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New York Times
28-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
The Ballet Kids of ‘Midsummer' Bring Magic to the Bugs
There is Oberon, the King of the Fairies, and his beautiful Queen, Titania. Puck, a sprite, works his magic with the occasional unforced error, as mortals and immortals find themselves in a similar predicament: wanting to love. And wanting to be loved. But for all the sparkle of the mythological adults in George Balanchine's 'A Midsummer Night's Dream,' it's the kids — 24, plus Titania's page — that rule this fantastical realm. Enter the Bugs. These young dancers from the School of American Ballet are the heart of New York City Ballet's production. Technically, they play Fairies and Butterflies, but at City Ballet and its training ground, S.A.B., they are known informally as Bugs. (Perhaps less dignified as far as outdoor creatures go, but cuter.) These Bugs are small, exuberant bodies that, at times, scurry across the forest stage, gleaming in the moonlit night. They're a coalition, a small but mighty squad of fleet-footed girls, ages roughly 10 to 12 — 'a wholly unsentimental deployment,' wrote Lincoln Kirstein, who founded the school and company with Balanchine. Balanchine based his ballet more on Felix Mendelssohn's overture and incidental music for 'A Midsummer Night's Dream,' to which he added additional pieces, than on the Shakespeare comedy. Mendelssohn's sweeping music also thrills the Bugs no end. It puts the gas in their engines, the quiver in their antennas, the flap in their delicate wings. 'You're not walking down the street anymore,' said Naomi Uetani, 11, with a smile she couldn't suppress. 'I'm in a magical place. I understand 'Nutcracker' — yeah, you're in the candy land, but this is different. The feeling.' There's truth to that. 'George Balanchine's The Nutcracker' (1954) is a marvel of storytelling and dancing, and kids play a huge part in it. But 'Midsummer' (1962), which closes City Ballet's spring season this week, remains both grand and carefree, irresistible for its sweetness. That comes from the children. 'They bring so much to the whole idea of the forest and all the little creatures,' Dena Abergel, City Ballet's children's repertory director, said. In other words, they bring the magic. With militaristic precision they burst into the action — their movements sharp and swift — while brief, stand-alone moments bubble up, seemingly from nowhere, as when the Bug called the spinner whips around in place while drawing her arms up and down. The seven Bugs in the overture have more difficult steps, including the first two who perform big saut de chats, or catlike jumps. But largely, for the children, the dancing in 'Midsummer' is a group experience. 'They're all part of the finale, they're all part of the Scherzo,' Abergel said. 'Everybody gets to dance a lot in 'Midsummer.'' Arm movements — pushing them out like rippling wings — are important for the Bugs; running and sharp footwork, too. 'There are a lot of sauté arabesques and pas de chats, and those are things that Balanchine uses from beginning to end in the training,' Abergel said. 'They're practicing all of those crucial classical steps,' as they also work on moving in and out of formations. When she's casting, though, Abergel is on the lookout for something other than technique. 'Just like every creature in nature, there are different bugs and different energies,' she said. 'This is more about energy and that ability to move quickly and with excitement.' For Abergel, the sweetest moment in the ballet has nothing to do with nailing a tight fifth: It's when the bugs yawn and fall asleep on one another in a pile. 'You don't really need any technique for that,' she said. 'You just need to be in the moment and understand what it's about. I love that they experience that onstage.' The children, wearing dresses or short pants and whimsical headwear designed by the innovative costumer Karinska — there are a dozen designs with individual details on each, which is rare for an ensemble — frame the ballet. After the classical wedding scene in the second act, they return to a darkened forest stage for the finale. Isla Cooley, 12, loves this moment, when the adult dancers leave and 'then, us Bugs are running onstage and flapping our wings,' she said. 'I think it was a supervisor who told me that she thought it was like us kind of crashing the party. Because it's like, Oh, wait! We're here.' Last year Isla was the spinner. This year, she is a pop-up Bug. 'When Oberon motions to us, we pop up, we spin, and then we jump around,' she said. Naomi was the first Bug in the overture last year. For her big jumping moment, she said: 'You have butterflies in your stomach, but you also want to do it super bad. So I was scared, excited and like nervous at the same time. But yeah, I still couldn't wait to do it.' What was Balanchine looking for when he cast children in his ballets? 'Curiosity,' said Carol Aaron Bryan, 74, who trained at the School of American Ballet and danced in 'The Nutcracker' and 'A Midsummer Night's Dream.' 'A kind of wonderment — just wondering what this adventure will be.' Bryan was around Balanchine a lot. In 1961 and '62, she performed Clara (as the young girl in 'The Nutcracker' was then known) opposite his Drosselmeier. 'He always did something different in the transition scene, and I never knew what he was going to do,' she said. 'It was always a surprise.' His Drosselmeier would sit near her legs on the sofa where she was meant to be sleeping. 'The whole couch would shake because he'd be fixing that Nutcracker,' she said. 'And I remember this so vividly: He would take the shawl off me and then he would cover me again. Like he was my Drosselmeier, my godfather.' When rehearsals started for 'Midsummer' — the first entirely original full-length ballet Balanchine choreographed in America — she said she felt she had gotten to know him, which 'made it easier for me to react when he asked us for things.' She recalled him working with the students on their runs by taking them to the back of the studio and running along diagonals with them. 'He would really show us,' she said. 'He was so nimble on his feet. It's like his heels never touched the ground. He became a Bug, and he became one of the Fairies. He taught us how to be so light and so quiet.' For Bryan, he was the man with the magic. His ability to enchant lives on in 'Midsummer' — in its glittering array of kids. As Naomi said, 'Without the bugs, the ballet wouldn't be alive.'
