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Lifetime Achievement Award 2027

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29 Oct 2026

For its 55th edition, the Prix de Lausanne is proud to present the Lifetime Achievement Award to Julio Bocca, in recognition of his exceptional career and impact on the dance world.

The ceremony will take place during the Final’s Interlude on Saturday, 6 February 2027. The full event will be live-streamed.

Julio Bocca: A Life Devoted to Dance

It all begins in Buenos Aires. Julio Bocca is four years old when he takes his first dance steps, guided by his mother. He doesn’t know it yet, but that childhood gesture is the first of a journey that will carry him from the stages of South America to the greatest theatres in the world. Trained at the National School of Dance and the ISA of the Teatro Colón, he enters the profession at a very young age: by 1982, he is performing at the Teresa Carreño Foundation and as a principal dancer with the Municipal Theater of Rio de Janeiro.

In 1985, the international stage discovers him. He wins the Gold Medal at the 5th Moscow International Dance Competition, and the following year American Ballet Theatre hires him as a principal dancer. There he becomes one of the most acclaimed artists of his generation, before going on to appear as a guest principal dancer on the world’s greatest stages.

But Julio Bocca is far more than a performer. In 1990, he founded the Ballet Argentino, taking dance well beyond the walls of traditional theatres. From 2010 to 2017, he directed the Sodre in Uruguay. He has organized and directed two international galas bringing together world-renowned dancers, and today he shares his experience as a guest teacher and coach with prestigious companies.

His career has earned him numerous honors: the Benois de la Danse, the Dance Magazine Award (1998), the Kennedy Center Gold Medal, and the Delmira Agustini Medal awarded by the Presidency of Uruguay. In 2026, he received the Lux Ductor Award, recognizing an exceptional career, and was named Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters of France.

Today, Julio Bocca is Artistic Director of the Permanent Ballet Company of the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, the house where he took his first steps as a young artist. From the little boy dancing under his mother’s watchful eye to the master guiding the next generation, the circle is a beautiful one: that of an artist who has never stopped giving back to dance what dance gave him.

Click here to find out more about Julio Bocca’s extraordinary story!

Photos: with courtesy of Julio Bocca.

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