Julio Bocca to receive the Prix de Lausanne Lifetime Achievement Award
The Argentine star, who chaired the Prix jury in 2016 and now directs the ballet company of Buenos Aires’s Teatro Colón, will receive the award during the 2027 Finals on 6 February
The Prix de Lausanne will present its Lifetime Achievement Award to Julio Bocca at the competition’s 55th edition. The ceremony will take place during the interlude of the Finals on Saturday 6 February 2027, and the whole event will be streamed live.
Bocca joins a list of recipients that includes John Neumeier, Wayne McGregor, Carlos Acosta, Sylvie Guillem and Alessandra Ferri – his partner for two decades at American Ballet Theatre. Since 2017 the Prix has used the award to highlight careers likely to inspire both the young candidates and the professionals who gather around the competition each year.
A long association with Lausanne
Bocca’s ties with the Prix go back more than a decade. He sat on the jury in 2014, was its president in 2016, returned as a jury member in 2019, and taught classical class at the competition in 2023 and 2024. Asked in 2016 what advice he would give the candidates, he replied: “Dance with your heart and don’t come to compete. We miss artists on stage…”
Reflecting on his relationship with the competition, Bocca says:
I came to the Prix de Lausanne many times and I also had the chance to be President of the jury. It is an opportunity for me to help the dancers and to give my point of view about dance and about the way I would love to see a dancer perform.
It is important for this competition to continue to grow up and change because it represents such a huge opportunity for many students around the world. I thank the organisation for inviting me and also for organising a preselection in South America. It is a way to continue to learn and a chance to meet other jury members, Directors, teachers as well as seeing the new generation of dancers. I enjoy being there. I really appreciate it and hope it will continue for many more editions.
The 2027 competition
The 55th Prix de Lausanne runs from 31 January to 7 February 2027 at the Théâtre de Beaulieu in Lausanne. The Finals, including the Lifetime Achievement Award ceremony, are on Saturday 6 February, followed on Sunday 7 February by Rising Stars, a performance showcasing the competition’s young talent.
From Buenos Aires to Moscow
Bocca was four when he took his first dance steps, taught by his mother, a dancer and teacher. A child prodigy, he trained at Argentina’s National School of Dance and at the Instituto Superior de Arte of the Teatro Colón, and turned professional in his teens, dancing with the Teresa Carreño Foundation in Caracas and as a principal at the Theatro Municipal in Rio de Janeiro.
Looking back on those early years in a 2016 interview for the Prix, he recalled that he danced his first performance, aged four, with a dummy in his mouth – and that he fell over on stage at the Moscow competition he went on to win.
That victory came in 1985, when he took the gold medal at the 5th Moscow International Ballet Competition. The following year American Ballet Theatre engaged him as a principal, and he stayed for 20 years, becoming one of the most acclaimed dancers of his generation and appearing as a guest with the world’s leading companies. He said farewell to ABT in June 2006 as Des Grieux in Kenneth MacMillan‘s Manon, opposite Ferri. Asked to name his favourite roles, he chose Romeo and Basilio.
Director, teacher and coach
In 1990 Bocca founded Ballet Argentino, taking dance far beyond the walls of traditional theatres – in Argentina he performed to vast crowds in stadiums and open-air venues, and his final performance, in December 2007 beside the Obelisco in Buenos Aires, drew an audience estimated at 300,000. He has described his greatest achievement as making ballet “very popular in Argentina”.
From 2010 to 2017 he was artistic director of the Ballet Nacional Sodre in Uruguay. He has also organised and directed two international galas bringing together leading dancers, and is in constant demand as a guest teacher and coach.
His honours include the Benois de la Danse (in the award’s first edition, in 1992), the Dance Magazine Award (1998), the Kennedy Center Gold Medal in the Arts (2008) and the Delmira Agustini Medal, presented by the President of Uruguay. In 2026 he received the Lux Ductor Award in recognition of an exceptional career, and France named him Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters, having made him a Knight of the order in 2015.
Back at the Colón
Since November 2024 Bocca has been director of the Ballet Estable del Teatro Colón, the resident company of the house where he trained as a boy. The Prix sees a satisfying circle in that return, describing him as an artist ‘who has never stopped giving back to dance what dance gave him’.
