Márcia Haydée

Biography

One of the most celebrated prima ballerinas of the second half of the 20th century, Marcia Haydée has also attained recognition as a choreographer and ballet director. An immensely charismatic figure, she has inspired a number of renowned choreographers and served as a model for dancers, while also influencing the development and form of classical ballet.  

Born in Brazil, Marcia Haydée studied with several masters, including the Czech dancer Václav Vlček. At the age of 15, she moved to Europe, where she attended the Royal Ballet School in London, before becoming a member of Le Grand Ballet du Marquis de Cuevas, with which she stayed for four years. In 1961, she joined the Stuttgarter Ballett, where she was named a prima ballerina. The Muse of the company’s director John Cranko, she participated in the creation of the “Stuttgart Ballet Miracle”. The legendary choreographer assigned to Marcia lead roles in virtually all the repertoire works, including Romeo and Juliet, Onegin, The Taming of the Shrew and Carmen. Other roles were created for her by Kenneth MacMillan, John Neumeier, Maurice Béjart, Glen Tetley, Jiří Kylián and other distinguished choreographers.

A truly mesmerising dancer and convincing actor, Marcia Haydée performed with companies all over the world, alongside such towering ballet figures as Rudolf Nureyev, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Jorge Donn and Richard Cragun, who was also her partner beyond the stage. Between 1976 and 1996, she was the artistic director of the Stuttgarter Ballett. In the second half of the 1990s she also helmed Chile’s Ballet de Santiago, the post of whose director she held again from 2003 to the end of 2020.

Currently living in Germany with her husband Günther Schöberle, a yoga teacher, Marcia Haydée regularly  travels around the world to stage her choreographies. She became a choreographer in 1987, when she conceived for the Stuttgarter Ballett an original adaptation of the classical fairy-tale ballet The Sleeping Beauty, which now, following triumphs in Germany, Belgium, Sweden, Chile, South Korea and Canada, has entered the Czech National Ballet’s repertoire. Other acclaimed choreographies of hers include The Firebird, Enas and Giselle and the Willis.

Marcia Haydée has garnered a number of accolades, with the most prestigious being the German Dance Prize, the Vaslav Nijinsky Award, the Brazilian Ordem do Mérito Cultural and the Prix de Lausanne – Lifetime Achievement Award.