Time Does Not Exist: WINNDance is giving great dancers a second act
For dancers over 40, retirement is close. A new company, WINNDance, is challenging that assumption, and it’s launching with a roster of names that most companies would kill for.
The company made its world premiere at this year’s Venice Biennale Dance festival, appropriately in a programme artistic director Wayne McGregor had titled Time Does Not Exist. The first production is Scirocco, built around two works: Death in Venice, choreographed by Imre & Marne van Opstal, Omar Román De Jesús and Rainer Behr, and Bridge of Sighs, conceived and choreographed by John Neumeier, with costumes by Boss.
A name with a manifesto built in
WINNDance was born from an idea by Slava Tutukin and Marijn Rademaker, and is based in Stuttgart. Its name carries a double meaning: “Winn” nods to “When, If Not Now” – a paraphrase of the well-known Rabbi Hillel maxim – while also echoing the English “win.” In fact, the company calls its supporters WINNers. The dancers are all over 40.
The opening cast is impressive: Diana Vishneva, Silvia Azzoni, Oleksandr Ryabko, Polina Semionova, Mara Galeazzi, Igone de Jongh, Kayoko Everhart, Silas Henriksen, Alexander Jones, Nora Kimball, Gil Roman, Giulia Tonelli and Ivan Urban.
A kind of limbo
Russian étoile Diana Vishneva, who turned 50 on 16 July, is candid about the problem the company is trying to solve:
Entire generations of dancers find themselves in a kind of limbo precisely when they are at the height of their expressive and technical powers. Continuing to share our art often becomes an individual struggle: not everyone wants to, or is able to, dedicate themselves to teaching, choreography or administrative roles.
The era in which Giselle or Swan Lake were danced well past forty is now over as today’s standards demand different physical abilities, increasingly defining ballet as an art form reserved for the young. The creation of this company could not have come at a more opportune moment.
Silvia Azzoni, 52, a longtime soloist with Hamburg Ballet under Neumeier – and part of the Scirocco cast alongside her husband, 48-year-old Ukrainian dancer Oleksandr Ryabko – recalls:
We’ve had some really funny moments during rehearsals. I remember when Omar – in order to explain to me, Diana and Gil Roman what he had in mind – threw himself onto his knees. We laughed and stopped him: “Oh no, we can’t do that jump!
Vishneva adds:
By bringing together seniors with closely related training, Marijn and his team have created an environment in which we can perform independently, without the relentless demands of a traditional schedule. Knowing each other so well lets us work in harmony almost instantly, needing very little time to synchronise.
The Alessandra Ferri effect
Much of the thinking behind WINNDance traces back to Alessandra Ferri, who returned to the stage at 50 after a six-year break, and pointedly did not want to revisit Juliet or Carmen. Instead, she inspired choreographers to create roles for dancers her own age: Léa in Chéri for Martha Clarke (2013), Eleonora Duse in Duse for Neumeier (2015), and Virginia Woolf in Woolf Works and the Mother in AfteRite, both for McGregor (2015 and 2018). Her career became proof that time can give as much as it takes away.
Balancing experience with succession
The company’s founders are careful to frame this as more than nostalgia. The idea isn’t to promote keeping dancers in a company who can only perform a narrow slice of the repertoire and therefore blocking the natural turnover of talent, but to support and valorise experience and artistic maturity.
What winning means
If “Winn” nods to Hillel’s question of when, it also nods to simply winning. Asked what the biggest victory is, Silvia Azzoni answers:
Expressing our personality, giving everything we have without holding back, while keeping a sense of the collective. We’re all principal dancers, used to coming onstage and carrying the company. This time we have to take care to leave the same space for others.
On tour through 2027
After its Venice premiere, Scirocco embarks on an international tour that will carry it across Europe and on to Japan.
Confirmed dates so far include the German premiere in Bonn (26–27 September 2026), performances in Baden-Baden as part of the festival “The World of John Neumeier” (3–4 October), a stop in Ludwigshafen (24 October), the Dutch premiere in The Hague (18–19 December), the Japanese premiere at Tokyo’s Shinjuku Bunka Center (19–23 February 2027), and performances at the Hamburg State Opera as part of the Hamburg Ballet Days festival (23–24 March 2027).
Graham Spicer, aka ‘Gramilano’, is a writer, director and photographer based in Milan. He was a regular columnist for Opera Now magazine and wrote for the BBC until transferring to Italy. His articles have appeared in various publications from Woman’s Weekly to Gay Times, and he wrote the Danza in Italia column for Dancing Times magazine. Graham was the historical advisor on Codice Carla, the 2023 documentary on Carla Fracci.
Graham also works as a dance photographer, and his photos have appeared in many books, theatre programmes, and magazines, including Dancing Times, Dance Spirit and Ballet2000, as well as all the major Italian newspapers.
He is a member of the Dance Section of The Critics’ Circle.
