Victor Caixeta
Victor Caixeta, from Brazil, had never danced a single step when, at the age of twelve, he was the only child chosen from his school – “purely because of my appearance” – for an outreach project by the local ballet school in his hometown of Uberlândia. Before that, on the advice of his mother, he’d tried out every sport imaginable in order to get rid of his surplus energy. “But I always got bored of them in no time.” In the case of ballet, however, that was totally different. “Initially, I did wonder what I was doing among all those girls in pink tights, but I could sense the challenge. Almost immediately, I realised you’ll never ever attain perfection in ballet. At the start, I wasn’t very flexible and my feet weren’t ideal, so when my teacher told me I’d have to do the equivalent of seven years’ work in three years’ time, I thought straight away, ‘challenge accepted!’”
Eighteen scholarships
In the following years, his teacher prepared him for several ballet competitions, and when Victor took part in the Prix de Lausanne at the age of fifteen, no fewer than eighteen prestigious schools offered him a scholarship. “It was incredible. I hadn’t even got through to the final, but apparently they saw something in me, just as the ballet teacher had in Brazil a few years earlier.” Partly because of its good regular academic curriculum, Victor opted for Canada’s National Ballet School, but he was so unhappy there that briefly he even considered stopping dancing. Luckily, a Brazilian teacher in Berlin persuaded him to give it another shot in the city’s Staatliche Ballettschule, and that turned out to be a bullseye. “I had a great time in Berlin. I had fantastic teachers, made lots of friends and was really challenged by, for instance, the opportunity of dancing works by choreographers like Wayne McGregor, Nacho Duato and Marco Goecke.”
Floored at the Bolshoi Theatre
In 2017, Victor took part in the prestigious International Ballet Competition in Moscow, and shortly before he was due to dance his second variation in the Bolshoi Theatre, he received a visit in his dressing room. And from no less a person than Yuri Fateev, artistic director of the Mariinsky Ballet in St Petersburg, who offered a contract out of the blue to Victor, who’d just turned eighteen. “I was so overwhelmed – the offer seemed such an unattainable dream – that I fell over during my second variation, but that didn’t bother Fateev. I was still allowed to go there.”
Mariinsky Ballet
Once in St Petersburg, Victor was ‘bowled over’ by the high standard of the dancers. “Suddenly, I was there in the studio with the stars I’d been following for years.” But soon he was getting solo roles himself, and less than a month after joining the company he was spotted by the legendary ex-dancer and teacher Gennady Selyutsky, who said he’d like to coach him. “My time with him was so special. I was still ‘wet behind the ears’ and he was in his eighties, but you really saw him come alive when we were at work. We rehearsed together for months, without taking a single day off.” It led to main roles for Victor in The Sleeping Beauty, The Nutcracker, Romeo and Juliet and other classics, as well as in ballets by choreographers like Hans van Manen, Wayne McGregor and Twyla Tharp. “Without this experience, I would never have become the artist I am today. I grew so much with the Mariinsky, and besides that I really love the Russian culture and the enormous passion for dance that exists in Russia.”
Russian invasion
In January 2022, Victor received the news that he would be promoted to ‘first soloist’ of the Mariinsky Ballet, as of the 2022/2023 season. One month later, Russia invaded Ukraine. “We got hardly any information. It was soon practically impossible to communicate with my family and all our bank cards were blocked.” Victor realised almost immediately that staying was not an option for him and that he’d have to move fast. Hastily taking stock of the possibilities, his eye fell on Dutch National Ballet. “Because even though it’s a very different company, with regard to repertoire it’s still close to the Mariinsky, and I’d also heard lots of good things about the artistic director Ted Brandsen.”
New energy
Victor counts himself very lucky that he joined Dutch National Ballet at the same time as Olga Smirnova, in March 2022. “Even though her situation, as a Russian, is many times harsher, she’s given me a huge amount of support.” Shortly after their arrival, the two of them danced Raymonda together, and since then Victor says there have been many other highlights as well. Like his first Swan Lake in April 2023, for example, after which he was promoted to principal, half an hour before his twenty-fourth birthday. Other absolute highlights were the Hans van Manen Festival, in June 2022 – “I’d already danced a couple of his ballets, but never rehearsed with the ‘one and only’ in the studio” – and working with William Forsythe in June 2023. “We’d just finished a long series of performances of Swan Lake and we were all tired, but Forsythe’s enormous drive injected us with new energy, as it were.”
Text: Astrid van Leeuwen
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CV
Place of birth:
Uberlândia (Brazil)
With Dutch National Ballet:
2022-2024
Career with Dutch National Ballet:
Principal (2023), soloist (2022)
Previously danced with:
Mariinsky Ballet (St. Petersburg, Russia)
Training:
Staatliche Ballettschule Berlin (Germany)
Awards:
- 2023: Nominated for Dancer of the Year Award, Critics’ Choice Dance Europe
- 2017: International Ballet Competition in Moscow, third prize
- 2017: Tanzolymp Berlin, first prize in the category classical dance
- 2017: European Ballet Grand Prix in Vienna, first prize
- 2017: Alexander von Swaine Preis, Berlin
- 2015: Youth America Grand Prix, New York, finalist
- 2014: Youth America Grand Prix, New York, finalist