 ...

, France, and in 2017 took up the post with Les Grands Ballets Canadiens de Montréal.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Cavallari, Ivan Italian choreographers Living people Year of birth missing (living people)