Roland Petit (13 January 192410 July 2011) was a French
ballet
Ballet () is a type of performance dance that originated during the Italian Renaissance in the fifteenth century and later developed into a concert dance form in France and Russia. It has since become a widespread and highly technical form of ...
company director,
choreographer and dancer. He trained at the
Paris Opera Ballet school, and became well known for his creative ballets.
Life and work
The son of shoe designer
Rose Repetto, Petit was born in
Villemomble
Villemomble () is a Communes of France, commune in the eastern suburbs of Paris, France. It is located from the Kilometre zero, centre of Paris.
Heraldry
Transport
Villemomble is served by Le Raincy – Villemomble – Montfermeil (Par ...
, 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 Champs-Élysées 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
Serge Gainsbourg (; born Lucien Ginsburg; 2 April 1928 – 2 March 1991) was a French singer-songwriter, actor, composer, and director. Regarded as one of the most important figures in French pop, he was renowned for often provocative rel ...
,
Yves Saint-Laurent 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 1970 Petit resigned after only four months as director of ballet at the Paris Opera. He resigned by letter from home (because he had no telephone in his office) protesting about poor working conditions, the failure in labour contract negotiations, and thwarting of his plans for three new ballet productions of which management only accepted one.
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", created in collaboration with the
band of the same name. 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 (1907–2000), but also with other artists such as
Max Ernst
Max Ernst (; 2 April 1891 – 1 April 1976) was a German-born painter, sculptor, printmaker, graphic artist, and poet. A prolific artist, Ernst was a primary pioneer of the Dada movement and surrealism in Europe. He had no formal artistic trai ...
.
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
Jean Tinguely (22 May 1925 – 30 August 1991) was a Swiss sculptor best known for his kinetic art sculptural machines (known officially as Métamatics) that extended the Dada tradition into the later part of the 20th century.Chilvers, Ian; Gl ...
.
''
Le jeune homme et la mort'' ("The Young Man and Death") of 1946 (libretto by
Jean Cocteau
Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau ( , ; ; 5 July 1889 11 October 1963) was a French poet, playwright, novelist, designer, film director, visual artist and critic. He was one of the foremost avant-garde artists of the 20th-c ...
) 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 ''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.
Honours
In 1994, he was awarded the
Prix Benois de la Danse as choreographer.
Personal life
In 1954, Petit married dancer
Zizi Jeanmaire, who performed in a number of his works. His memoirs were published in 1993 under the title ''J'ai 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
Geneva ( , ; ) ; ; . is the List of cities in Switzerland, second-most populous city in Switzerland and the most populous in French-speaking Romandy. Situated in the southwest of the country, where the Rhône exits Lake Geneva, it is the ca ...
, Switzerland, aged 87, of
leukemia in 2011.
Ballets
During his career, Petit choreographed 176 works, including:
*''Guernica'' (1945)
*''Les forains'' (1945)
*''
Le jeune homme et la mort'' (1946)
*''
Carmen'' (1949)
*''Ballabile'' (1950)
*''Le loup'' (1953)
*''
The Lady in the Ice'' (1953)
*''
Notre-Dame de Paris
Notre-Dame de Paris ( ; meaning "Cathedral of Our Lady of Paris"), often referred to simply as Notre-Dame, is a Medieval architecture, medieval Catholic cathedral on the Île de la Cité (an island in the River Seine), in the 4th arrondissemen ...
'' (1965)
*''Paradise Lost'' (1967)
*''
Kraanerg'' (1969)
*''Pink Floyd Ballet'' (1972 and later)
*''Roland Petit Ballet'' (1973)
*''Proust, ou Les intermittences du coeur'' (1974)
*'' L'Arlésienne'' (1974)
*''
Coppélia'' (1975)
*''La symphonie fantastique'' (1975)
*''Cyrano de Bergerac'' (1978)
*''Le fantôme de l'Opéra'' (1980)
*''Les amours de Frantz'' (1981)
*''The Four Seasons'' (music of
Antonio Vivaldi
Antonio Lucio Vivaldi (4 March 1678 – 28 July 1741) was an Italian composer, virtuoso violinist, impresario of Baroque music and Roman Catholic priest. Regarded as one of the greatest Baroque composers, Vivaldi's influence during his lif ...
, 1984)
*''The Blue Angel'' (1985)
*''Clavigo'' (1999)
*''Duke Ellington'' (2001)
*''Les chemins de la création'' (2004)
References
External links
*
CMI
{{DEFAULTSORT:Petit, Roland
1924 births
2011 deaths
Burials at Montparnasse Cemetery
Deaths from leukemia in Switzerland
Paris Opera Ballet dancers
French male ballet dancers
French people of Italian descent
French ballet choreographers
Prix Benois de la Danse winners
Commanders of the Legion of Honour
Musical theatre choreographers
Paris Opera Ballet artistic directors
20th-century ballet dancers