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 Dalal
Achcar
Classical
Ballet Aficionado
(Copyright, Lebanese Imprints on the Twentieth Century, Volume I,
Asma Freiha and Viviane Ghanem, 2006)
Internationally renowned as a choreographer, teacher, director and
producer, Dalal Achcar has given most of her professional life to
the development of classical ballet as an art form in Brazil. She
is currently considered the foremost authority on the Brazilian
arts scene.
She was born in Rio de Janeiro, daughter of Dona Josephin Ghosn
Achkar, widely considered to be one of Rio’s most elegant
ladies, and of Anis Achcar. Her parents, keen to give their daughter
a well-rounded education, sent her to Pierre Klimov’s ballet
lesson where she rapidly found classical dance to be her passion.
Wishing to further her career as a ballerina, she then trained in
France, the United States and Great Britain.
Dalal’s greatest influence was the Russian ballet mistress
Maria Makarova, herself trained at the St Petersburg School of Ballet.
Such was the closeness between them that Dalal invited Makarova
to Brazil in the late 1950s. Dalal also shared a long friendship
with another great ballet legend, Dame Margot Fonteyn.
Dalal brought her dream to life by founding and directing the ballet
do Rio de Janeiro; its repertoire was of such high artistic and
technical merit that the dance company found itself in great demand
all over Brazil and went on to conquer European critics and audiences.
Her involvement in the founding of the Teatro Castro Alves Ballet
School (Ebateca) in Salvador, Bahia confirmed her as a pioneer in
the world of dance. The school was the forerunner of the Ballet
Brasileiro da Bahia, the first professional dance company to be
created in that state. Dalal was its director between 1963 and 1972,
building up a strong repertoire of Brazilian inspired full-length
choreographies.
She also taught ballet at the Ballet do Rio do Janeiro and Ballet
Dalal Achcar, which she co-founded with Maria Luisa Noronha and
Marcia Kubitschek in 1972. There she introduced the teaching methods
in practice at the Royal Academy in London, the school Margot Fonteyn
had founded for talented dancers of secondary school age wishing
to become professional dancers.
Dalal’s choreographies have been very well received in Los
Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Hamburg, Stuttgart, Havana, Tokyo,
Santiago and Buenos Aires. They have been danced by such internationally
renowned dancers as Natalia Makarova, Marcia Haydee, Fernando Bujones,
Richard Cragun, Anne Marie de Angelo and Ana Botafogo, to name but
a few.
She has also been responsible for bringing high quality international
dance companies such as London’s Royal Ballet (1973) and the
Paris Opera Ballet (1974) on tour to Brazil.
That classical dance should have become so popular in Brazil is
due in great part to her tireless promotion of this art from the
list of her achievements below. But her interests were by no means
limited to ballet. She helped produce operas, operettas, musicals,
concerts and plays that starred internationally renowned artists,
contributing to her reputation as one of the foremost producers
of her generation. She has worked with the very best artists, teachers,
choreographers, conductors, dancers, actors, singers, directors,
set designers and other professionals in the arts.
Dalal
Achcar’s Productions and Artistic Achievements:
1959: Ballet do Rio de Janeiro tours Brazil with
guest dancers Margot Fonteyn and Michael Sommes.
1960: Dalal Achcar is invited by Margot Fonteyn
to be guest star with the corps de Ballet of the Royal Academy of
Dancing for a Royal Gala performance. She dances with the Ballet
do Rio de Janeiro at the Drury Lane Theatre in London in the presence
of the Royal Family.
That year; Dalal Achcar produces a repertoire with several Brazilian
artists including Manuel Bandeira, Mario de Andrade, Jose de Alencar
and Vinicius de Moraes. The choreographies are by Nina Verchinina,
Dennis Gray, Maryla Gremo and Ismael Guiser with music by Heitor
Villa-Lobos and Claudio Santoro, and costumes and sets by Roberto
Burle Marx and Di Cavalcanti.
1961: The Ballet do Rio de Janeiro wins over audiences
and critics in London with its all-Brazilian repertoire, a first
for London. The company’s foreign tour lasts four months,
taking it to the UK, Spain and Portugal, and the company gives eighty
performances of Zuimaaluti, Morte de um Passaro, O Garatuja and
Concerto Brasileiro. The finale of the company’s European
tour is an Italian televised performance directed by Frederico Fellini.
