Ivan Cavallari Masterclass

Join Ivan Cavallari, artistic director of Les Grands Ballets Canadiens, for a classical ballet masterclass, available to participants thanks to a partnership between Northrop and James Sewell Ballet. This class is for intermediate/advanced level dancers and will start with a warm up at the barre, followed by center and jumps. 

Free for University of Minnesota students, faculty, and staff. Participants will receive a 50% off discount code for a performance of Les Grands Ballets Canadiens Dancing Beethoven at Northrop Feb 17-18.

James Sewell Ballet, Cowles Center, 528 Hennepin Avenue, Minneapolis, MN, 55403 

Ivan Cavallari 

Born in Bolzano, Italy, in 1964, Ivan Cavallari received his initial training at the Teatro alla Scala Ballet School in Milan. His teachers recognized his talent by awarding him a scholarship to the BolshoiBallet School in Moscow in 1981, where he continued his training until 1983. From 1984 to 1985, he danced with the Scala Ballet School before joining the Stuttgart Ballet in 1986, where he became a soloist and then principal dancer under the successive directorships of Marcia Haydée and Reid Anderson. He danced all the leading roles of John Cranko’s ballets and regularly staged the latter’s works with the Royal Ballet Covent Garden in London, La Scala in Milan, the Czech National Ballet, among many other companies. He also staged numerous works by Uwe Scholz, and choreographed ballets for the Stuttgart Ballet, the State Opera Ballet in Hanover, the Lodz State Opera Ballet in Poland, the Mannheim Ballet, the Vienna State Opera Ballet, the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart and the Liaoning Ballet of China.

From 2007 to 2012, he was the Artistic Director of the West Australian Ballet, the oldest dance company in Australia. In 2013, he was named the Artistic Director of the Ballet de l’Opéra national du Rhin, where he staged such works as Dolly in April 2013, and his own choreographies of Pinocchio in 2014 and The Nutcracker in 2016.

Cavallari was appointed Artistic Director of Les Grands Ballets in 2017. As a choreographer, he created new pieces such as Presto-Detto, Giselle and Romeo & Juliet, bringing the company’s repertoire in a resolutely classical direction while remaining anchored in modernity.