Classical Ballet Aficionado
(Copyright, Lebanese Imprints on the Twentieth Century, Volume I, Asma Freiha and Viviane Ghanem, 2006)

Internationally renowned as a choreographer, teacher, director and producer, Dalal Achcar has given most of her professional life to the development of classical ballet as an art form in Brazil. She is currently considered the foremost authority on the Brazilian arts scene.

She was born in Rio de Janeiro, daughter of Dona Josephin Ghosn Achkar, widely considered to be one of Rio’s most elegant ladies, and of Anis Achcar. Her parents, keen to give their daughter a well-rounded education, sent her to Pierre Klimov’s ballet lesson where she rapidly found classical dance to be her passion. Wishing to further her career as a ballerina, she then trained in France, the United States and Great Britain.

Dalal’s greatest influence was the Russian ballet mistress Maria Makarova, herself trained at the St Petersburg School of Ballet. Such was the closeness between them that Dalal invited Makarova to Brazil in the late 1950s. Dalal also shared a long friendship with another great ballet legend, Dame Margot Fonteyn.

Dalal brought her dream to life by founding and directing the ballet do Rio de Janeiro; its repertoire was of such high artistic and technical merit that the dance company found itself in great demand all over Brazil and went on to conquer European critics and audiences.

Her involvement in the founding of the Teatro Castro Alves Ballet School (Ebateca) in Salvador, Bahia confirmed her as a pioneer in the world of dance. The school was the forerunner of the Ballet Brasileiro da Bahia, the first professional dance company to be created in that state. Dalal was its director between 1963 and 1972, building up a strong repertoire of Brazilian inspired full-length choreographies.

She also taught ballet at the Ballet do Rio do Janeiro and Ballet Dalal Achcar, which she co-founded with Maria Luisa Noronha and Marcia Kubitschek in 1972. There she introduced the teaching methods in practice at the Royal Academy in London, the school Margot Fonteyn had founded for talented dancers of secondary school age wishing to become professional dancers.
Dalal’s choreographies have been very well received in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Hamburg, Stuttgart, Havana, Tokyo, Santiago and Buenos Aires. They have been danced by such internationally renowned dancers as Natalia Makarova, Marcia Haydee, Fernando Bujones, Richard Cragun, Anne Marie de Angelo and Ana Botafogo, to name but a few.

She has also been responsible for bringing high quality international dance companies such as London’s Royal Ballet (1973) and the Paris Opera Ballet (1974) on tour to Brazil.

That classical dance should have become so popular in Brazil is due in great part to her tireless promotion of this art from the list of her achievements below. But her interests were by no means limited to ballet. She helped produce operas, operettas, musicals, concerts and plays that starred internationally renowned artists, contributing to her reputation as one of the foremost producers of her generation. She has worked with the very best artists, teachers, choreographers, conductors, dancers, actors, singers, directors, set designers and other professionals in the arts.

Dalal Achcar’s Productions and Artistic Achievements:

1959: Ballet do Rio de Janeiro tours Brazil with guest dancers Margot Fonteyn and Michael Sommes.

1960: Dalal Achcar is invited by Margot Fonteyn to be guest star with the corps de Ballet of the Royal Academy of Dancing for a Royal Gala performance. She dances with the Ballet do Rio de Janeiro at the Drury Lane Theatre in London in the presence of the Royal Family.

That year; Dalal Achcar produces a repertoire with several Brazilian artists including Manuel Bandeira, Mario de Andrade, Jose de Alencar and Vinicius de Moraes. The choreographies are by Nina Verchinina, Dennis Gray, Maryla Gremo and Ismael Guiser with music by Heitor Villa-Lobos and Claudio Santoro, and costumes and sets by Roberto Burle Marx and Di Cavalcanti.

1961: The Ballet do Rio de Janeiro wins over audiences and critics in London with its all-Brazilian repertoire, a first for London. The company’s foreign tour lasts four months, taking it to the UK, Spain and Portugal, and the company gives eighty performances of Zuimaaluti, Morte de um Passaro, O Garatuja and Concerto Brasileiro. The finale of the company’s European tour is an Italian televised performance directed by Frederico Fellini.

1962: Co-founder of the Teatro Castro Alves Ballet School (EBATECA) in Salvador in Bahia.

1963: From Ebateca is born the Ballet Brasileiro da Bahia, which Dalal Achkar directs until 1972 and for which she creates a repertoire.

1967: Margot Fonteyn returns to Brazil to perform with the Ballet do Rio de Janeiro, accompanied by Rudolf Nureyev, who appears in Brazil for the first time. It also marks the first time that the stadium of Maracanazinho is used for an artistic event, and attracts an audience of thirty thousand people. Five performances are additionally given at the Teatro Minicipal do Rio de Janeiro. The programme includes the first and second acts of Giselle, Dance for Four instruments. Metastasis and Le Corsaire.

1968: As director of the Ballet do Rio de Janeiro, she honors Indira Ghandi’s state visit to Brazil with her production Dance for Indira at the Palaciodos Arcos theatre in Brasilia.
She produces OS Inconfidentes directed by Flavio Rangel with music by Chico Buarte and commissions a full-length Cinderella by British choreographer Norman Thompson.

