Michal Štípa
Principal Dancer
Michal Štípa was born in Brno. Between 1990 and 1998 he studied at the Dance Conservatory in Brno. In 1998 he joined the ballet of the National Theatre in Brno, where in 2000 he was appointed a soloist. He danced in a variety of roles, primarily from the classical repertoire: the Prince in Swan Lake, Colas in Wary In Vain, Romeo in the ballet Romeo and Juliet, the Prince in The Nutcracker. Noble appearance, streamline figure, graceful port de bras rank Štípa in the “danseur noble” category. Alongside technical excellence and natural dramatic talent, these physical preconditions dominate his Solor in the ballet La Bayadére. In the 2001–2002 season he made guest appearances at the Slovak National Theatre in Bratislava (The Nutcracker, Notre-Dame de Paris) and in the 2003–2004 season started to perform as a guest at the National Theatre Ballet in Prague. He introduced himself to audiences as the Prince in Swan Lake, Jean de Brienne in Raymonda, the Prince in The Nutcracker andAlbert in Giselle. Since the 2004–2005 season he has been a soloist and in 2009 became a principal dancer of the National Theatre Ballet in Prague. He has alternately appeared as a guest at Liberec’s F. X. Šalda Theatre (in the ballets Manon, Andersen and La dame aux camélias), at the National Moravian-Silesian Theatre Ostrava (in Carmen, Sleeping Beauty, The Swan Lake and Giselle), at the Janáček Theatre in Brno (in the ballets Spartacus, Swan Lake, Romeo and Juliet, La Bayadére, The Nutcracker and the musical-dance performance Edith Piaf), at the Slovak National Theatre in Bratislava (Notre-Dame de Paris and The Nutcracker), as well as at the State Opera Prague (Cinderella and Swan Lake) and at the Metropolitan Hall in Taiwan in the ballet The Lady of the Camellias and Giselle(choreography: Allen Yu).
He has also danced the Prince in the ballet The Nutcracker – A Christmas Carol, Romeo in Romeo and Juliett and Othello in the ballet of the same name by the choreographer Youri Vàmos, Lensky in Onegin by John Cranko, Prince Siegfried in Kenneth Greve´s Swan Lake, Romeo in Romeo and Juliet, Escamillio in Mats Ek´s Carmen, Father in Jean-Christophe Maillot´s Cinderella, Princ Desiré in Javier Torres´s The Sleeping Beauty, in the mixed bill Ballet Mania as Conrad in Le Corsaire (Pas de trois) and in George Balanchine’s famous choreography Tchaikovsky,Pas de deux, in Petr Zuska’s Maria’s Dream. He has also danced in Conny Janssen’s choreography Álbum Familiar within the mixed bill Family Album, in Jiří Kylián’s choreographies Sinfonietta and Petite Mort, in Petr Zuska´s A Little Extreme, 1st symphony D major, Empty Title and the lead role in his ballet BREL – VYSOTSKY – KRYL / Solo for Three, for which he received the Thalia Award 2007 or in William Forsythe´s In The Middle Somewhat Elkevated, part of triple bill Americana III.
For the 1998–1999 season he received the Philip Morris Flower Award for best classical dance talent of the year and three years later the main Philips Morris Flower Award for best classical dancer. In 2000 he took part in the Competition of Dance Artists of the CzechRepublic and Slovakia in Brno, where he won second prize. In 2004 he received a Thalia Award nomination for the role of Solor in La Bayadére and in the same year he also won the Audience Prize. In March 2005 he won the Thalia Award for his rendition of Albert in the ballet Giselle. Michal Štípa has participated in tours of Germany, Austria, Spain, Finland, Italy, Portugal, Malta, Japan, Russia, Taiwan and China.
