His professional trajectory showed him capable of flight. Now, at 40 and the height of his career, Julio Bocca is walking off stage. He retires from the boards towards the end of this year to let his imagination take flight in a new role.
Starting next year, he will be spending his time “directing the Argentinian Ballet, selecting a repertoire based not just on academic grounds; one that will always be interesting and appealing to spectators of all kinds.” He will also stop watching his weight and relax other demands that his current working life makes on him.
Angeline Montoya, a French journalist living in Argentina and author of La vida en danza (Life in dance), a biography of Julio Bocca put together over seven years, told MYRIADES 1 that “he became a popular idol, a very strange phenomenon for a classical ballet dancer. Rudolf Nureyev and Mijaíl Barishnikov achieved a similar popularity, but they were helped in this by circumstances unrelated to their talent: their defection from the Soviet Union, Nureyev’s extravagant lifestyle and Barashnikov’s courtship with Hollywood. Bocca knew how to surround himself with individuals who would make him a star of the people. The rest he achieved simply by dancing.”
The life of this dancer has been one of constant struggle. From Spain, where he was on his last tour, Julio talked to MYRIADES 1 about his unsettled childhood, going “from one school to another” until he had no choice but to give up secondary school altogether. “I don’t want that to happen to the kids who are starting out now. If someone thinks that taking up dancing – or any kind of artistic activity – is incompatible with an education at school, they clearly don’t know what they are talking about, or they’re still living in the stone age.” When he retires from the stage, he will be concentrating on the creation of a comprehensive school that will allow pupils to combine dance studies with regular primary and secondary education. “We’re working on it; and it’s what I’ll be spending most of my time and energy on once I retire,” he says.
Julio always wanted ballet to be an art form of the people. “Ever since I started out on my career, I wanted ballet to be something that went beyond what I had learned. My ambition was to open it up to more than just the people who could afford to pay for a – generally expensive – ticket. I also wanted to attract all those other people who had never seen ballet either out of prejudice or because they had no interest in the subject matter on offer.” For him, the idea that ballet and opera are for a privileged élite was always phony.
“Even though I came from a simple background, I was used to hearing opera ever since I was a boy, on the radio or at the theatre where my grandfather used to take me. I also went with him to the ballet. The only élite he belonged to was that of the workers. When I started to dance, I felt under an obligation to deliver all that beauty and artistry into the hands of as many people as I could, including those traditionally excluded.”
Montoya comments, on the same subject: “A lot of people still think that to go to the Colón Theatre you have to wear a dinner jacket or an evening gown. Julio wanted wanted to take ballet out of the Colón so that everybody could enjoy it.” Bocca, who became the lead dancer with the American Ballet, set classical dance to music by Pink Floyd, Lito Vitale and the humour of Les Luthiers. Just as the avant-garde’s intent was to banish art from museum walls, Julio Bocca’s is to free ballet from exclusive spaces: for two free performances that he gave in Buenos Aires, over 45,000 people turned at Palermo Park in 2004 and another 20,000 at River Plate football stadium in 2000. “I did a lot of open air shows, for hundreds of thousands of people, where the spectators were a real mix. People who were very well-off together with humble folk and their little children. Each saw and understood what they wanted to see or understand.”
As an artist who seeks to break down stereotypes, “I’m always looking for new things, risky ones if at all possible. I ask someone to take care of the choreography and then I let myself  go. What you see is the result. Some people like it, others can’t stand it... There are people who only want to see me dancing Swan Lake or Giselle. For me, that’s unthinkable. Everything is dance: more academic or less academic, with plots or without them. If something has music, it can be danced.” Bocca brings ballet closer not only to the public, but also to those who want to practise it. This philosophy led him to create the Argentinian Ballet in 1990, “with the aim – still unchanged – of showing the world our youngest talent.” Under his direction they have given performances in every continent in the world and continue to do so at more than 150 shows a year. Montoya relates how “until Guerra and Urlezaga appeared on the scene, no-one was putting money into ballet in Argentina like Julio Bocca. He set up a school for dance and musical comedy and the Julio Bocca Foundation, which awards study grants to people who want to dance. All these enterprising moves mean work for dozens of people, but also for dancers whose only previous option was the Colón Ballet, which invites applicants to compete for places every ten or fifteen years.” Elements artistic and social walk hand-in-hand, if you let them. The dancer’s biographer claims that “like all other art, dance can be an instrument that includes people. Artistic creation gives people a more active image of themselves. The act of creating is a statement that one is worth something, that one has something to give to the world.” Julio’s success in this respect has not been without its limitations. He explains: “Without a consistent political activity, little or nothing can be achieved by dance or any other artistic pursuit. All we can do is bring consolation and diversion to the distressing times the world is going through today. We don’t claim to be revolutionaries. We just bring a little beauty and style into a world that is ever more cruel and merciless.”