Choreographer and ballet director Micha van Hoecke.
The Belgian dancer, choreographer and director Micha van Hoecke died this Saturday, July 7, in a hospital in the Tuscan city of Massa, at the age of 77, the victim of a cancerous process that had been diagnosed a short time ago. Van Hoecke remained active as long as he could, and lately he participated in the revival of Maurice Béjart's work
L'heure exquise
for the dancer Alessandra Ferri in Ravenna, and which he knew
better
than anyone, having been part of the premiere with Carla Fracci in 1998, almost a quarter of a century ago.
Micha van Hoecke was born in Brussels on July 22, 1944 to a Russian mother and a Belgian father;
Before starting his career as a dancer, although already a student at various Parisian schools, he made his debut as an actor in action films such as
Les Loup dans la bergerie
(1960, by Hervé Bromberger, and in which Jean Babilée and Françoise Dorléac also participated);
Samedi soir
(1961, by Yannick Andréi);
and
Le petit garcon de l'ascenseur
(1962, by Pierre Granier-Deferre) where he unleashed his histrionic abilities, which did not go unnoticed.
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As early as 1960 Roland Petit found it in the working rooms of Madame Olga Preobrajenskaia, the mythical teacher from the Imperial Mariinsky Theater in Saint Petersburg.
Micha always said, many years later, that everything, even the smallest detail or comment from her Russian teacher, had been basic and had found her answer later in life and in professional practice.
The fact is that he began to dance with Petit in the Parisian sessions in 1960 and in 1961 Maurice Béjart claimed him for the Ballet del Siglo XX (BSXX) in Brussels precisely because of his powerful histrion.
In 1971 Béjart created for him the role of Petrouschka in
Nijinski, clown de Dios,
and in 1972 he made his first ballet for the students of the Mudra academy,
Les mariés de la tour Eiffel
, an institution that he will direct since 1979.
It is in 1971 when he makes his first ballet for the BSXX,
Le Fou
, based on Gogol with music by Stravinsky and Hadjidakis. Always in Brussels, in 1981 he founded on his own L'Ensemble, a training school for young artists that worked until he decided to move to Italy in 1983 and created choreographies for the Royal Ballet de Wallonie. In 1981, the film director closely linked to the ballet Claude Lelouch commissioned him to choreograph his film
Boléro
, which toured various European festivals. Van Hoecke also worked alongside other famous directors such as Luca Ronconi, Liliana Cavani or Roberto De Simone, being also Riccardo Muti's preferred choreographer for inserting choreographies in his operas.
On March 4, 1981, at the Lope de Vega theater in Seville, the then-called National Classical Ballet premiered
Van Hoecke's
The Sorcerer's Apprentice
, a choreography that that same year was performed at the Real Coliseo Carlos III in San Lorenzo de El Escorial. In 1991 Micha made his debut as an operatic director with
La muda de Portici
en Ravenna, Auber's opera whose leading female role does not sing, but is played by a dancer-mime (Pavlova came to play this role). At the Avignon Festival he created
Antígona 2
(1972, on a score by Theodorakis). For the Ballet of the Community of Madrid he created two ballets:
The ox on the roof
(1996, music by Milhaud) and
Saeta
; a year earlier, in 1995, in Rome he offered
Fellini
(music by Nino Rota), which premiered at the Teatro Constanzo. From the end of the eighties he supported his young group in Castiglioncello, where he also directed his modest but constant summer festival.
From 1999 to 2003 he directed the corps de ballet at the Teatro Massimo in Palermo, where he alternated some repertoire reruns with his own creations, in which it was never difficult to recognize the stylistic influences of Roland Petit and Marice Béjart, what he himself called "the inheritance of my French culture ”, to which he added his rich classical training together with Preobrajenskaia.
In 2002 he choreographed
The Seven Deadly Sins
by Bertolt Brecht with music by Kurt Weill, a work for which he was awarded and praised by critics, as it summarized his theatrical style and his experiences with singing and comedy.
From 2010 to 2014 Micha van Hoecke directed the Rome Opera Ballet, before returning to his usual collaboration with the Ravenna Festival and other major Italian annual events.
Micha van Hoecke is survived by his wife, the Japanese dancer Mike Matsuse, who for decades also became his closest collaborator in both the choreographic and directing fields.
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