Ivan Urban was born in Belarus and trained at the Minsk Ballet School and the Hamburg Ballet School, which he joined with the support of the Pierino Ambrosoli Cultural Foundation after reaching the semi-finals of the Prix de Lausanne in 1992. His most important teachers include Alexander Ivanovich Kaladenko, Anatoli Nisnevich and Kevin Haigen. He joined the Hamburg Ballet in 1994, becoming a soloist in 1997 and first soloist in 1998. Ivan Urban has been ballet master of the Hamburg Ballet since 2020.
John Neumeier created numerous roles for him, such as Telemachos in Odyssee, King Koll/Fortinbras in Hamlet (1997, new version), Sir Andrew in VIVALDI oder Was ihr wollt, Eros in Bernstein Dances, Serge Diaghilev in Nijinsky, Konstantin (Kostja) Gawrilowitsch Trepljow in Die Möwe, Carsten in Préludes CV, Friedrich der Große in Tod in Venedig, The Doctor and Serge Diaghilev in Le Pavillon d'Armide and Alexej Alexandrowitsch Karenin in Anna Karenina. He has also danced a large number of solo roles in other works by Neumeier, including Armand, Des Grieux, Monsieur Duval and Count N. in The Lady of the Camellias, which he is now also responsible for staging at the Vienna State Ballet. He has also performed in ballets by George Balanchine, John Cranko, Nacho Duato, Mats Ek, Jiří Kylián, Pierre Lacotte, Natalia Makarova, Rudolf Nureyev and Jerome Robbins.
Guest performances have taken Ivan Urban to Berlin, Düsseldorf, Essen, Munich, Moscow, Bordeaux, Toronto, Beijing, the St. Barthʼs Music Festival, the World Ballet Festival 2006 in Japan, Roberto Bolle and Friends galas in Italy, the charity gala Event Prominent 2007 and 2010 in Hamburg and a gala in honour of Natalia Makarova at the Alexandrinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg in 2011. With the National Ballet of Canada in Toronto and the Stanislavsky Ballet in Moscow, he danced the role of Konstantin (Kostya) Gravilovich Treplyov in Die Möwe. He performed with the Vienna State Ballet at the Vienna Philharmonic's New Year's Concert in 2006 and at the Nureyev Gala in 2018, where he interpreted Neumeier's Opus 100 – for Maurice alongside Alexandre Riabko.
Augenblick (music: Samuel Barber) was his first own choreography, which premiered at the Bolshoi Theatre on 22 November 2006. In 1996, Ivan Urban was awarded the Dr Wilhelm Oberdörffer Prize.