“I don’t like talking stop. I speak as I speak. I speak like that. I’m not screaming. I have this tone so that people listen. You don’t have to shout to listen to you, but you have to pay attention,” he says Julio Adrián Lojo Bocca When news asks him to raise his voice a bit. It is the beginning of a talk that reflects man and exceptional artist.
“I am a very hardworking person, very demanding and humble. A person who likes to do good, who is always more concerned with others than for himself. That he tries to look for new and different things. Curious, who is open, always willing to learn, and that if he is wrong he recognizes him,” he says.
Bocca is the current Stable ballet director of Colón Theater And he is also a teacher invited by the main companies in the world. This year he was already in Stockholm, in the American Ballet and in Korea and the San Francisco Ballet and Vienna awaits him.
When he talks about his strengths, constancy and discipline are first. Also trust. “Although they have done everything, people who trusted me have stuck a knife, I still trust people, perhaps with more steps until I get to trust. My strength is also to believe that things can always be done, that everyone has the same possibility. And respect.”
As for its most difficult aspects, he mentions the demand: “I like everything to go well, that everyone is at the same level. When I see that things can be done and not done, I am more demanding and it gives me angry. Now I try to reassure myself, to know how to put on the situation. Not everyone will be able to do everything right, they will be fast or want that vision that one wants to compensate for not to do so much.
News: Does it do therapy?
Julio Bocca: I did when I was a boy and won the Moscow contest. Suddenly they talked to me, they helped me, they were friends. The love of the people, the press, my head made “Buuu”. It was bad, it was derogatory, quite superb. So my representative, Lino Patalano, recommended a psychologist. I had a long time to make the decision, but I went and served me a lot. I put my feet on the ground and my head instead. He accommodated my new reality. Leaving a middle -class family to be in the world and the 19 go to New York as the first figure of the American Ballet. It was a lot. Then I returned to learn no.
News: Did he return to therapy?
Bocca: Yes, because there was a period that was almost six years without vacations. It was my moment and I wanted to do everything. They call you from the Opera of Paris, of the Royal, of La Scala, of the Bolshoi. Are you going to say no? He had signed contracts two or three years before. But I started not feeling good in the functions, not to enjoy, I ended up empty. At one point I got tired of myself and wanted to leave everything. I reserved almost a month on an island, disconnected from everything. I like the sea, it reassures me, but at ten days I was already wanting to return. There I returned to the same psychologist. I learned to say that not with much difficulty and forced myself to have every year at least two weeks of vacation. And the last time I went to therapy was when I started with the process of my retirement. My last function of Giselle, my last from Don Quixote, Romeo and Julieta, I was doing a closure of each character until reaching the end with the farewell on Avenida 9 de Julio. I enjoyed that function to the fullest, I felt happy, I was smiling to have made the decision to retire in the best of my career. You have to know how to leave because there are young people behind.
News: Do you feel that you left a legacy?
Bocca: I feel that I left an open path, a way of working, a respect. I go to any company in the world and there is a love, a respect, because they know who I am, although many have not seen me dance. Something I left and it is nice to be able to receive that in every place that I am going. It is a respect for my career, for my career, for what I did.
News: Your biggest challenge?
Bocca: Perhaps accepting specific moments like my first knee operation, I didn’t know what was going to happen, if I was going to dance again or not. After the seventh operation I was already used. I knew you can come back.
News: Your greatest achievement?
Bocca: Live of what I chose and love. I have an incredible race, I have filled football stadiums, I have made the ballet popular, I have given millions of possibilities to dancers, choreographers, directors. I still help, I still fight for the dancer, for the dance of good quality. In my personal life too, I am seventeen years ago with a wonderful human being.
News: Do you feel a winner?
Bocca: I didn’t do this to succeed. I did it because I liked to dance, be on stage, transmit sensations. Nor did I seek to be recognized. I wanted dance to be popular, that everyone could see this wonderful thing and choose whether or not they liked.
News: How do you manage your ego with such a race?
Bocca: With the support, education and values of my family. Discipline, respecting and enjoying work. Bringing the moment I returned from Moscow, those values were always. And I was lucky to do what I liked. I put the same love when I danced on a stage with an uneven floor, a football stadium, Luna Park or in the Metropolitan Opera House. The important thing was to dance, be a transmitter of this beautiful art and that people could enjoy.
News: Now it’s time to be in the colon. What implies being the stable ballet director?
Bocca: Close a circle of my career. I started at eight years in the Columbus, here I have had very bad things and wonderful things. I want to achieve, for example, that first Argentine figures who work abroad can also work in this house.
News: With what situation did you find?
Bocca: My feeling is that I entered the past. Wonderful, but there is a whole new world, a new way of dance, a different dynamic, new productions. And I also felt that it is the theater of the people here, it is not everyone’s theater. It occurred to me, for example, to convene plastic artists, such as Renata Schussheim, to work on hand programs. Open, unite these people to be part of the theater. I also incorporated the peripheose. An hour before the function, the people who want to hear a talk to know what they will see. Among that, there is always a dancer, a technician, someone from tailoring, a musician, a director. It is to do the work that one did, that a little disappeared, that the ballet is popular, that it is for everyone.
News: What other objectives are proposed?
Bocca: Carrying the tour ballet, doing more functions – there will be six ballet seasons next year – more contemporary works. The Columbus is one of the few theaters where everything is done, costumes, shoe store, hairdressing, scenery. That must be maintained because it is magical, but try to aggiornar more and modernize.
News: How is your relationship with the dance body?
Bocca: Well there. Neither good nor worse. We are fine, we are getting to know each other. Many know me, they know how they handle me, and others are new. Just four months ago I started working, we will continue to meet.
News: Could they overcome the rispideces they had this year following the work methodology?
Bocca: Yes, we are working from 10 to 5 and we have four hours of trial. Choreographers always ask for six hours to rehearse, that’s why I asked for an hour to get to almost six hours. I also asked for the mandatory class and start at 10 instead of at 11. There are less hours of trials, more weeks are needed to work choreographies. Instead of doing more functions or being able to go on tour, you waste time in more weeks of rehearsals. They are changes to make and let’s see if they want to do it. It is not a matter of forcing anyone, but also they, who chose this profession, put their hearts.
News: What about the retirement of the Columbus dancers?
Bocca: You have to put together something that is good for those who are and for those who come. You have to see how it is done and that it is a transition process for the dancer. A dancer can dance until 45 years old. You have to prepare and accompany them in that transition because life continues and they have the possibility of doing other things.
