Under a lucky star – Style – Kommersant

“He was more than a star. Patrick was a comet, he liked to fly high, with his character, charisma, generosity and amazing ability to share emotions with the public, ”this is how the new artistic director of the Paris Opera Ballet, Jose Martinez, spoke about the hero of the gala evening, Patrick Dupont. His name is little known to the Russian audience, although he played a lot in films (for example, with Maya Plisetskaya in the musical “Broken Hearts” and Alain Delon in the thriller Gilles Béa “Dance Machine”), toured the world with the troupe of his name “Dupont and his stars ”(he was one of the first dancers who came up with the idea of ​​​​going with ballet to the masses and earning a living with his name), and in recent years he participated in the French analogues of“ Dancing with the Stars ”.

Dupont is often compared by the French to Nureyev and is called one of the most daring and flamboyant dancers in history. At the age of 16, which is very early even for the most gifted, Dupont became a part of the ballet troupe of the Paris Opera, at the age of 21 – its “etoile” (star), and ten years later he headed it, replacing Rudolf Nureyev himself in 1990. Martinez, who was then a dancer, calls those years the most “rocker”, and DuPont’s partners compare him in drive with James Dean. And Dupont would not be himself if his love affair with Opera Garnier did not end in a big scandal seven years later. Isabelle Adjani called the dancer to become a member of the jury at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival, he was fired for being absent from work for two weeks, and then he sued and won the case. However, when asked to return as a guest étoile, he decided on principle to choose independence.

The idea of ​​the gala evening came to Aurelie Dupont, former artistic director of the Paris Opera, two years ago, when Patrick Dupont passed away at the age of 62 due to heart complications due to severe cancer. An interesting detail: in French, their surnames sound the same, but are spelled differently, with Aurelie at the end – T, and Patrick – D, which he always jokingly called the symbol of the dancer: “D, like Danseur.” The program of the evening was created according to the sketches of Aurelie Dupont, but, unfortunately, it was not in the hall.

The performance began with a film with clips from Dupont’s legendary performances – shots from the ballets Le Corsaire, Don Quixote and Songs of an Itinerant Apprentice interspersed with his video interviews. When Patrick is asked what his shortcomings are, he responds with “self-criticism” and talks about his life’s work with humor. By tradition, the first part of the ballet gala evening at the Opéra Garnier is a defile, the entire troupe and étoiles in snow-white tutus and sparkling Chanel tiaras gather on stage along with the “rats” – the youngest students of the Parisian dance school to the music of a march from Berlioz’s Les Troyens. When Patrick Dupont took over as Artistic Director, he came up with the brilliant idea “to gather on one stage all the dancers who for half a century made the hearts of the audience beat faster.” He asked all living etoiles to take part in the fashion show – after all, there are no former stars. In honor of Dupont, the organizers of the evening decided to use the same technique. So, on the stage were the greatest dancers of our time who worked with Patrick: Marie-Agnes Gilot, Josette Amiel, Elisabeth Platel, François Alu, Laetitia Pujol, Marie-Claude Pietragalla, Fanny Gaida, Karol Arbaud, Cyril Atanasoff, Manuel Legris, Eleonora Abbagnato , Georges Piletta and the eldest Claude Bessy, whom Dupont affectionately called “my godmother”.

In the second part, the guests were shown “Vaclav” by John Neumeier, created specifically for Dupont as a homage to another great dancer, Vaslav Nijinsky, who dreamed of choreographing to the music of Bach. It was this role that, after the very first performance, brought Patrick the status of étoile. And then – a piercing pas de deux “Songs of an itinerant apprentice” by Maurice Béjart to the music of Gustav Mahler. First, Dupont performed it in tandem with Nureyev (it was Rudolf’s farewell performance), and later he danced it with his closest friend Jean-Marie Didier. At the gala evening, the dancer-etoile Germain Louvet performed the role of Dupont, and the part of Nureyev was performed by the etoile Hugo Marchand. The performance ended with the classical Etudes or a ballet about ballet. The choreography by the Dane Harald Lander is built on the principle of a dance class – it was one of Dupont’s favorite programs: highly technical, he always loved to perform it.

After the performance of the evening, organized with the support of AROP (friends of the Paris Opera), patron of the Chanel dance program and the official hours of the Rolex Opera, a dinner awaited the guests, the menu of which was worked on by several star chefs: Nadia Sammu, the kitchen manager at the La Feniere restaurant in the Luberon, was responsible for the first course , for the second – Sven Chartier, who created the Oiseau Oiseau gastronomic project in La Perche, where Parisians run to hide for the weekend to taste seasonal delicacies from vegetables from local beds. The finale of the dinner was a chocolate tartlet from the daughter of the legendary chocolatier Jacques Guenan from Rue Turenne, who works hand in hand with her father and helps him create timeless classic desserts. The celebration continued in the Rotunda of regular spectators on the lower floors of the Opera Garnier until four in the morning, where patrons, celebrity guests and the troupe danced to the set of one of Karl Lagerfeld’s favorite DJs, Agat Mougan – according to the testament of Patrick Dupont, who said that life was made for dance.

Lidia Ageeva