San Francisco Chronicle
05-05-2025
- Entertainment
- San Francisco Chronicle
San Francisco Ballet's new season to spotlight Forsythe and Balanchine, bring back popular classics
San Francisco Ballet's Artistic Director Tamara Rojo expects that some of her decisions for her third year of programming will surprise recent audiences. After a 2025 season without any works by George Balanchine, the company plans to include an all-Balanchine program spotlighting the New York City Ballet founder. This will be followed by a triple bill of works by the groundbreaking American choreographer William Forsythe, who Rojo sees as further innovating Balanchine's choreographic style. 'Last season was more inspired by my legacy of work with British choreographers and also narrative ballets, and this season is a little bit more American in the works and the choreographers and the style of dancing,' Rojo told the Chronicle. 'We are an innovative and very eclectic and versatile group of artists, and I want to give the audience the most amazing experience every year and not ever become predictable.' The coming season will also bring meaningful milestones as 2026 marks the San Francisco Ballet Orchestra's 50th anniversary, and the 20th year of Martin West's leadership as music director. Perhaps Rojo's most striking change, however, comes in the form of a structural shakeup that breaks from the old hierarchy of corps, soloist and principal ranks for the dancers to introduce demi-soloist and first soloist ranks. But first, the programming. The Ballet has a history of dancing Balanchine stretching back to 1952, and with 'Balanchine: Father of American Ballet' (Feb. 10-15), the company continues that tradition. The bill will consist of three of his best-known works: 'Serenade' and the 'Diamonds' section of 'Jewels,' both set to Tchaikovsky; and 'Stars and Stripes,' a patriotic celebration set to orchestrations of John Phillips Sousa's famous marches. To Rojo, it made perfect sense to follow the program with works by all-Forsythe, whose choreography, she said, 'is the closest thing in terms of the structure of Balanchine's musical understanding in so many ways, and in the amazing ability to create a world without narrative.' An American who spent much of his career in Germany, Forsythe shook up the dance world with the sharp, postmodern movement of his breakthrough work titled 'in the middle, somewhat elevated' in 1987. San Francisco Ballet has danced Forsythe's work since commissioning his ballet 'New Sleep' that same year, but this will mark the company's first all-Forsythe bill (Feb. 17-March 8). The program will bring together his recent works inspired by the avant-garde pop music of British singer James Blake, presenting 'Prologue,' 'The Barre Project,' and 'Blake Works I,' which was a local hit when San Francisco Ballet danced it in 2022. The other four programs slated for the 2026 season include a world premiere story ballet, two classics from the 19th century and the return of ' Mere Mortals,' a ballet inspired by the moral challenges of artificial intelligence, which was first unveiled in 2023. Following the company's traditional one-night gala program on Jan. 21, the company's 93rd season will kick off with the previously announced world premiere of resident choreographer Yuri Possokhov's full-length 'Eugene Onegin,' a co-commission with the Joffrey Ballet set to a new score by frequent Possokhov collaborator Ilya Demutsky. 'Dancers love dancing his work, and he has a real talent for narrative,' said Rojo of Possokhov, a former principal dancer who began his choreography career at San Francisco Ballet, who Rojo describes as 'one of the most awarded choreographers of our time, respected worldwide.' Alexander Pushkin's classic Russian novel in verse, about a 19th century dandy who plays with two women's hearts and faces intense remorse, is already well-known in the dance world through John Cranko's famous ballet of the same name. But Possokhov, whose version of 'Anna Karenina' toured to the Bay Area with the Joffrey last year and was an audience hit, was passionate about pursuing his unique version of it. 'Yuri is a very emotional man, an artist through and through,' Rojo said. 'I felt that Yuri's passion for this story, the amount of years he had been thinking about it, clarity of his vision for it, means that really, I needed to trust him.' For the classics, Rojo is bringing back Marius Petipa's ' Don Quixote ' (March 19-29), staged by Possokhov and former artistic director Helgi Tomasson, a lively comic ballet that includes some of the canon's most most challenging dancing. It will be followed by the Romantic-era 'La Sylphide' (April 10-16), in the company's existing staging by Tomasson, which honors August Bournonville's light, bounding choreography and presents iconic ballet imagery in its corps of winged fairies. The season will then close April 23-May 3 with a reprise of 'Mere Mortals,' a popular commission from Rojo's first