The dancer Marcos Sousa, 18 years old, is the first Brazilian to have a lifetime contract to join the ballet corps of the prestigious Paris National Opera, one of the world’s most renowned ballet companies. The news arrived on June 28, and now Marcos is preparing to return to the French capital and begin a new stage in his successful career.
Before this victory, however, he had to face many challenges, but always with the certainty that ballet was fundamental in his life and that was how he could conquer audiences outside Brazil. Perseverance was something the young man from Maranhão never lacked.
As a boy in the city of Grajaú, in the interior of Maranhão, Marcos Souza already showed signs of what his future would be: he had fun dancing in June quadrilhas.
Discovered by Timóteo Cortez, the city’s quadrilha choreographer, he was invited to dance at an academy in his city when he was 10 years old. He even stopped for a year, until he received a new invitation to return to dance and take classes at the academy, with the possibility of participating in a pre-selection in São Luís for the Bolshoi Theatre School in Brazil, in 2019. Now, at 12 years old.
“I went to São Luís for the pre-selection, passed to the final selection in Joinville [Santa Catarina]. In October 2019, I did that audition, passed, and everything went well,” he told Agência Brasil.
In 2020, he began his studies at the Bolshoi Theatre School in Brazil, and in the first year he was alone because his mother couldn’t go. It was the first time he was away from his family.
“Living far from my family, with new people, different people, and far away, was very difficult for me,” he recalls.
Pandemic
Marcos faced another barrier during the covid-19 pandemic. With only two months of classes, he had to face everything alone.
“At that time, I was already without my family, new place, new people, new school, and pandemic, it was very difficult, but everything went well in that first year,” he said.
After that phase, already integrated into the school, he began to have his mother’s company, who moved to Joinville in 2021.
In September 2023, Marcos fulfilled a great dream, which was to study at the École de Danse de l’Opéra National de Paris, a school linked to the prestigious Paris National Opera, which along with the Bolshoi Theatre School are at the top of his personal ranking as the best.
The dancer realized that at that moment he was ready and wanted to explore new horizons. And he decided to send a “really bold” email, because, according to him, that’s not actually the procedure.
In the message, in English, sent in 2022, he asked the director of the Paris National Opera Dance School if there was a possibility to do an audition. Even without receiving a response, he didn’t lose hope and sent another email, this time in French, in February 2023, again asking about the possibility of doing an audition and saying he was interested in the school that was his dream. Finally, he received a response, with a request from the French to send a video with a series of exercises he should do, for them to evaluate.
“The response came on my birthday, April 5, 2023. I received the response saying I had an audition in Paris, and then I knew I was going to Paris. I went to the moon, very, very, very. It was in the morning, I opened the email box on my phone and there was the notification, in French. I said I already knew what it was,” he recounted, excited, in detail.
The trip to the French capital for the audition was in the company of Germana Saraiva, his first teacher at the Bolshoi Theatre School in Brazil.
“I invited her because she’s a person I have a lot of trust in. She was my first teacher at the Bolshoi Theatre, a person I have a very strong bond with. We stayed five days in Paris, I did the audition and everything went well,” he said.
Obstacle
As the path was always full of many setbacks, at that moment he also faced a big problem. Four days before the audition, he had a sprain in his right foot.
“It demotivated me a lot. I was very sad, but since everything was already booked, hotel, plane ticket, I wasn’t going to give up halfway. I was going anyway. I fought a lot to achieve it, and said ‘let’s go’ try my dream. I went after a lot of care from the Bolshoi School therapists, who always helped me, I’m very grateful,” he revealed.
The technical training based on the Russian methodology carried out over 5 years at the Bolshoi Theatre School in Brazil allowed him to show the French school his ability in classical ballet.
“I arrived there and it was a different method, different language, different people, and the audition was very difficult. I did the class, at the end the school director, Elizabeth Platel, called me to her little room and told me I had been approved. I thought I wouldn’t be approved in that audition, because my class wasn’t good, I had a sprained foot, I had taken medication so I wouldn’t feel pain in my foot, and then came the response that I would start in September, in the third division,” he recalled, explaining that in the school’s system the young dancers start in the sixth division and go up to the first, where the older dancers study.
