Brigitte Lefèvre

Brigitte Lefèvre joined the Paris Opera Ballet School at the age of  eight and entered the corps de ballet at the age of sixteen. During her  years at the Opera she studied with Yvette Chauviré, Gérard Mulys, Serge  Peretti, Yves Brieux, Rita Thalia, Janine Schwarz, Serge Perrault and  Raymond Franchetti, dancing in ballets by George Balanchine, Roland  Petit, Maurice Béjart, Michel Descombey and Gene Kelly, as well as in  the major classical works.

Interested from early on in different techniques of dance, Brigitte  Lefèvre studied jazz with Gene Robinson and participated in numerous  courses given by Alwin Nikolaïs, Merce Cunningham and Paul Taylor.

In 1970 she choreographed her first work, Mikrocosmos (to music by  Bartok), for Jacques Garnier, Michaël Denard and herself. The ballet was  presented at the Avignon Festival, in the Cour d’honneur.
She has also worked for the theatre and for musical comedy – in  productions by Jean-Michel Ribes, Jean Mercure and Serge Peyrat at the  Théâtre de la Ville.

She also created the choreography for La Révolution Française at the  Palais des Sports in Paris and made her debut as an actress in the role  of Lisa, in Dostoïevsky’s The Possessed, directed by Jean Mercure at the  Théâtre de la Ville in Paris.

She left the Opera in 1972 to found the « Théâtre du Silence »  together with Jacques Garnier. Situated in La Rochelle between 1974 and  1985, this was to be one of the first regionally-based companies in  France. In addition to works by Jacques Garnier and Brigitte Lefèvre,  the choreographies of Merce Cunningham, Lar Lubovitch, David Gordon and  Robert Kovich came to enrich the company’s repertoire. They toured  extensively (visiting twenty-one countries worldwide). Greatly  interested in teaching, Brigitte Lefèvre gave both classical and  contemporary classes within the company (which she directed  single-handed from 1980 onwards), as well as running various courses.

In 1985, she was appointed Principal Inspector of Dance for the  Ministry of Culture and, in 1987, promoted to General Inspector and  Chief Dance Delegate.

In September 1992, she was appointed General Administrator of the  Paris Opéra-Garnier and, in February 1994, Associate Director, Head of  Dance. In August 1995, she was made Director of Dance at the Paris  Opera.

Since her appointment, Brigitte Lefèvre has set out to create a  living repertoire rhyming not only with the past and the present but  also with the future.

Whilst reserving a special place for traditional works and the great  classical ballets – including the productions of Rudolph Nureyev – she  regularly includes in the Paris Opera season works that have marked the  20th century and invites contemporary choreographers to revive ballets  or create new works. Hence, since 1995, several works have joined the  Paris Opera Ballet’s repertoire (The Rite of Spring in 1997 and Orphée  et Eurydice in 2005 by Pina Bausch , Glacial Decoy by Trisha Brown in  2003, La Dame aux camélias in 2006 and Troisième Symphonie de Gustav  Mahler in 2009 by John Neumeier…) and numerous choreographers have  created works for the company (Maurice Béjart, Trisha Brown, Mats Ek,  William Forsythe, Jirí Kylián, Blanca Li, Wayne McGregor, Benjamin  Millepied, José Montalvo, John Neumeier, Robyn Orlin, Roland Petit,  Angelin Preljocaj, Saburo Teshigawara, Sasha Waltz…).

Brigitte Lefèvre is Vice President of the Conservatoire national  supérieur de musique et de danse de Paris, Administrator of the Centre  National de la Danse (since 1998), and Administrator of La Société Radio  France (since September 2004).

Source: Medici.tv