Haydeh Changizian
A pupil of Madame Yelena and one of the most mentioned Iranian ballerinas. After graduating from Madame Yelena’s Dance School in Tehran, where she was trained in classical ballet and character dance, she moved to Germany in 1961. She pursued her academic dance education first at the Institute Für Bühnin Tanz in Cologne (1961-1964) and later at the Kirov Ballet School in Russia (1964-1966). She joined Frankfurt Opera Ballet in 1966 and stayed with the company for seven years. She performed at Roudaki Hall Opera as a principal guest dancer with the Iranian National Ballet in 1969 and later in 1971.
Career with the Iranian National Ballet
Appointed as the company's new prima ballerina, she joined the Iranian National Ballet as a permanent member in 1972. As the leading dancer of the company, she performed principal roles in ballet productions of Scheherazade (Shahrzad), Nutcracker, Giselle, La Bayadère, Don Quixote, Fountain of Bakhchisarai, Bijan and Manijeh, Coppelia, La Fille Mal Gardée, and The Witch Boy. She was one of the first dancers dismissed after Ali Pourfarrokh's takeover of the directorship of the Iranian National Ballet Company as its second artistic director when he succeeded Nejad Ahmadzadeh. Her short-lived career with the Iranian National Ballet Company lasted only five years, from 1972 until 1977, when she had to leave the company.
Failed Aspirations and Later Years
After leaving the Iranian National Ballet in 1977, she intended to start her own dance company, The Niyavaran Cultural Dance Company, and a dance school, the Haydeh Changizian Ballet Institute—a project that was never realized. The new political circumstances in the country spoiled her plans and made her leave the country. Finally, she left Iran in 1980 to reside first in Germany and later in the United States. In 1982, she staged a self-produced performance, a nostalgic retrospective to her lost short-lived career, called "In Memory of Roudaki Hall," in California. Her last stage appearance was with the Santa Barbara Ballet, with which she danced for a short period of time as a guest artist in Giselle and Sleeping Beauty productions. After leaving the profession, she was involved in several projects: dance school, interior design, art dealing, jewelry design, etc. She returned to dancing in the 1990s as an amateur dancer of Argentine Tango but left both dancing and the United States a few years later to reside in Iran for a few years and later in Portugal.