YEREVAN / ZURICH, SWITZERLAND — Veronique Tamaccio was born in 1982 in Marseille. She is a Switzerland-based ballerina and dance teacher with Italian and Armenian roots. At the age of 8, she stood out in dance competitions in Montpellier, and Paris, then participated in various ballet contests in France and abroad.
Tamaccio studied at the Studio Ballet Colette Armand and Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Danse de Marseille under the direction of Colette Armand.
In 1998 she won a scholarship to the Lausanne Ballet. In 1999–2000 she performed with the English National Ballet (“Coppelia,” “Raymonda,” etc.) and with the Jeune Ballet de France (Milady in “The Three Musketeers,” Pas-de-deux in “Diana and Actaeon,” etc.). Since 2001, Tamaccio has performed with the Birmingham Royal Ballet, participated in “Swan Lake,” “The Nutcracker,” “Façade,” “Sleeping Beauty,” “Beauty and the Beast,” “Apollo” and in other performances. Later, Tamaccio worked also with the Dutch National Ballet and the Zurich Ballet.
Currently she resides in Zurich with her husband and two children, running the Ballet for Everyone dance center, where she teaches children and adult classes both for beginners and advanced students in various classes (Adult Ballet for Beginners, Intermediates, Advanced, Barre Workouts, Choreography, Stretching Classes, Little Ballerinas Classes, Ballet Together Classes, etc.). In her teaching Tamaccio combines ballet, Pilates and stretching to provide an optimal opportunity to improve posture and flexibility.
Dear Veronique, you have danced since you were 3, so can we call you a dancer by birth? Although Fred Astaire said: “Some people seem to think that good dancers are born, but all the good dancers I have known are taught or trained.”
I would say I could dance before I could walk. Dancing was always very natural to me. My mother told me when I was 3, I told my dance teacher I was born in first position (the famous ballet position). As a little girl, I was dancing everywhere, in the streets, in the sea, on the beach in Marseille, in the pool, in our house everywhere and every day. It was a big part of my life. I grew up surrounded by classical music. My uncle, Jacques Semizian, was always playing the Nocturnes from Chopin on his beautiful piano and my favorite thing to do was to dance as he was playing. Often, Jean Ter-Merguerian and other famous Armenian violinists were coming to his house and I was dancing along as they were rehearsing for their upcoming concerts. I cherish these precious and very special childhood moments.
