The Heinz Bosl Prize, which is awarded every two years to support young dancers, goes this year to two young Ukrainian talents who had to leave their homeland due to the Russian war of aggression. The prize, which the Heinz Bosl Foundation awarded on Sunday at the autumn matinee in the National Theater, is endowed with 2,500 euros each. Varvara Lobanova, who has been studying at the Academia Teatro alla Scala in Milan since September 2022, and Serhii Zharikov were honored. He has been attending the John Cranko School in Stuttgart since spring 2022.
The prize, which Konstanze Vernon and Fred Hoffmann initiated, commemorates the foundation’s namesake, the great dancer Heinz Bosl, who died in 1975 at the age of just 28. This year the jury, in addition to Ivan Liška, chairman of the Heinz Bosl Foundation, consisted of Bettina Wagner-Bergelt (dance manager and curator, former director of the Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch), Gigi Hyatt (Balletschule Hamburg Ballett John Neumeier), Frédéric Olivieri (Ballet School of the Accademia Teatro alla Scala) and Tadeusz Matacz (John Cranko School). By choosing this year’s award winners, the jurors are intended to “set a sign of peace in times of conflict.”
Varvara Lobanova is 19 years old, she comes from Kharkiv. She studied ballet in Kiev until the start of the war. At the awards ceremony on Sunday, the student from the Accademia Teatro alla Scala performed a variation from the first act of “Giselle” in the Jules Perrot version. Serhii Zharikov is also 19 years old and comes from Krasnyj Lyman in the heavily contested Donetsk Oblast in eastern Ukraine. At the age of 15 he started his lessons at the ballet school in Kiev. On February 22, 2022, he won third place in his first dance competition, the “Tanzolymp” in Berlin. Two days later the war began. Thanks to the placement of Youth America Grand Prix, he was able to continue studying at the John Cranko School. For the award ceremony he danced “Sonata” with Kaela Tapper, a pas de deux by Uwe Scholz to music by Sergej Rachmaninoff.
In addition to the Heinz Bosl Prize, the foundation also awards the Konstanze Vernon Prize, also every two years, in memory of its founder and founding director of the Bavarian State Ballet. The first prize winner in 2015 was the Brazilian Ivy Amista, former principal soloist and ballet mistress at the Bavarian State Ballet. Jonah Cook followed in 2017, the first soloist has also since left the State Ballet and is now dancing in Russia. In 2019 the award went to the Italian Jacopo Bellussi, principal soloist at the Hamburg Ballet. Most recently, the Brazilian Rafaelle Queiroz was honored with the 10,000 prize in 2022. She followed Christian Spuck, the former director of the Zurich Ballet, as a solo dancer at the Berlin State Ballet.