Annabelle Lopez Ochoa

Originally from Leuven, Belgium, she trained at the Royal Ballet School of Flanders. After a performing career spanning more than 12 years with several European companies, including as a soloist with Scapino Ballet Rotterdam, she decided in 2003 to devote herself entirely to choreography. From that time onward, her work attracted international critical acclaim, with reviewers praising the emergence of a singular and daring voice in the choreographic landscape.

Since then, she has created over a hundred works for major companies worldwide. Her repertoire, diverse in both format and style, includes conceptual pieces as well as large-scale narrative works. She has distinguished herself as one of the few choreographers excelling in narrative ballet, with landmark creations such as A Streetcar Named Desire (2012), Broken Wings (2016), Frida (2020), and Coco Chanel (2023), celebrated for their dramatic power and accessibility to broad audiences.

A versatile artist, she also develops projects in theatre, opera, musical theatre, and dance film. Between 2005 and 2015, she was part of the dance-theatre collective Die Fantasten, with which she co-directed several productions presented at numerous theatres and festivals across the Netherlands. She has also collaborated with visual arts and fashion, notably on a project for designers Viktor & Rolf at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.

During the 2020–2021 pandemic, she explored new forms of remote creation and produced a notable series of dance films, actively contributing to the rise of this medium. Deeply committed to teaching, she is regularly invited to lead and direct international training programs, including at Jacob’s Pillow, where she also served as program director. Since the 2025–2026 season, she has been an artist in residence at Ballett Dortmund.