programmed season in 2023 with surreal choreography by Canadian Aszure Barton. Composer and electronic music innovator Sam Shepherd, also known as Floating Points, will return to join the orchestra in performing the work's startling score from the pit. In dancer news, Thamires Chuvas, Dylan Pierzina, Alexis Francisco Valdes and Adrian Zeisel, currently in the corps, will enter the new rank of demi-soloist. Katherine Barkman and Joshua Jack Price, currently soloists, will enter the new rank of first soloist. Rojo said the changed rank system gives 'the opportunity to recognize progression without putting a huge amount of pressure on the individual before they are ready for it.' She added that she was thrilled that the company could extend corps contracts to all six of last year's apprentices, who came up through the San Francisco Ballet School. At the top of the ranks, she has hired three new principal dancers. Francesco Gabriele Frola joins from English National Ballet, Patricio Reve joins from Queensland Ballet, and Madeline Woo previously danced with the Royal Swedish Ballet. The number of dancers will remain roughly steady with 76 company members and six apprentices. 'I'm genuinely in love with the artists in this company,' Rojo said of the roster. 'This past season has been so thrilling, because they've been able to explore so many different styles, many of them new to them. I think their progress has been outstanding in every rank.' The 2026 season will be preceded by the company's traditional 'Nutcracker' run (Dec. 5-28), and by touring engagements at Orange County's Segerstrom Arts Center and the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles.
New York Times
03-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
This Young Virtuoso Now Has the X Factor: Nobility
When Roman Mejia found out he would be dancing 'Apollo,' the oldest work in New York City Ballet's repertory, he knew where to turn for god guidance. A dancer who does his homework — he is, he says, 'such a bunhead' — Mejia had a plan, or a man, in mind: Jacques d'Amboise, a family friend and an athletic, unruly Apollo from the 1950s and '60s whose performances he studied on video, would lead the way. 'His approach was just so raw,' Mejia said after a run-through of the ballet in advance of his debut. 'Essentially at the beginning of the ballet, he is just learning how to become a god. And these muses are here to teach him how to progress and how to get there. So you really see from the beginning that he's almost weak on his feet, trying to figure out things — some things work, some things don't. He gets frustrated.' The fervor of youth? Mejia, 25, has always had that down. But over the last couple of seasons, he has begun to tap into a more understated refinement, which was indelibly clear in his first 'Apollo,' on Tuesday night at Lincoln Center. Mejia went from an unfinished boy to a refined god with the help of his three muses (Unity Phelan, Dominika Afanasenkov and Ashley Hod). He was raw, yes, but also guileless. This was a sincere, musical Apollo — full of heat and strength, but also youthful and unaffected, impulsive and curious. Mejia's control was in the way that he linked the steps with emotions, giving both a logic, a fluidity. Mejia may have muscles — he is, as they say, ripped — but he doesn't muscle his way through steps. Mejia is an airborne dancer whose exuberance shines in joyful Balanchine ballets like 'Stars and Stripes,' 'Rubies' and 'Western Symphony.' But his repertoire, especially in recent seasons, has expanded to roles that require him to be more subtle, more sophisticated. His bravura side is still firmly in place, yet it is buoyed now by a growing sophistication. Mejia, who grew up in Fort Worth, saw 'Apollo' for the first time when he was 3. It might seem unusual that such a young child would fall for such an dramatic yet unadorned Balanchine ballet with music by Stravinsky, but there he was, a toddler, performing the choreography at home. 'My dad has stories of me going around the house just like this,' Mejia said, illustrating a striking moment from the ballet in which Apollo wraps an arm behind his back, the other raised, and opens and closes his hands like blinkers. Both of his parents were dancers — Maria Terezia Balogh and Paul Mejia, a former member of City Ballet who had staged 'Apollo' in Texas. 'At that age,' his father said, 'he would go to the ballet whenever we had a performance, and what was always amazing, whether it was 'Apollo' or whatever he saw, the next day he could duplicate it.' 'It was just uncanny,' he added. Roman was especially proud, Paul Mejia said, 'of the fact that he could do the hand behind the back and in front flashing. He thought that was a neat thing.' While on a visit to the zoo, the young Roman approached another little boy with his new skill. 'He said, 'Look, look — look at this!'' Paul said. 'And he did Apollo, and the little boy started to scream and cry. He thought he was a nut or something.' Mejia started training at 3. 