According to Marcos, the first year at the Parisian school was one of great difficulty, in a place where everything was new.
“I fought a lot. In the first months I cried from missing my friends from Joinville, but even so I didn’t get demotivated. The first year passed, I started speaking French, made several friends.”
According to the school’s schedule, the school year starts in September and goes until the following July. Because of his talent, the dancer, who started in the third division, managed to reduce the course duration from 3 to 2 years.
“In the middle of the school year, the school director and my teacher at the time informed me that I had skipped a grade, because they were very happy with my progress. She saw that I wanted to progress and be part of, really, that work they were doing with me. I was very happy, because I saw that my work was being rewarded and in the right direction,” he said.
In the 2024/2025 season, the last year of school, Marcos again had to face problems. In November 2024, he had a ligament injury in his left ankle, which forced him to stop dancing for 2 months.
Apprehensive, with effort and desire to make up for lost time, Marcos returned to dancing at the end of January 2025.
“But it wasn’t about that, it was about me calming down, doing things right, in my time. Then came the end-of-year show in April 2025, I danced with another Brazilian, on the stage of the Opéra Garnier, in Paris, João Pedro Silva, we did a duo. The director said she put us together because she saw we had a different energy, there was a synergy there,” he recalls, adding that João Pedro, a São Paulo native who lived in Goiânia before going to Paris.
At 18 years old and at the end of his course at the Paris School, came the concern of having to find a job to support himself in the Parisian capital.
“The school advises us to do external auditions at other schools and I did with my friends. We went to Amsterdam, I even went to Moscow, to the Bolshoi Theatre. Then came the competition for entry into the ballet corps of the Paris National Opera Ballet, which was on June 28, 2025,” he detailed.
For the presentation, a teacher from the Paris National Opera gives a class for the candidate to do some exercises in 45 minutes, without using the barres, only doing center and jumps, plus a variation, which means a excerpt from a ballet danced alone, a solo. In his case, it was from Sleeping Beauty, from the version of the famous and renowned Russian dancer and choreographer Rudolf Nureyev.
Marcos recounted emotionally that, at the end, the result is posted on a sheet stuck to the wall with the list of approved candidates.
“This year three boys passed, me and two others, and four girls from my class. It was a huge emotion and I was very anxious,” he recalled.
“When the result came, I couldn’t believe it from so much emotion. The first person I called was my mom, obviously, who is my queen, the person who always supported me. Then I called teacher Germana Saraiva. Even today I can’t believe that I’m the first Brazilian man with a lifetime contract with the ballet corps of the Paris National Opera Ballet. A carousel goes through my head,” he revealed.
Marcos went on vacation to see friends in Joinville, and then meet his mother in the city of Grajaú, in Maranhão.
For the general director of the Bolshoi School, Pavel Kazarian, considering that more than 70% of the students graduated from the institution in Brazil are employed in the dance field, it is possible “to see that art changes the lives of children, their families, and the surrounding community.”
The next season of the Paris National Opera company starts on August 26, and Marcos has a return scheduled for August 20, when he will prepare for the start of work in his dream place. The opening ballet of the season will be Giselle, but the dancer still doesn’t know the role he will play.
“I really like this ballet Giselle, but I’ve never danced it in my life. I’ve always watched it. It will be a great experience,” he assesses.
Bolshoi School
The Bolshoi Theatre School in Brazil is a cultural project with social, cultural, and educational influence, representing a bridge in the cultural area between Brazil and Russia. It began operating on March 15, 2000, in Joinville, being the only extension of the Bolshoi Theatre outside Russia, and the first time the Bolshoi transfers its ballet teaching method, which made it one of the world’s most prominent institutions, to another country.
“With 25 years of implementation in Brazil, the first Bolshoi Theatre School educates around 260 students from Brazil and countries like Argentina, Panama, Paraguay, and Russia, 54% girls and 46% boys. The institution grants 100% scholarships to all students,” informed the Bolshoi Theatre in Brazil.
The project has the Friends of the Bolshoi to maintain the activities, including support from companies and individuals, through services, direct sponsorships, or tax incentives.
Source: Agência Brasil