French ballet dancer turned choreographer Pierre Lacotte dies aged 91

Pierre Lacotte, the French ballet dancer who mined the past to produce modern choreographic classics, died on Monday in La Seyne-sur-Mer in southern France at the age of 91.

Pierre Lacotte was a star dancer at the Paris Opera in the early 1950s before turning devoting himself to choreographing 19th century classics. AFP - ALEXANDER NEMENOV

"He was full of energy," said his wife of 55 years Ghislaine Thesmar.

"It's very sad," added the former principal dancer. "He still had so many projects and was writing a book."

Rise

Born in 1932 in Chatou just outside Paris, Lacotte entered the Paris Opera school in 1942. He joined the Opera's corps de ballet and became one of its star dancers before he was 20.

To cultivate his burgeoning interest in choreography in the late 1950s, he founded the Ballets de la tour Eiffel company after resigning from the Paris Opera. He also worked as an independent dancer and choreographer.

In June 1961, he was at the epicentre of one of the cultural world's most spectacular moments.

After befriending the dancer Rudolf Nureyev while he was on tour in Paris, Lacotte helped him escape KGB agents and seek asylum in France just minutes before Nuryev was due to board a plane back to the Soviet Union.

The cloak-and-dagger episode was recounted in a 2018 biopic titled The White Crow which was directed by the British actor Ralph Fiennes.

Change

But by the end of the decade Lacotte's dancing career was effectively over after suffering an ankle injury.

Undeterred by the setback, he sought out the archives of the Paris Opera determined to reinvigorate 19th-century productions and place them on the world's greatest stages.

They included La Sylphide, the first ballet to be performed completely on pointe – on the tips of the toes – when it premiered in 1832.

He revived other 19th century classics including Coppélia, La Fille du pharaon and Paquita for the Bolshoi in Moscow to the Mariinsky in St Petersburg and the Berlin Staatsoper.

Work ethic

Lacotte's last work in 2021 was a production for the Paris Opera of The Red and the Black based on the 1830 novel by the French writer Stendhal. 

He was working on a piece for the Rome Opera ballet when blood poisoning set in on an infected cut, said Thesmar.

"He loved the Paris Opera, it was his one and only home," she  added.

"He was a lover of the classical and romantic period," said Brigitte Lefèvre, a former director of dance at the Paris Opera.

"But he also loved what was modern."