1969: Introduces the Royal Academy of Dancing teaching methods in Brazil. Invited to participate at the Stuttgart competition by Marcia Haydee, she wins the second prize for her choreography of Pas de Trois.

1970: She directs the Ballet Brasileiro da Bahia’s tour of Brazil with guest stars Marcia Haydee and Richard Cragun. She introduces Margot Fonteyn’s Ballet in Education programme to Brazil.

1971: She co-founds Ballet Dalal Achcar with Maria Luisa Noronha.

1972: Publishes Danca, the first dance magazine in Brazil with Marcia Kubitscheck and Maria Luisa Noronha.

1973: She produces the Royal Ballet’s Brazilian tour, taking performances by the whole corps de ballet (110 dancers) and guest star Margot Fonteyn to eighty five thousand people across the country. Experts consider this event the year’s cultural highlight.

1974: Following on the success of the Royal Ballet’s tour she produces the Paris Opera Ballet’s Brazilian tour with its full corps de ballet and numerous principal dancers.

The professional dance course, in co-ordination with the Colegio Brasileiro de Almeida, is recognized as an educational qualification.

The Ballet do Rio de Janeiro grants 104 ballet scholarships, covering classical ballet to Jazz dance.

She produces a series of public performances in open-air theatres in an effort to make dance accessible to wider audience.

She produces a series of public performances in open-air theatres in an effort to.

She produces the first full-length version of The Nutcracker in Brazil at the Theatro Municipal do Rio de Janeiro with guest stars Doreen Wells, Cyrill Atanassof and Alphonse Poulain.

1975: First edition of the Winter Dance Festival presented by the Ballet do Rio de Janeiro in Brazil’s major cities. The Amazon Forest, the ballet she co-choreographed with Sir Frederick Ashton for Margot Fonteyn, is premiered. Other guest stars include David Wall, Doreen Wells, Georgina Parkinson, Cynthia Gregory, Desmond Kelly and Ivan Nagy.

The Nutcracker is presented again, at the Sao Caetano theatre with Doreen Wells and Cyrill Atanassof.

1976: Second edition of the Winter Dance Festival with a tour introducing Natalia Makarova and Fernando Bujones to Brazil for the first time. Merle Park and Anthony Dowell of the Royal Ballet are guest stars of the Ballet do Rio de Janeiro. The Nutcracker is danced at the Theatro Municipal de Sao Paolo with the Paris Opera Ballet’s prima ballerina Wilfride Piollet and Fernando Bujones as guest star. Petropolis is performed at the Teatro do Palacio das Artes in Belo Horizonte.

1977: Production of the Ballet Gala from Adam Darius’ version of Anne Frank and other choreographies created for the Ballet do Rio de Janeiro.

1978: Inauguration of the Teatro Goias with Margot Fonteyn and David Wall in Sylphides. This marks Fonteyn’s last appearance in Brazil.

A modern production of Romeo and Juliet with music by Alec Costandinos is staged in front of an audience of 70.000 people on Botafogo beach in Rio de Janeiro. Produced a five-city tour of Northen Brazil.

1979: She publishes the first edition of her book Ballet – Art, Technique and Interpretation, which is distributed throughout Brazil.

1980: Achcar produced Brazilian classics, creating Floresta Amazônica on Villa-Lobos music and featuring Gabriela, with author Jorge Amado, Caribé, Edu Lobo and choreographer Gilberto Motta.

1986: Achcar organized the II International Dance Festival in Rio de Janeiro and lectured on "The Latin American Ballet and its Development" at the II Latin American Conference of Experts on Ballet, in Caracas.

She was the artistic Director of the Ballet do Theatro Municipal do Rio de Janeiro, and twice president of the Fundação Theatro Municipal. She arranged the first performances in Brazil of international companies, including the Royal Ballet, the Ballet de l´Opéra de Paris, and the American Ballet Theater. She founded the Association of Friends of Teatro Municipal, and developed the ´Education with Art` program at the Municipal, with music, opera and ballet performances accompanied by teaching materials; the performances were seen by thousands of students from Rio de Janeiro schools. She organized dance shows in the city parks to introduce the mass public to ballet. In association with Funarte, she inaugurated the Memory Series, preparing biographies of artists that made up the history of music, opera and dance at the Theatro Municipal; in 2013 50 books have been published.

2003: Achcar created the Companhia Jovem El Paso, which premiered in 2004 the show Superbacana: Dançando a Tropicália. Later the company changed its name to Companhia Jovem de Ballet do Rio de Janeiro. The company performs at the Theatro Municipal do Rio de Janeiro and tours Brazil with new dances by choreographers Eric Frederic, Vassili Sulich and Luis Arrieta.

Achcar developed several other choreographic works, among which are The Nutcracker, Don Quijote, Abelard and Heloise, and Something Special, staged in several international centers such as Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Hamburg, Stuttgart, Tokyo, La Habana and Santiago de Chile, with artists such as Natalia Makarova, Marcia Haydée and Fernando Bujones.

She has published several articles and books, among which are: Jornal da Dança (1972), Ballet – Arte, Técnica e Interpretação (A technical and didactic book – 1979), Ballet – Uma Arte, (1998), A Cultura no Terceiro Mundo – ABL (1999) and Istanbul – A Fascinating City (Guide of Istanbul, 2011)