Renowned artist Valentina Turcu is responsible for the choreography, direction, dramaturgy, and musical concept of the dramatic ballet "Madame Bovary," which will premiere on August 2nd on the open stage at Prokurative.
VALENTINA TURCU
Valentina Turcu, as usual, doesn't narrate but physically experiences every situation, emotion, and event. She doesn't translate a historical novel into a series of ballet numbers; instead, she seeks a true inspiration, that deep, driving impulse from within that propels the protagonists out of the rational cultivation and calculation of social life, connecting and separating them, colliding and scattering them within their small, body-limited universe. (Maja Đurinović)
Kyoto Prize 2015 nominee Valentina Turcu is an outstanding dance artist and choreographer. Her creative oeuvre includes over 140 ballet, theatre, and opera productions, and her ballets tour worldwide. Valentina Turcu’s works have been described by critics as sensational, emotional experiences, visionary ideas, and unique sensual poetry, and her sense of theatre is subtle and strong, fresh, innovative, and surprising. Intense expression with statement, precision, and unique style in her highly aesthetic choreographic writings. She found an inexhaustible source of choreographic inspiration in various grand narratives of our time. Because of her proverbial and musical perfectionism, her powerful impact, and her integrity, she can rightly be admired as a prolific artist who reinvented the great genre of dramatic ballet. Her ethical cosmopolitanism represents with utmost conviction the deepest psychological states and the eternal dilemmas of human civilization.
Born in Croatia, she is trained in classical ballet. She studied in Rudra and danced at Béjart Ballet Lausanne, where she worked with the great master Maurice Béjart.
Since 1998, she has choreographed various productions – from classical narrative to avant-garde, from large-scale productions to single choreographed pieces for gala concerts, and directed several theatre classics. Carmen, Romeo and Juliet, Peer Gynt, Master and Margarita, Anna Karenina, Dangerous Liaisons, La Bohème, The Tempest, Death in Venice, Bodas de Sangre, A Streetcar Named Desire, Eugene Onegin, Don Juan, La Dame aux Caméllias and Madame Bovary are just some of the outstanding productions from her extensive body of work.
She creates not only as a choreographer but also as a director, dramaturge, or author of a musical concept, which has earned her numerous awards. Among them, the bronze medal of the World Dance Competition 2002 in Nagoya, Japan, and the Award for the most innovative choreography of the Slovenian Dance Competition 2007. In 2008, she was awarded by the Slovenian Association of Ballet Artists for her work in ballet, opera, and drama. The jury stated: "By mastering dance-theatrical expressions and using profound interpretations, she reaches the highest level of stage maturity and awareness. She enriches our stages with her charismatic personality. Her body expression simply opens new dimensions in the understanding of dance art.”
Turcu is the recipient of the Slovenian State Prize for her outstanding achievements as a director and choreographer for the production of Sergei Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet at the Slovenian National Theatre Maribor in 2012, which was also performed with great success in Riga in 2014, Vilnius in 2015 and Helsinki in 2022. The ballet Eugene Onegin, performed at the Slovenian National Theatre Maribor in 2016, received the Glazer Award 2017 and was chosen by Dance Europe Magazine as the creator of one of the five best world premieres in Europe in 2016.
In recent years, Valentina Turcu has worked with the Augsburg Theatre in Germany, the Latvian National Ballet, the National Ballet Brno, the Opéra-Théâtre de Metz Métropole in France, the Croatian National Theatre Split, and the Croatian National Theatre in Zagreb. She has also collaborated with the Festival Ljubljana and the Dubrovnik Summer Festival, for whose works she was awarded the prestigious Orlando Award in 2016. In 2023, she created her Romeo and Juliet for the Romanian National Opera and Ballet Cluj and was awarded the highest professional award – “Maestra Choreographer”. Recently, the Slovenian National Ballet Maribor danced her piece at the 2023 Summer Festival on Budapest's Margits Island.
Turcu, considered the creator of a new milestone in the quality and expression of classical ballet today, won the 2018 Prešeren Fund Award, the highest recognition for artists in Slovenia. Her outstanding creation of the ballet spectacle Death in Venice was declared the best production of 2018 by Dance Europe Magazine in London. She received the highest Croatian Actor Award for the best choreographer, and the performance was named the best ballet production in Croatia. in 2020, she created a brand new creation, La Dame aux Caméllias, for the National Ballet Brno at the famous Janáček Theatre to great acclaim. In 2022, she created a provocative ballet, Madame Bovary, on music by Chopin and Phillip Glass, for the Croatian National Ballet Zagreb and the Slovenian National Ballet Maribor.
Recently, she also collaborated with Anastasia Matvienko. Her work Romeo and Juliet was performed in Tokyo in 2023 with Haruo Niyama. Her latest creation, Hamlet, premiered in June 2024 in a production by the Swiss Béjart Ballet Lausanne, achieving sensational success with both the audience and critics.