Paris Opera Junior Ballet

The new cohort of the Paris Opera Junior Ballet will launch its 2026/2027 season at Orsolina28 Art Foundation with a three-week residency. This residency will mark the beginning of the dancers’ artistic journey and provide an inspiring environment in which to embark on the new season, fostering creativity, artistic transmission, and artistic development.

Throughout the residency, the dancers will focus on three works: two repertory pieces by Julian Nicosia and William Forsythe and a new creation by Anna Hop.

“Eternal Rift”, created in 2025 by Julian Nicosia, explores what the choreographer describes as “a quiet divide running through time and skin, unseen but always felt.” The piece unfolds in that suspended space between touch and release, between holding on and letting go. From this tension emerges a new breath, a shared pulse where bodies strive to part yet remain bound by an invisible thread. Through a choreographic language that is both physical and abstract, the work examines connection, detachment and the impermanence of movement. Set to the organic and electronic score by Janiv Oron and Michael Anklin, “Eternal Rift” becomes a landscape of raw emotion, where collective intensity meets the fragility of individual expression.

Created in 1996 by William Forsythe, “The Vertiginous Thrill of Exactitude” is the conclusion of a six-part study on ballet, titled “Six Counter Points”. “Six Counter Points” opens with a scene showing two dancers seated on stage, moving slowly and laboriously with jerky movements without ever losing contact with the floor. “The Vertiginous Thrill of Exactitude” is a joyful and virtuous celebration of the raw physicality of the first piece, transcribed into the codified language and syntax of classical ballet. Balanchine’s spirit is present in this work, whose title is borrowed from a phrase by sociologist Roland Barthes. Forsythe, who dreamed of choreographing a ballet to Franz Schubert’s Ninth Symphony, conceived a lively and precise pas de cinq set to the music’s final four movements.

This residency will also provide the company an opportunity to work with Polish choreographer Anna Hop on her new creation, a piece for seven dancers that will premiere in Paris at the Opera Garnier on January 9, 2027.

This residency is made possible through the support of Chanel, Founding Patron of the Paris Opera Junior Ballet.

Julian Nicosia

Born in Saint-Étienne, France, in 1989, Julian Nicosia first trained in acrobatic rock dance before entering the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Lyon. He joined the Lyon Opera Ballet in 2010, performing works by William Forsythe, Jiří Kylián, Mats Ek, Trisha Brown, Ohad Naharin, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, Maguy Marin and Christian Rizzo, among others.

In 2015, he joined the Dresden Frankfurt Dance Company under Jacopo Godani, becoming Ballet Master two years later. Since 2019, he has pursued his own choreographic path, creating works for major institutions including the Paris Opera, the Finnish National Ballet, Semperoper Dresden, Ballett Dortmund, Tiroler Landestheater, and the St. Gallen Dance Company.

His work is defined by an innovative and deeply collaborative process, shaped by dialogue between dancers and sound. Nicosia’s emerging choreographic voice is both physical and introspective, evolving within the tension between restraint and release, between separation and renewal.

Anna Hop

Anna Hop graduated from The National Ballet School in Warsaw in 2009 with a Diploma in Professional Classical and Contemporary Dance and, since 2009, she has been a dancer with Polish National Ballet.

Anna Hop’s debut as a choreographer was a piece called “In a Raspberry Bush” in 2010 for Polish National Ballet Choreographic Workshop Creations 2. Since then, she has presented her choreographies regularly.

Hop has also directed the opera in Polish Baltic Philharmonic “The Snow White”, composed and conducted by Piotr Staniszewski (2019) and is an author of the choreography for the opera “Haunted Manor”, directed by Natalia Babińska in Opera Nova in Bydgoszcz (2019). Since 2013, she has regularly cooperated with the Educational Program Department of The Grand Theatre – National Opera and Den Norske Opera & Ballett in Oslo, giving workshops and creating performances.

She has worked as a choreographer, movement director and director for operas, movies, drama performances, musicals, music videos, galas, advertisements, the 90th Anniversary of Polish Radio, for New Years Eve galas (2015, 2016, 2017), she choreographed for The National Ballet School in Warsaw and Gdańsk and for Trondheim Katerdaleskole, couple of projects of LEDA4ART, for Il Balletto Castelfranco Veneto. She has also cooperated with DansiT, PRODA Trondheim, Spin Off Forstudium i Dans in Oslo and Den Norske Ballettskole, Theatre Academie in Warsaw, The Royal Ballet School of Antwerp, National Drama Theater in Warsaw.

William Forsythe

Born in New York and trained in Florida with Nolan Dingman and Christa Long, William Forsythe first danced with the Joffrey Ballet, then the Stuttgart Ballet, where he was named resident choreographer in 1976. During the following seven years, he created new works for the Stuttgart ensemble and other ballet companies throughout the world.

In 1984, he began a twenty-year tenure as Director of the Frankfurt Ballet, where he created pieces like “Artifact” (1984), “Impressing the Czar” (1988), “Limb's Theorem” (1990), “The Loss of Small Detail” (1991), “Eidos:Telos” (1995), “Kammer/Kammer” (2000) and “Decreation” (2003).

In 2004, Forsythe created a new, more independent ensemble, The Forsythe Company, which he ran from 2005 to 2015. Among the works produced by this ensemble are “Three Atmospheric Studies” (2005), “Human Writes” (2005), “Heterotopia” (2006), “I Don't Believe in Outer Space” (2008) and “Sider” (2011).

More recently, Forsythe created works for the Paris Opera Ballet, English National Ballet, Boston Ballet, Dance Theatre of Harlem, Scala Ballet Company. Forsythe has also created architectural installations and performances. These “choreographic objects” have been presented worldwide in museums and exhibitions. In collaboration with media specialists and educators, Forsythe has developed new approaches to dance documentation, research, and education.

Core elements of his CD-ROM Improvisation Technologies, “A Tool for the Analytical Dance Eye”, developed with the ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe and first published in 1999, are now accessible online. Forsythe is an Honorary Fellow at the Laban Centre for Movement and Dance in London and holds an Honorary Doctorate from The Juilliard School in New York.

Paris Opera Junior Ballet

In May 2024, the Paris Opera created its Junior Ballet. This company is composed of young artists aged 18 to 23, recruited on two-year professional training contracts. Conceived as an incubator for young talent, the Paris Opera Junior Ballet meets several objectives: diversifying dancers' profiles, supporting their professional integration, strengthening the Paris Opera's outreach through touring and educational activities, and perpetuating the Paris Opera's more than three centuries of artistic excellence.

The Junior Ballet is open to young dancers from all backgrounds, as well as to students of the Paris Opera Ballet School wishing to complete their training. Its repertoire combines classical, neoclassical and contemporary works, offering its dancers a rich artistic experience while bringing the Paris Opera's heritage to audiences in France and abroad. The Junior Ballet benefits from the exceptional support of Chanel and the generous support of Fondation BNP Paribas, Kinoshita Group, GRoW @Annenberg, Fondation Caris and major individual donors.