Dalal Achcar

Dalal Achcar is a renowned Brazilian ballet director, choreographer, and cultural leader whose career has spanned more than six decades. Since 1961, she has served as Producer, President, and Director of the Associação de Ballet do Rio de Janeiro, shaping the Brazilian ballet scene and promoting international cultural exchange. From 1968 to 1971, she was Artistic Director and Choreographer of the Ballet Brasileiro da Bahia, and in 1971 she introduced the Royal Academy of Dance syllabus to Brazil, serving as the RAD’s official representative in the country until 1981.

She has held some of the most prestigious cultural positions in Brazil, including Ballet Director and President of Fundação Theatro Municipal do Rio de Janeiro across three mandates between 1981 and 2002. In 1984, she founded the Association of Friends of The Municipal Theatre, further strengthening Brazil’s cultural institutions. As a producer, she has brought world-class ballet to Brazilian audiences, organizing landmark tours such as The Royal Ballet in 1973, Opéra de Paris in 1974, and the American Ballet Theatre in 1997.

Her creative work includes original productions and reinterpretations of classics, such as A Floresta Amazônica created for Margot Fonteyn, O Quebra-Nozes, Don Quixote, Something Special for Natalia Makarova, Com Amor, Cardinal, Suite Brasileira, Romeu e Julieta set to pop music, Cinderela set to disco music, Sonho de uma Noite de Carnaval, Branca de Neve, and Cartas de Amor. In 1992, she conceived and directed the global event Concert for Planet Earth, filmed and broadcast by the BBC, and later directed opera with Johann Strauss’s The Fledermaus in 2002.

Throughout her career, she has choreographed for or collaborated with many of the greatest dancers and choreographers of the 20th and 21st centuries, including Frederick Ashton, Margot Fonteyn, Rudolf Nureyev, Natalia Makarova, Antony Dowell, Cynthia Gregory, Ivan Nagy, Marcia Haydée, Richard Cragun, Fernando Bujones, Jorge Donn, Julio Bocca, Marcelo Gomes, Igor Zelensky, Tetsuya Kumakawa, Dorothée Gilbert, among many others.

She is also the author of influential works on ballet, including Ballet Arte – Técnica e Interpretação (1981, with six editions published until 1998) and Ballet, uma Arte (1989). Her expertise has been shared through lectures in Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, Panamá, and Caracas, including at the Iberian American Conference of Ballet Experts under the auspices of the Organização dos Estados Americanos.

Her contributions to the arts have been recognized internationally with numerous honors, including the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the United Kingdom, the title of Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et Lettres in France, the Ordem do Rio Branco in Brazil, and her induction as a member of the Academia Brasileira de Arte.