Patrick Armand – Landgraf on Dance

“Matinee Ballet Academy”
Ballet Academy of the Vienna State Opera
Vienna State Opera
Vienna, Austria
May 31, 2026

by Ilona Landgraf
Copyright © 2026 by Ilona Landgraf

Excitement permeated the Vienna State Opera as its auditorium filled for the Ballet Academy’s end-of-the-year performance last Sunday. One could feel the jitters of both the young artists and their families and friends who flocked to the performance. Their worries were unfounded; everything went as smoothly as could be wished.

Music by the Strauss family accompanied the opening Presentation, which assembled students of the 1.- 8. class. Its compilation of polkas, marches, gallops, and ball dances choreographed by the Academy’s director, Continue reading “Well on the Way”

Fabien Voranger
Dresden, Germany
October, 2015

Love guided and catalyzed Fabien Voranger’s career in several decisive situations. Just aged ten, being infatuated with a young girl fueled his interest in ballet and led to his audition for the Ballet School of the Paris Opera; and, as it happens, he was accepted. Later, while he was in a scholarship study program at the Royal Ballet School in London his girlfriend was his major support during a reorientation forced by injury. Love almost made him follow a ballerina to Australia. His desire to express his art led to many moves but ultimately to success.
Now, at the age of thirty-four, his love is rooted in Dresden, where Voranger, meanwhile principal of Semperoper Ballet, lives with his wife, opera singer Antigone Papoulkas, and two sons. In early October we met there in a French bistro to talk about his career, his life and his vision of the art of ballet.

Voranger started to take ballet lessons around the age of six together with two of his his three sisters in his home village close to Aix-en-Provence in Southern France. Continue reading ““I am always in love.””