Roland Petit (Choreography)
Roland Petit (January 13, 1924 – July 10, 2011) was a French choreographer
and dancer born in Villemomble, near Paris, France. He trained at the Paris
Opera Ballet school, and became well known for his creative
ballets.
Petit trained at the Paris Opera Ballet school under Gustave
Ricaux and Serge Lifar and began to dance with the corps de ballet in 1940. He
founded the Ballets des Champs-elysees in 1945 and the Ballets de Paris in 1948,
at Theatre Marigny, with Zizi Jeanmaire as star dancer; Petit and Jeanmaire wed
in 1954.
Petit collaborated with Serge Gainsbourg, Yves Saint-Laurent and Cesar and
participated in several French and American films. He returned to the Paris
Opera in 1965 to mount a production of Notre Dame de Paris (with music by
Maurice Jarre). He continued to rule ballets for the largest theaters of France,
Italy, Germany, Great Britain, Canada, and Cuba.
In 1968, his ballet Turangalila provoked a small revolution within the Paris
Opera. Four years later, in 1972, he founded the Ballet National de Marseille
with the piece “Pink Floyd Ballet”. He directed the Ballet for the next 26
years. For the decor of his ballets, he would work in close collaboration with
the painter Jean Carzou (1907-2000), but also with other artists such as Max
Ernst.
Author of more than 50 creations 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 realistes 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 well-known
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
non-figurative treatment to Turangalila
In 1954, Petit married the dancer
Zizi Jeanmaire, who performed in a number of his works. His memoirs were
published in 1993 under the title J`ai danse sur les flots (English: I
Danced on the Waves). He and Jeanmaire had one daughter, Valentine Petit, a
dancer and actress.
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