'I was just so inspired by the whole idea of moving to music and taking up space,' he said. When Mejia was 9 or 10, he lost interest in ballet and took a couple of years off, playing the piano and studying taekwondo. (He excelled at that, too.) A couple years later, while in middle school at the Fort Worth Academy of Fine Arts, he learned that a nearby studio needed boys for 'The Nutcracker.' 'I wasn't too crazy about dance, but I was doing it at school so I thought why not?' Mejia said. 'And that's when I really fell back in love with it again. I think it's just the aspect of performing. I really love performing.' He began training at an academy in Coppell, Texas, more than an hour away. 'I'd go with him, and he'd do his class,' Paul said. 'I didn't watch it, nothing. I wanted to stay away from the whole thing. We saw that he was not only serious, but he had a gift.' His parents decided to open a studio themselves. At 13, Roman started training at the Mejia Ballet Academy where he focused on technique and on learning variations, classical and from the Balanchine repertory. At 14, he came to New York for one of two summer sessions at the School of American Ballet, the academy that feeds into City Ballet. Before he started, he learned about his father's history at the company — and that Paul had married Suzanne Farrell, the dancer Balanchine was most enamored with. The marriage led to drama: Paul and Farrell left the company and danced in Europe. But while Farrell eventually made her way back to City Ballet, Paul did not. 'My sister always said, 'Oh, you know, our father was married to Suzanne Farrell,'' Mejia said. 'And I was like: 'No he wasn't. That's crazy.' And she's like, 'Oh yeah, it was all over the internet.'' (A family friend confirmed it at the dinner table one night. 'My sister was, like, 'I told you so,'' he said.) Once Mejia was serious about studying at the School of American Ballet, his father 'sat down with me and kind of gave me the rundown of everything,' he said. There is more family history at the school: Both of his parents studied there along with his paternal grandmother, Romana Kryzanowska, a protégé of Joseph Pilates. Mejia is named after her father, the Detroit artist Roman Kryzanowska. D'Amboise was the reason Mejia ended up at City Ballet. At one point Mejia found himself with an offer to join Boston Ballet or to continue at the school. D'Amboise voted for New York. In 2017, Mejia joined the corps de ballet and was promoted to soloist in 2021. Two years later he became a principal dancer. In the fall of 2023, he performed his first lead in a full-length ballet as a principal: Franz, the male lead in 'Coppélia.' Franz is a comic role with virtuosic elements — Mejia trademarks — but what was most revealing about his performance was the warmth and assurance with which he held the stage, especially in the classical third act. Last winter, performing opposite Tiler Peck — his fiancée — he made his debut as Siegfried in 'Swan Lake' and, again, showed a more nuanced side of his dancing, more grounded and understated. He showed that he could be a prince. For Siegfried, Mejia worked with Gonzalo Garcia, a former principal who is now a repertory director at City Ballet, and Isabelle Guérin, a former Paris Opera Ballet étoile. She showed him, he said, that 'I don't have to always punch things to make them effective.' Garcia, who works frequently with Mejia, was proud of his Siegfried. 'I think becoming that kind of dancer, a noble dancer, can take sometimes a few tries,' he said. 'But from the moment we started until he did his first shows, I was blown away. He understood it.' It has become increasingly apparent that, however thrilling, Mejia has more to offer than virtuosity. This season, he makes his debut in Jerome Robbins's elegant, folk-infused 'A Suite of Dances,' created for Mikhail Baryshnikov in 1994; later he'll take on Balanchine's 'Divertimento from 'Le Baiser de la Fée.'' 'It's fiendishly hard,' he said of 'Baiser.' 'I didn't realize. And it's not bravura at all. That solo is long.' But Mejia, Garcia said, 'never whines' and 'never seems upset, which is kind of amazing.' Mejia got only one crack at 'Apollo' this time around. That was fine. When he describes himself as feeling 'over the moon' — a recurrent Mejia line — he means it. 'I'm ready to be pushed in this new way of not just nuanced work, but telling a story,' he said. 'Apollo is bravura, but a lot of it is so subtle and it's not so in your face. I'm starting to figure out where to play with things now.' When the curtain went up on 'Apollo,' his nerves kicked in, but the music calmed him down. 'I felt so comfortable and at home,' he said. 'It was quite something to perform, and I just feel really lucky that I was able to experience that at this point. Obviously, I feel like here's still more to do and more to grow in it. But in the moment it just felt so right.'
