Viktor Banka
Viktor Banka was born in Budapest and studied at the Hungarian Dance Academy from 1999 to 2008. He joined the Hungarian National Ballet in 2008, where he stayed until 2012, dancing ballets by Marius Petipa, Vasilii Vainonen, Frederick Ashton and George Balanchine, among others. He then moved to the Polish National Ballet in 2014. He danced in works by choreographers such as John Cranko, Maurice Béjart, Jiří Kylián and William Forsythe. In addition, Banka has choreographed his own works, including Sans Titre, with which he won first prize at the International Choreographer Competition Bytom in 2006. Banka joined the company of Opera Ballet Vlaanderen in 2016, where he has danced in works by Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, Crystal Pite, Akram Khan, Merce Cunningham, Jan Martens and Alain Platel, among others. For Choreolab, he created At, Into, or Across the Space Separating (2018), Planetarium (2019) and Room Temperature (2020). He also created a short film, The Peace of Wild Things (2021).
Repertoire at OBV
- Pond Way (Merce Cunningham)
- Approximate Sonata 2016 (William Forsythe)
- L’Oiseau de feu (Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui)
- De Notenkraker (Demis Volpi)
- Ten Duets on a Theme of Rescue (Crystal Pite)
- Ma Mère l’Oye (Jeroen Verbruggen)*
- Faust (Jean-Christophe Maillot)
- Les Noces (Edward Clug)
- Ecdysis (Annabelle Lopez Ochoa)*
- Four Schumann Pieces (Hans Van Manen)
- Secus (Ohad Naharin)
- Requiem (Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui)*
- Joy (Alexander Ekman)
- Shahrazad (Jonah Bokaer)*
- Memento Mori (Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui)
- Workwithinwork (William Forsythe)
- Giselle (Akram Khan)
- Dialoog (Jeanne Brabants)
- Fall (Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui)
- Boléro (Maurice Béjart)
- JOY (Alexander Ekman)
- B.R.I.S.A. (Johan Inger)
- Bach Studies (Benjamin Millepied)*
- Cantus Firmus (Jeanne Brabants)
- Mea Culpa (Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui)
- RASA [after La Bayadère] (Daniel Proietto)*
- Le Sacre du printemps (Pina Bausch)
- C(h)oeurs 2022 (Alain Platel)*
- Futur proche (Jan Martens)*
*originated the role