The Argentinian Demis Volpi has been appointed director of the Hamburg Ballet

The Argentine dancer and choreographer Demi Volpi39 years old, will take over the direction of the famous Hamburg Ballet, which for fifty-one years directed the no less famous John Neumeier. It was this choreographer of American origin – and German by adoption – who gave shape to a consolidated company based on his works, essentially narrative and with a language that we can well define as neoclassical.

The arrival of Demis Volpi at the Hamburg Ballet marks a revolution in this institution so strongly associated with the name of John Neumeier, whose prestige as a choreographer has transcended all boundaries.

Volpi stated in his first press conference: “As artistic director of the Hamburg Ballet I hope to be able to offer the audience and the company new artistic impulses and present choreographers with different perspectives on dance. But at the same time I want to preserve the tradition and impressive spectrum of John Neumeier’s works.”

“My first season, which I call “Prologue,” is a tribute to the past, a celebration of the present and a look to the future”.

A career full of great goals

Volpi’s career to date is one of highly successful milestones: he created his first narrative ballet for the Stuttgart Ballet in 2013, which was the company’s greatest success in 20 years.

He was then appointed resident choreographer, but from 2006 to today he has been invited to recreate classical pieces and create contemporary works by numerous companies: including the American Ballet Theater and the National Dance Company of Mexico and more closely to our geography the Ballet of Santiago de Chile and the Sodré National Ballet of Montevideo.

Demis Volpi created more than forty ballets and opera performances and In 2020 he took up his first position as artistic director and choreographer of the Rhine BalletGermany.

It implies his arrival at the more than prestigious Hamburg Ballet a giant step in his career.

Demis Volpi was born in Buenos Aires in 1985 and, in terms of training, he spent only a year at the Instituto Superior de Arte del Teatro Colón because he then entered the National Ballet School of Canada and subsequently the John Cranko School in Stuttgart. Q

But his beginnings in dance were very early: He was just four years old when he began what would become his career.. One of the masters most recognized by Volpi, and who continues to be a very important artistic link for him, is Mario Galizzicurrent director of the Teatro Colón Ballet.

What will your first season in Hamburg be like?

The first season of Volpi opens with a program that is as heterogeneous as it is captivating. Your title is Times are moving and includes four works that cover a span of the last fifty years of dance. First of all, Slowlythe first work he created Pina Bausch for the Wuppertal Danse Theater and this has not occurred again in the last half century.

Then the Variations for two couples by Hans van Manen, a name little known to us, but very influential in European dance and in decisive choreographers such as Jiri Kylian.

There is also a work by Volpi himself, with which he presents himself to the Hamburg public: it is a piece inspired by the American poet Emily Dickinson and above all in his poetry Hope is a feathered thing. Her tone, we anticipate, is a mixture of optimism and melancholy, of pain, joy and desire.

The program ends with a work by the choreographer Justin Peck which has the same title as the program, Time is Running Out. Peck is resident choreographer of the New York City Ballet and this piece, from 1917, delves into the historical ideals of his country, the United States, but also its dark political reality. Times… You dance in sneakers, a somewhat unusual ingredient on the ballet stage.

It’s worth adding that Justin Peck created the wonderful choreography for the second one History of the West Sidewhich he directed Steven Spielberg.

In short: a bold, beautiful and stimulating program from all points of view. How can we not be comforted by the consecration of our compatriot Demis Volpi, an Argentine artist who fully represents the country in which he was born?