Marie Allard (1742–1802) was a French ballerina. She debuted in the

Paris Opera The Paris Opera ( ) is the primary opera and ballet company of France. It was founded in 1669 by Louis XIV as the , and shortly thereafter was placed under the leadership of Jean-Baptiste Lully and officially renamed the , but continued to be kn ...

in 1761. Marie Allard was born in 1742 to a poor family in

Marseille Marseille (; ; see #Name, below) is a city in southern France, the Prefectures in France, prefecture of the Departments of France, department of Bouches-du-Rhône and of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur Regions of France, region. Situated in the ...

. At the age of 10, she was offered to a Monsieur V. and the Comédie de Marseille. Her mother died two years later and Marie became a ''première danseuse'' (first dancer) of the Lyon opera. By the age of 14, she was employed at the Comédie-Française and lived in a small apartment in Paris. Shortly after beginning her studies with balletmaster Gaétan Vestris, she became his lover. In 1760 she gave birth to a son, Auguste Vestris. In June 1761 Allard made her debut at the Paris Opera in

Jean-Philippe Rameau Jean-Philippe Rameau (; ; – ) was a French composer and music theory, music theorist. Regarded as one of the most important French composers and music theorists of the 18th century, he replaced Jean-Baptiste Lully as the dominant composer of ...

's '' Zaïs''. The audience and the young rakes Duc de Mazarin and Monsieur de Bontems were quite taken with her. In her first decade at the Paris Opera she danced 35 roles and received commendation for her ''

pas de deux In ballet, a ( French, literally "step of two") is a dance duet in which two dancers, typically a male and a female, perform ballet steps together. The ''pas de deux'' is characteristic of classical ballet and can be found in many well-known ...

'' with Jean Dauberval in ''Sylvie''. Allard and Vestris also taught dance to their son, who would become the leading male dancer of his generation. At one point, Allard's contract was suspended temporarily "on the ground that her deplorable habit of producing two children every eighteen months caused her to be constantly in a condition which was destructive of all stage effect." Her career started to decline as her son rose to fame and the committee asked her to retire in 1781. Allard died from a stroke in 1802.

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