Pierre Lacotte

Choreographer

Born in Chatou near Paris in 1932 and died in La Seyne-sur-Mer in 2023, the dancer and choreographer trained at the ballet school of the Opéra national de Paris and became a member of the ballet company at the same theatre in 1946. In 1955 he founded his own company, Les ballets de la Tour Eiffel, and from 1956 to 1957 he danced with the Metropolitan Opera Ballet in New York. In 1962 Lacotte became director of the newly founded Ballet National Jeunesses Musicales de France, where he both danced and choreographed, often with prominent roles for the dancer Ghislaine Thesmar, whom he married in 1968. His interest in reconstructing lost ballets led to the reconstruction of a pas de deux for the Donizetti opera La Favorite (1840), which he presented for discussion in Venice in 1970. Following the success of the reconstruction of Taglioni's La Sylphide in 1972, he brought Saint-Léon's Coppélia back to the stage of the Opéra national de Paris in 1975 – a work that had not been performed there since 1870. In 1976 he reconstructed Marie Taglioni's only ballet Le Papillon from 1860, followed by La Fille de Danube for Buenos Aires (1976), Giselle for Strasbourg (1978), Nathalie, ou La Laitière Suisse for Leningrad (1979), Marco Spada, ou La Fille du bandit for Rome, as well as La cracovienne for French television (1984) and the nuns' ballet from Robert Le Diable for Italian television (1987). After Ghislaine Thesmar retired from the stage, the couple took over the direction of the Ballets de Monte-Carlo in 1985. In 1988, Lacotte moved to Verona as director of the opera ballet, but returned to France in 1991 to take over the directorship of the Ballet de Lorraine, which he held until 1999. Here he reconstructed Taglioni's ballet L'Ombre (1993). He rounded off his impressive portfolio of reconstructions with Le Lac des fées for Berlin (1995), La Fille du Pharaon for Moscow (2000), Paquita for Paris (2001) and Ondine for St. Petersburg (2006), and his last piece Le Rouge et le Noir (after Stendhal) premiered in Paris in 2021.