International Dance Day
April 29, 2010
In 1982 the International Dance Committee of the International Theatre Institute, UNESCO, created International Dance Day. This celebration is held every year on April 29th to honor the birthday of Jean-Georges Noverre (1727-1810), the creator of modern ballet.
Every year a message from a well-known dance personality is circulated throughout the world. The intention of International Dance Day and the Message is to unite the field of Dance by celebrating this art form and reveling in its universality, to cross all political, cultural and ethnic barriers and bring people together in peace and friendship with a common language.
The International Dance Committee of ITI collaborates with World Dance Alliance and the International Dance Council to promote this event.
2010 International Dance Day Message
by Julio Bocca
Bocca will deliver his address on April 30, 2010 at a celebration at the UNESCO headquarters in Paris.
Dance is discipline, work, teaching, communication. With it we save on words that perhaps others would not understand and, instead, we establish a universal language familiar to everyone. It gives us pleasure, it makes us free and it comforts us from the impossibility we humans have to fly like birds, bringing us closer to heaven, to the sacred, to the infinite.
It is a sublime art, different each time, so much like making love that at the end of each performance it leaves our heart beating very hard and looking forward to the next time.
English translation by Marcia De La Garza (Original in Spanish)
Biography
Julio Bocca (born March 6, 1967) is one of the most celebrated ballet dancers of 20th century and arguably one of the most important Argentine dancers of all time. Born in the Munro neighborhood of the Greater Buenos Aires, Bocca started ballet lessons at the age of four. At the age of seven, he entered the National School of Dance from where he quickly advanced to the Teatro Colón's Advanced Arts Institute within one year.
A prodigiously gifted youngster, Bocca joined the Chamber Ballet Company at the Colón Theatre in 1981 where he performed as a soloist at the Colón in a production directed by Flemming Flindt. In 1985, he won the Gold Medal at the International Ballet Competition in Moscow and was invited to join the American Ballet Theatre by Mikhail Baryshnikov.
In 1990 Bocca established the Ballet Argentino and continues to serve as the artistic director.
Previous International Dance Day Celebrations: