Sylvano Bussotti was an Italian composer of contemporary classical music, also a painter, set and costume designer, opera director and manager, writer and academic teacher. His compositions employ graphic notation, which has often created special problems of interpretation. He was known as a composer for the stage. His first opera was La Passion selon Sade, premiered in Palermo in 1965. Later operas and ballets were premiered at the Teatro Comunale di Firenze, Teatro Lirico di Milano, Teatro Regio di Torino and Piccola Scala di Milano, among others. He was artistic director of La Fenice in Venice, the Puccini Festival and the music section of the Venice Biennale. He taught internationally, for a decade at the Fiesole School of Music. He is regarded as a leading composer of Italy's avantgarde, and a Renaissance man with many talents who combined the arts expressively.
Alessandra Ferri OMRI is an Italian prima ballerina. She danced with the Royal Ballet (1980–1984), American Ballet Theatre (1985–2007) and La Scala Theatre Ballet (1992–2007) and as an international guest artist, before temporally retiring on 10 August 2007, aged 44, then returning in 2013. She was eventually granted the rank of prima ballerina assoluta.
Robert Neil Hardwick is a British-born Finnish theatre and TV director and writer. He was raised in Teversal, near Nottingham. His father was a teacher, and Neil Hardwick has described himself as "a second generation non-miner".
Carolyn Carlson is an American born French nationalized contemporary dance choreographer, performer, and poet. She is of Finnish descent.
Itä-Pasila (Finnish), Östra Böle (Swedish) is a neighborhood in the Pasila subdivision of Helsinki, Finland.
Finnish National Ballet is a professional ballet company at the Finnish National Opera, in Helsinki, Finland. The company was founded in 1922 and it currently employs 73 dancers. It is the only Finnish company that regularly performs a classical ballet repertoire. The current director Madeleine Onne started with the company in 2018, after Kenneth Greve, (2008–2018), Dinna Bjørn (2001–2008) and Jorma Uotinen (1992–2001).
Giovanni Galzerani was an Italian choreographer, ballet dancer, and composer who was active in major theatres throughout Italy from 1808 to 1853. He was born in Porto Azzurro on the Isle of Elba and began his education in Gaeta where his father was the military commandant at the time. At his father's wish he enrolled in the Collegio della Nunziatella in Naples to train for a military career, remaining there until the age of 17. While at the college, he also studied ballroom dancing with Ferdinando Gioia, the brother of the celebrated dancer and choreographer Gaetano Gioia, and became one of his best pupils. After his father's death in 1806, Galzerani abandoned preparations for a military career and dedicated himself entirely to the ballet, first as a dancer and then as a choreographer. He also composed the music for some of his ballets, such as Il pericolo which premiered in 1818 at the Teatro Regio in Turin.
Jorma Elo is a contemporary choreographer.
Tero Kalevi Saarinen is a Finnish dance artist and choreographer, and Artistic Director of Tero Saarinen Company. Saarinen has made an international career as both a dancer and choreographer.
The Tokyo Ballet is a classical ballet company, based in Tokyo, Japan, founded in 1964.
Giorgio Madia is an Italian choreographer and stage director active in the fields of opera, ballet, operetta, musical and event.
Mikki Kunttu is a Finnish lighting and set designer. Kunttu has worked mainly in the field of dance, but also theatre, popular music and opera, as well as television and industrial arts. At the age of 18 Kunttu began designing lightings for Kotka City Theatre. He graduated in 1995 from the Media and Arts programme of Tampere University of Applied Sciences, specializing in lighting and sound design. After graduating he proceeded to work at Tampere Concert Hall.
Francesco Ventriglia is an Italian ballet dancer, choreographer and artistic director. In 2010 he was appointed as Europe's youngest artistic director by the Florence Opera House at the age of 32, where he held the role as artistic director and principal choreographer for Maggio Danza until 2013. In 2014, he was named the artistic director of the Royal New Zealand Ballet until June 2017, and from January 2018, as adjunct artistic director of the National Ballet of Uruguay, Ballet Nacional Sodre alongside Igor Yebra. Ventriglia is also a choreographer of classical and contemporary ballet, having works performed internationally by companies such as the La Scala Ballet, Arena di Verona, Bolshoi Theatre, the Mariinsky Ballet, Grande Theatre du Geneve, Royal New Zealand Ballet, Ballet Nacional Sodre and at the Venice Biannale.
Krzysztof Pastor is a Polish dancer, choreographer and ballet director. He was resident choreographer with the Dutch National Ballet in Amsterdam from 2003 to 2017, director of the Polish National Ballet in Teatr Wielki – Polish National Opera in Warsaw since 2009 and at the same time from 2011 until 2020 was the artistic director of the ballet of the Lithuanian National Opera and Ballet Theatre in Vilnius.
Lorca Massine is an American choreographer and dancer born in New York on July 25, 1944, to choreographer Léonide Massine, a Russian immigrant. He studied dance with his father, Victor Gsovsky, Asaf Messerer and Anatole Wilzac. Over his career, Lorca Massine has collaborated with world-acclaimed choreographers such as Balanchine, Béjart, and his father, Léonide Massine,.
Doris Laine was an internationally recognised Finnish ballet dancer, dance choreographer and pedagog, who later held several prominent leadership positions in dance and the wider performing arts. She is regarded as one of the most influential people in Finnish dance.
Irina Hudova was a Finnish ballerina and dance pedagogue, notable for having served as the Director of the Finnish National Ballet as well as the first Professor of Dance in Finland.
Lauri Asko Antero Sarkola is a Finnish actor and theater manager. He studied at the Svenska Teaterskolan from 1963 to 1966. He had a long career at the Swedish-speaking Lilla Teatern, where he first starred in 1967–1974 and served as deputy director from 1972 to 1974. In 1974–1981 and 1984–1997, Sarkola was the director of Lilla Teatern. From 1982 to 1985, Sarkola worked as a professor at the Helsinki Theatre Academy. He directed the Helsinki City Theatre from 1998 to 2016.
Lucia Nifontova-Saurama, better known as Lucia Nifontova, was a Finnish ballet dancer and Finland’s first prima ballerina assoluta. In the 1930s and 40s she and her partner Arvo Martikainen were the leading dancers in Finland and among the foremost artists in Finnish ballet of all time periods. Her performances of Odette and Odile in Swan Lake were especially noted for their artistic accomplishment and emotional interpretation.
