Dancers
The dancers of Opera Ballet Vlaanderen are an extremely diverse group, all classically trained. They start each working day with the traditional ballet class, and then go into the studio for the rehearsals of a richly varied repertoire of performances.
Opera Ballet Vlaanderen (OBV) presents opera, ballet, music and dance theatre as living, contemporary art forms. The house focuses on the great works of opera and dance history as well as contemporary creations and forgotten masterpieces to be rediscovered. In 2014, Opera Vlaanderen merged with Ballet Vlaanderen, which was founded in 1969 by Jeanne Brabants. Her successors as artistic director have been respectively Valery Panov, Robert Denvers, Kathryn Bennetts, Assis Carreiro and Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui. Each of them brought their own artistic interpretation of what ballet can mean, but all have been united by a desire for diverse programming. That also typifies the leadership of Jan Vandenhouwe, the current artistic director of Opera Ballet Vlaanderen. Key elements in his ballet programming are a stylistic flexibility ranging from classical ballet to contemporary dance, passing on the legacy of contemporary Flemish dance to a new generation and creating hybrid productions in which opera and ballet are combined. In the coming years, he will be collaborating with three associate artists: Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, Jan Martens and Jermaine Spivey.