1962: Co-founder of the Teatro Castro Alves Ballet
School (EBATECA) in Salvador in Bahia.
1963: From Ebateca is born the Ballet Brasileiro
da Bahia, which Dalal Achkar directs until 1972 and for which she
creates a repertoire.
1967: Margot Fonteyn returns to Brazil to perform
with the Ballet do Rio de Janeiro, accompanied by Rudolf Nureyev,
who appears in Brazil for the first time. It also marks the first
time that the stadium of Maracanazinho is used for an artistic event,
and attracts an audience of thirty thousand people. Five performances
are additionally given at the Teatro Minicipal do Rio de Janeiro.
The programme includes the first and second acts of Giselle, Dance
for Four instruments. Metastasis and Le Corsaire.
1968: As director of the Ballet do Rio de Janeiro,
she honors Indira Ghandi’s state visit to Brazil with her
production Dance for Indira at the Palaciodos Arcos theatre in Brasilia.
She produces OS Inconfidentes directed by Flavio Rangel with music
by Chico Buarte and commissions a full-length Cinderella by British
choreographer Norman Thompson.
1969: Introduces the Royal Academy of Dancing teaching
methods in Brazil. Invited to participate at the Stuttgart competition
by Marcia Haydee, she wins the second prize for her choreography
of Pas de Trois.
1970: She directs the Ballet Brasileiro da Bahia’s
tour of Brazil with guest stars Marcia Haydee and Richard Cragun.
She introduces Margot Fonteyn’s Ballet in Education programme
to Brazil.
1971: She co-founds Ballet Dalal Achcar with Maria
Luisa Noronha.
1972: Publishes Danca, the first dance magazine
in Brazil with Marcia Kubitscheck and Maria Luisa Noronha.
1973: She produces the Royal Ballet’s Brazilian
tour, taking performances by the whole corps de ballet (110 dancers)
and guest star Margot Fonteyn to eighty five thousand people across
the country. Experts consider this event the year’s cultural
highlight.
1974: Following on the success of the Royal Ballet’s
tour she produces the Paris Opera Ballet’s Brazilian tour
with its full corps de ballet and numerous principal dancers.
The professional dance course, in co-ordination with the Colegio
Brasileiro de Almeida, is recognized as an educational qualification.
The Ballet do Rio de Janeiro grants 104 ballet scholarships, covering
classical ballet to Jazz dance.
She produces a series of public performances in open-air theatres
in an effort to make dance accessible to wider audience.
She produces a series of public performances in open-air theatres
in an effort to.
She produces the first full-length version of The Nutcracker in
Brazil at the Theatro Municipal do Rio de Janeiro with guest stars
Doreen Wells, Cyrill Atanassof and Alphonse Poulain.
1975: First edition of the Winter Dance Festival
presented by the Ballet do Rio de Janeiro in Brazil’s major
cities. The Amazon Forest, the ballet she co-choreographed with
Sir Frederick Ashton for Margot Fonteyn, is premiered. Other guest
stars include David Wall, Doreen Wells, Georgina Parkinson, Cynthia
Gregory, Desmond Kelly and Ivan Nagy.
The Nutcracker is presented again, at the Sao Caetano theatre with
Doreen Wells and Cyrill Atanassof.
1976: Second edition of the Winter Dance Festival
with a tour introducing Natalia Makarova and Fernando Bujones to
Brazil for the first time. Merle Park and Anthony Dowell of the
Royal Ballet are guest stars of the Ballet do Rio de Janeiro. The
Nutcracker is danced at the Theatro Municipal de Sao Paolo with
the Paris Opera Ballet’s prima ballerina Wilfride Piollet
and Fernando Bujones as guest star. Petropolis is performed at the
Teatro do Palacio das Artes in Belo Horizonte.
1977: Production of the Ballet Gala from Adam Darius’
version of Anne Frank and other choreographies created for the Ballet
do Rio de Janeiro.
1978: Inauguration of the Teatro Goias with Margot
Fonteyn and David Wall in Sylphides. This marks Fonteyn’s
last appearance in Brazil.
A modern production of Romeo and Juliet with music by Alec Costandinos
is staged in front of an audience of 70.000 people on Botafogo beach
in Rio de Janeiro. Produced a five-city tour of Northen Brazil.
1979: She publishes the first edition of her book
Ballet – Art, Technique and Interpretation, which is distributed
throughout Brazil.
Contact:
editorial@onefineart.com
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