Pierre Lacotte

Pierre Lacotte (born 4 April 1932) is a French ballet dancer and choreographer specialised in the reconstruction or lost choregraphies of romantic ballets. His mother was an affirmed musician and he manifested very early his interest for dance. After an initial reluctance, his family surrendered to his stubbornness so that Lacotte could become a student of Gustave Ricaux, which was professor at the Paris Opera.In 1946 he was engaged in the Paris Opera Ballet and in 1953 become its first dancer. Among his master at the Paris Opera Ballet School, he had Lubov Egorova, Carlotta Zambelli and the choreographer Serge Lifar, who chose Paulette Dynalix, Claude Bessy and Lacotte as the three interpretive dancers of Septuor, a single-act ballet represented in Paris on January 25, 1950.In 1955 he left the Paris Opera and become a solist dancer, invited to perform all over the world. Subsequently, Lacotte founded his body ballet named Les Ballets de la Tour Eiffel, some festivals asked him choregaphies for operas (Hippolyte et Aricie in 1960, Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda in 1961) and from 1963 to 1968 he was appointed as director of the Ballets des Jeunesses Musicales de France where he created many works including Hamlet (1964), La Voix (1965) or Intermede (1966).Lacotte was a frequent dance partner of Yvette Chauvire, Lycette Darsonval and Christiane Vaussard.He married in 1968 the ballerina Ghislaine Thesmar.In 1971 he was named professor at the Paris Opera and began to specialise in the reconstitution of lost choregraphies of romantic ballets:He also re-created historical versions of Giselle (1978 and 1991), Swan Lake (1998) and The Nutcracker (2000) and some ballets of Michel Fokine: Polovtsian Dances (1986), The Firebird (1991), Le Spectre de la Rose (1997).Between 1985 and 1988 he was associate director of the new Ballets de Monte Carlo where he resumed his original creations (Lapprenti sorcier, Te Deum, Vingt-quatre heures de la vie d’une femme) and artistic director of the Ballet national de Nancy et de Lorraine From 1991 to 1999. He created the ballet Les Trois Mousquetaires in 2010 and his own versions of Coppélia in 2002 and La Fille du Danube in 2006.Lacotte lives in Paris.

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