Maurice Béjart (1927-2007)

Major partners of the Paris Opera’s 350th anniversary

Major partners of
the Paris Opera’s 350th anniversary

A suivre:

Abbé Perrin (Director of...

Directors, ballet masters, stage directors, choreographers, architects... Octave discovers the personalities that have marked the history of the Opera which continues to attract the great names of music and dance.

Mesmerised by a performance from Serge Lifar, the adolescent Maurice Béjart decided to dedicate himself to dance. He joined the Marseille Ballet in his home city before completing his training in Paris and London. After a season spent with the Cullberg Ballet, Béjart founded his first company in 1953. In 1955, his Symphonie pour un homme seul, set to the concrete music of Pierre Schaeffer and Pierre Henry, was a ballet sensation. In 1959, he was invited to the Théâtre Royal de La Monnaie in Brussels to choreograph The Rite of Spring. The success that Béjart enjoyed with the piece gave rise to the Ballet of the 20th Century. Through his choice of performance venues, he tried to take ballet out of the theatres to open it up to a wider audience. In 1987, he left Brussels and founded the Béjart Ballet in Lausanne, Switzerland, along with Rudra, his ballet school. A charismatic figure if sometimes controversial, Maurice Béjart offered numerous works to the Paris Opera Ballet and its Ballet School: The Rite of Spring (1965), Webern opus 5 (1967), Bolero and Firebird (1970), Life and Serait-ce la mort? (1979), Le Concours (1985), Mouvement-Rythme-Étude (world premiere production, 1985), Arepo (world premiere production), Kabuki, Salomé, Sonate à trois (1986), M pour B (Paris Opera Ballet School, 1991), Beethoven’s 9th Symphony (1996), Sept Danses grecques (Paris Opera Ballet School, 2000), Le Chant du compagnon errant, Phrases de quatuor, Le Mandarin merveilleux (2003), Variations Don Giovanni (Paris Opera Ballet School, 2006), and Variations pour une porte et un soupir (2006).