First dancer then respected choreographer in the 1950s and 1960s, Pierre Lacotte devoted himself since 1968 to the recreation of 19th century ballets, painstakingly reconstructed from archives.
He was known for his reconstructions of 19th century ballets for the world’s greatest companies: choreographer Pierre Lacotte died Monday at the age of 91, his wife, star dancer Ghislaine Thesmar, told AFP. ” Our Pierre left us at 4:00 a.m.“, said Ms. Thesmar, specifying that he died in a clinic in La Seyne-sur-Mer in the Var (south of France) of sepsis after the infection of a wound.
” It’s very sad, he was still full of projects and was writing a book,” said his wife since 1968.. ” He was full of energy and had projects for companies“including the Rome Opera Ballet, she added. His last creation dates back to October 2021 (he was then almost 90 years old): the ballet adaptation of Stendhal’s novel, The Red and the Black for the Paris Opera. ” He loved the Opera, it was his one and only home“, assured Ms. Thesmar.
An extract from “Le Rouge et le Noir” by Pierre Lacotte with Hugo Marchand, at the Paris Opera.
An early passion
Born April 4, 1932 in Chatou, near Paris, Pierre Lacotte fell in love at a very young age with the ballets of the Paris Opera, which his parents took him to see. He joined the École de l’Opéra de Paris in 1942 despite poor health and joined the corps de ballet, then became principal dancer in 1951. He was 17 when Serge Lifar chose him to interpret his creation, septetwith Claude Bessy, the future director of the School of Dance.
S his first creations are rooted in his time: Exodus (1953) is set during World War II, The night is a witch (1954) is based on specially composed music by jazz clarinetist Sidney Bechet. He resigned from the Opera the following year and founded the Ballets de la Tour Eiffel company, then from 1959 he pursued a career as a dancer and independent choreographer.
/2023/04/10/643400ed71b3f_079-img1200298805.jpg)
Lacotte had helped Nureyev to move to the West
At the beginning of the 1960s, he was one of the protagonists of the resounding defection to flee to the West of the legendary Russian dancer Rudolf Nureyev. During a tour of the Kirov (name of the Mariinsky in the days of the USSR), the young prodigy discovered Paris, with Pierre Lacotte and other dancers.
On June 16, 1961, at Le Bourget airport, just before a panicked Nureyev boarded the plane that was to take him back to Russia, Lacotte had the idea of contacting Clara Saint, ex-fiancée of a son of André Malraux, then Minister of Culture. Once there, she asks for the help of the French police and the dancer will make his high profile leap to the West.
He becomes a “ballet archaeologist”
An ankle injury forced Pierre Lacotte to slow down his activity in 1968 and it was then that he devoted himself to researching archives of old ballets, pushing him to recreate The sylph, the first ballet sur pointes (1832). These reconstructions will become the passion of the one who will soon be nicknamed the ” ballet archaeologist“.
The choreographer became a specialist in forgotten ballets from the Romantic period, which fascinated him with their ” undeniable purity of style“.” I love rummaging through the archives of the library-museum of the Opera, I feel like a child discovering his grandparents’ letters in the attic“, he confided to La Croix.
He will resurrect, among other things, Coppelia (1870), the Pas de six by La Vivandière (1844), The Pharaoh’s Daughter (1862), paquita (1846) for the greatest stages in the world, from the Bolshoi to the Paris Opera, via the Mariinsky in Saint-Petersburg and the Staatsoper in Berlin.
Brigitte Lefèvre, then director of the Paris Opera, explained in 2013 with the ballet The sylph, the importance of the work of Pierre Lacotte.