Artistic Director of Norwegian National Ballet
Norway
Ingrid Lorentzen will be apart of the Jury for the Grand Finale on April 25th 2025.
After many years as a soloist in the Norwegian National Ballet, Ingrid Lorentzen was appointed Artistic Director in 2012.
“In a demonstration of remarkable creativity, Ingrid Lorentzen programmed five world premieres for her opening performance as ballet director,” wrote The Financial Times in a review.
Lorentzen appointed Alan Lucien Øyen and Jo Strømgren as resident choreographers, and from 2019, Marit Moum Aune as resident director. The Norwegian National Ballet has a close collaboration with choreographic legend Jiří Kylián and is now one of the companies with the most of his ballets in its repertoire. Under Lorentzen’s leadership, the company performs the great classical ballets and works by choreographers such as Mats Ek, William Forsythe, Sol León and Paul Lightfoot, Crystal Pite, Alexander Ekman, in addition to works by Strømgren, Øyen, and Aune.
With Lorentzen at the helm, the company entered into an agreement in 2019 with Norsk Tipping and Talent Norge to focus on addressing gender disparities in who gets the opportunity to tell stories and create works on the major ballet stages. Since this initiative began, female choreographers have created 27 new works – seven of them for the Main Stage. In 2015, Lorentzen launched a new company for young dancers, Nasjonalballetten UNG, with the goal of supporting and nurturing the greatest Norwegian and international talents under the Opera’s roof. In 2023, the Wilhelmsen Academy was established, an initiative that gives young ballet talents from all over Norway the opportunity to become ballet dancers.
In the international dance magazine Dance Europe, Lorentzen was selected as one of the “Directors of the Year” in both 2015 and 2022. She has held several positions in the Norwegian Arts Council, and in 2019 she was appointed as the new chair of the jury for the International Ibsen Award. She also serves as the chair of the Van Cleef & Arpels FEDORA Dance Prize.