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Patrons
The EADH is delighted to announce our patrons Dr Jane Pritchard MBE (Victoria & Albert Museum, London), Professor John Neumeier (director Hamburg Ballet) and Makhar Vaziev (director, Bolshoi Ballet). We celebrate their life time achievements and contribution to dance history and performance.
Dr Jane Pritchard MBE
A distinguished dance historian, Jane Pritchard is the curator of dance for the V&A-Victoria and Albert Museum, London. With Geoffrey Marsh she curated Diaghilev and the Golden Age of the Ballets Russes, 1909 –1929 for the V&A and she edited the accompanying book. Previously she was archivist for Rambert Dance Company and English National Ballet, and created the Contemporary Dance Trust Archive. Her other exhibitions include Les Ballets 1933 (which toured Britain and was seen at Saratoga, New York), Rambert Dance Company at 75, and A Flash of Light: The Dance Photography of Chris Nash. She curated seasons of dance films for the BFI Southbank, London; the British Council for Japan, the Philippines, and Korea; and the Nureyev Foundation. She lectures widely on dance and has made BBC radio programs on the Ballets Russes and the 19th-century composer for dance Georges Jacobi.
She has contributed to numerous publications including the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, The Annual Register, Dance Chronicle, Dance Research, and The Dancing Times. She was a recipient of a Churchill Travel Fellowship and the Anthony Denning Research Award, and in 2014 was graced with an MBE for her services to the arts. Her most recent book is Anna Pavlova: Twentieth-Century Ballerina.
Professor John Neumeier
American choreographer and ballet director John Neumeier has led the Hamburg Ballet since 1973. He completed his dance studies with Vera Volkova and at the Royal Ballet School and joined the Stuttgart Ballet in 1963. He directed the Frankfurt Ballet from 1969 moving later to Hamburg which has been the centre of his creative work ever since. His ballets have been performed by every major company in the world making him one of leading choreographers of our time. In addition to his creative work, his passion for dance history is well known and his interest in Nijinsky has led to the creation of his own ballets Nijinsky in 2000 and Le Pavillon d’Armidein 2009.
His commitment to education led to the creation of the John Neumeier Foundation (Stiftung John Neumeier) in 2006, where his personal collection of ballet material ranges from the 17th century to the modern day and includes the world’s largest collection of material on Vaslav Nijinsky. His many awards include the Deutscher Tanzpreis 1988, Légion d'honneurin 2003, and the Herbert von Karajan Music Prize 2007. He was the first recipient of the Prix de Lausanne Lifetime Achievement Award in 2017.
Makhar Vaziev
After a distinguished career as a leading dancer at the Maryinsky Theatre, Makhar Vaziev became director of the Maryinsky Ballet in 1995 and led the company until 2008. Under his leadership, the Maryinsky extended its repertoire with productions by many Western choreographers including Neumeier, MacMillan, and Forsythe along mounting a number of reconstructions of Petipa ballets La bayadère, The Sleeping Beauty, and Le réveil de Flore re-staged by Sergei Vikharev using Nikolai Sergeyev’s notebooks of the original choreography notated at the time of creation.
From 2008 to 2016 he was ballet director of La Scala Milan where the reconstruction of Petipa’s Raymondaw as brought to the stage by Vikharev according to original notation. He was awarded the title of Merited Artist of the Russian Federation in 2002 and he has been the director of the Bolshoi Ballet since 2016.