Vlastimil Harapes

Biography

Ballet master of the National Theatre Ballet He is a graduate of the Dance Conservatoire in Prague (1965). In 1966 he became a member and in 1971 a soloist of the National Theatre Ballet. He had a residency at the A. J. Vaganova Dance Institute in St. Petersburg (1968). In 1987–1989 he was a soloist and the artistic director of the Laterna magika ballet. Between 1990 and 2002 he held the position of Artistic Director of the National Theatre Ballet in Prague. During his more than twenty years of active work, he danced pivotal male roles in virtually all the titles of the National Theatre Ballet’s repertoire. Especially worthy of mention are the Prince in Swan Lake, The Sleeping Beauty, The Nutcracker and Cinderella, title roles in Macbeth, Faust, Faun’s Afternoon, Spartacus, Tales of Hoffmann and Odysseus, Romeo and Mercucio in Romeo and Juliet, Orion in Sylvia, Albert in Giselle, Colin in Wary in Vain, Basilo in Don Quixote, the Czarevitch in The Firebird, Adam in Creation of the World, Escamillo and Don José in Passion and many others. He was a permanent guest of Deutsche Oper am Rhein in Düsseldorf (Swan Lake, Orpheus, Calevala, The Spirit of the Rose, Sphinx etc). He also gave guest performances in Frankfurt, in the Scottish Royal Ballet, in Rome’s Dance Academy and Opera, in the Tokyo City Ballet, as well as on stages in France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Austria, Finland, Spain, Switzerland, Greece, Cuba, Australia and other countries. Vlastimil Harapes is also a successful film and theatre actor. He has interpreted the main roles in a number of films, among them Markéta Lazarová, Den pro mou lásku (The Day for My Love), Panna a netvor (The Beauty and the Beast), Operace mé dcery (My Daughter’s Operation), Wolfgang and Bolero. He has performed in the theatre plays The Tempest and Masquerade and appeared in the TV productions Jak vytrhnout velrybě stoličku (How to Extract a Whale’s Molar), Jak dostat tatínka do polepšovny (How to Get Dad into a Penitentiary), Dary hadího krále (Presents of the Snake King), Anynka and the Devil and a host of other programmes. In 1984–1986 he won the TV audience competition for best dancer of the year, while in 1985 he was the absolute winner in all competition branches. In the National Theatre he worked on the choreography and production of the ballets Cinderella (1994), Swan Lake (1996), Some Like It ... (1994) and Mowgli (1996). He is the co-author of the libretto for the children’s ballet Little Beetles (1992). At the present time, Vlastimil Harapes works as a ballet master of the National Theatre Ballet, the State Theatre in Košice and is a visiting pedagogue at the Dance Academy in Rome. Furthermore, he also acts in theatre plays (J. Murrell – Last Summer, J. B. Poquelin Moliére – L’Ecole des Femmes, P. Merimée – Le Carosse du Saint-Sacrament, Gustav Skála – I Don’t See It Black).