ISMAEL IVO
Ismael Ivo
Born in São Paulo, Brazil, Ismael Ivo studied acting and dance there, winning an award as best solo dancer in 1979, 1981, and 1982. In 1983 he accepted an invitation from Alvin Ailey to move to New York, where he became a member Alvin Ailey Dance Center. From 1985 to 1996 Ivo lived in Berlin. He collaborated closely with Johann Kresnik, the German Dance Theatre choreograph and Ushiu Amagatsu, the Japanese director and choreograph of the world famous Sankai Juku ensemble.
Ivo has made guest appearances all over the world with his numerous solo performances. In 1992 he went on tour with Apocalypse, accompanied by the Japanese pianist Takashi Kako. Labyrintos, his first group choreography, was premiered at the Theaterhaus Stuttgart early in 1993. Ivo's collaboration with Johann Kresnik include Phoenix, 1985,Mars (Theater Basel and later Schauspielhaus Hamburg), Francis Bacon, which was acclaimed as the Dance Theatre success story of 1994, and most recently Othello in 1995. The later two productions were subsequently performed in many countries around the globe.
In 1994 Ivo worked with George Tabori in Leibzig on Schoenberg's operaMoses und Aaron. For more than ten years he had been the artistic director of the International Tanzwochen Wien festival in Vienna. To mark the start of the 1996/1997 season, he was appointed Dance Theatre director at the Deutsches Nationaltheater in Weimar, where he produced The Brief History of Hell in 1997,Artaud 1997, Kuss im Rinnstein´, directed by Marcio Aurelio, ´98, Michelangelo, coproduced with Schaubühne Berlin and directed by George Tabori in 1998. At the opening of the Cultural Capital of Europe Weimar in 1999 Mephisto, based on the text Faust from Goethe, also collaborated with the Brazilian director Marcio Aurelio. In 1998/1999 he also directed and choreographed Medea-Material from Heiner Müller, which combined actors and dancers, a solo evening for female dancer, Ariadne, a group piece inspired on three short stories of Garcia Marquez, The Funeral of the Big Mama, and a new solo piece for himself, Dionysos.
The partnership between dancer Márcia Haydée and Ivo included Aura, a choreography they both realized for the ballet of Theatro Municipal, Rio de Janeiro. This homage to Miles Davis and Alvin Ailey was premiered in October 2000. For Wiener Stadthalle, Vienna, they created a piece inspired on the music of Heitor Villa-Lobos and Shakespeare’s The Tempest, Floresta Do Amazonas, premiered in December 2000. In April 2001, they realized a ballet for a classical company, the Ankara State Ballet, Medea Again.
With Yoshi Oida as director and Koffi Koko as dance partner Ivo worked on Saint Genet, a piece about the French writer Jean Genet, realized in collaboration with Theaterhaus Stuttgart, House of World Culture, Berlin and City Theater Rouen, France and Teatro Comunale, Ferrara, premiered in March 2001.
Under the directorship of George Tabori, Márcia Haydée and Ivo developed a new form of performance in a play without words, Ödipus after Sophokles. The premiere was in September 2001 in Berliner Ensemble, Berlin, which produced the piece together with Theaterhaus Stuttgart. In May 2002 Ivo created a new duo together with Màrcia Haydée, “M.-like Callas”, a homage to the famous opera singer, as well to his college as one of the most famous female dancers, which was called once “The Callas of the Dance” by international press. In the same month he followed an invitation by Carolyn Carlson to her “SoloMen” project at the Venice Biennale: his new solo evening “Mapplethorpe” premiered in Venice in 2002.In 2005, Ivo was awarded the prestigious Time Out Award at the Barbican in London for “The Maids” as “the most outstanding performance of the year”. He was appointed as director of the Venice Biennale's Dance section in 2005.