Roland Petit

Roland Petit 13 January 1924 10 July 2011 was a French ballet company director choreographer and dancer He trained at the Paris Opera Ballet school and became well known for his creative ballets The son of shoe designer Rose Repetto Petit was born in Villemomble near Paris He trained at the Paris Opéra Ballet school under Gustave Ricaux and Serge Lifar and began to dance with the corps de ballet in 1940 He founded the Ballets des ChampsÉlysées in 1945 and the Ballets de Paris in 1948 at Théâtre Marigny with Zizi Jeanmaire as star dancer Petit collaborated with Constant Lambert Ballabile 1950 Henri Dutilleux Le Loup 1953 Serge Gainsbourg Yves SaintLaurent and César Baldaccini and participated in several French and American films He returned to the Paris Opéra in 1965 to mount a production of Notre Dame de Paris with music by Maurice Jarre He continued to direct ballets for the largest theatres of France Italy Germany Great Britain Canada and Cuba In 1968 his ballet Turangalîla provoked a small revolution within the Paris Opéra Four years later in 1972 he founded the Ballet National de Marseille with the piece Pink Floyd Ballet He directed the Ballet National de Marseille for the next 26 years For the décor of his ballets he would work in close collaboration with the painter Jean Carzou 19072000 but also with other artists such as Max Ernst The creator of more than 50 ballets across all genres he choreographed for a plethora of famed international dancers He refused the free technical effects he did not stop reinventing his style language and became a master in the arts of pas de deux and of narrative ballet but he succeeded also in abstract ballets He collaborated also with the nouveaux réalistes including Martial Raysse Niki de Saint Phalle and Jean Tinguely Le jeune homme et la mort The Young Man and Death of 1946 libretto by Jean Cocteau is considered his magnum opus and it is also his most wellknown work the choreography and the costumes are of astonishing modernity In his 1949 ballet Carmen he made an unusual use of the en dedans while he gave a nonfigurative treatment to Turangalîla Among the films to which he contributed are Symphonie en blanc by René Chanas and François Ardoin 1942 short film on history of dance in which he appeared as a dancer the choreography for the 1948 film Alice in Wonderland The Glass Slipper in 1954 Anything Goes with others in 1956 and Black Tights as choreographer writer and dancer in 1960 In 1994 he was awarded the Prix Benois de la Danse as choreographer In 1954 Petit married dancer Zizi Jeanmaire who performed in a number of his works His memoirs were published in 1993 under the title Jai dansé sur les flots I Danced on the Waves He and Jeanmaire had one daughter Valentine Petit a dancer and actress Petit died in Geneva Switzerland aged 87 of leukemia in 2011 Source Article Roland Petit from Wikipedia in English licensed under CCBYSA 30