Boston Globe
29-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
Jean-Pierre Bonnefoux, sinuous ballet dancer and choreographer, dies at 82
He had worked briefly with George Balanchine, the co-founder and principal choreographer of City Ballet, at the Paris Opera in 1963, when the company performed Balanchine's 'The Four Temperaments.' Six years later, Balanchine asked Mr. Bonnefoux to replace an injured dancer in the title role of 'Apollo,' which he was staging at the German Opera Ballet in Berlin. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up The four days Mr. Bonnefoux spent with Balanchine, who coached him in the role, were life-changing. 'It gave me the strength to go through 10 more years of dancing,' he told Barbara Newman in an interview for her 1982 book, 'Striking a Balance: Dancers Talk About Dancing.' Advertisement Knowing that 'someone like that exists somewhere,' he said, gave him a goal: 'You need to be amazed all the time, to be fresh, to be interested always.' Mr. Bonnefoux had an additional reason for wanting to join City Ballet. During a guest appearance at a gala with the Eglevsky Ballet on Long Island in 1968, he had fallen for McBride. It was 'love at first sight,' McBride said. 'I had never met anyone like him.' They married in 1973. Advertisement Over his 10-year career with City Ballet, Mr. Bonnefoux performed in a wide range of works, by Balanchine, Jerome Robbins, and other choreographers, which showcased his pure classical technique as well as his aptitude for contemporary movement. 'He was so beautiful physically,' Jean-Pierre Frohlich, a former dancer and a repertory director at City Ballet, said in an interview. 'He had a look that was very different to the dancers here, very sophisticated and elegant.' Although not considered a virtuoso dancer, Mr. Bonnefoux brought a sinuous grace and power to his roles, as well as a sharp theatrical intelligence. 'Mr. Bonnefous shaped the role with a cursive styling that suggested a Japanese woodcut,' Don McDonagh of The New York Times wrote of his performance in Balanchine's 'Bugaku' in 1975. 'He was powerful, but with the litheness of a large cat rather than a blunt muscularity.' Balanchine created roles for Mr. Bonnefoux in 'Stravinsky Violin Concerto' (1972), 'Cortège Hongrois' (1973), 'Sonatine' (1975), 'Union Jack' (1976), 'Étude for Piano' (1977), 'Vienna Waltzes' (1977), and 'Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme' (1979); Robbins created roles for him in 'A Beethoven Pas de Deux' (1973), later known as 'Four Bagatelles,' and 'An Evening's Waltzes' (1973). In 1977, after noticing that there were no dedicated classes for young boys at the School of American Ballet, Mr. Bonnefoux approached Balanchine about teaching there. 'I wanted the young ones here to feel right away like male dancers and understand the technical differences,' he told the Times. That same year, he tore all the ligaments in an ankle while performing. During the enforced rest period that followed, encouraged by Balanchine, he began to choreograph. Advertisement In 1978, he created 'Pas Degas' as part of City Ballet's French-themed evening 'Tricolore.' That year, he also created 'Quadrille' for students at the School of American Ballet and 'Une Nuit a Lisbonne' for the Syracuse Ballet. 'This strange time, when it was supposed to be the end for me,' Mr. Bonnefoux told the Times, 'was finally maybe the richest part of my life.' Jean-Pierre Bonnefoux and his twin sister, Dominique, were born April 9, 1943, in Bourg-en-Bresse, in eastern France, to Marie Therèse (Bouhy) Bonnefoux and Laurent Bonnefoux, a tax adviser. A few years later, the family moved to Paris, where the twins began to take dance classes. Jean-Pierre's teacher suggested that he audition for the Paris Opera Ballet School. While studying there, he also pursued acting, appearing in 'Les Fruits Sauvages' (1954), 'Les Diaboliques' (1955), 'Les Carottes Sont Cuites' (1956) and other films. In 1957, at 14, he joined the Paris Opera Ballet. He moved quickly through the ranks of the company, performing lead roles in 19th-century classics 'Swan Lake,' 'Giselle,' and 'Sleeping Beauty,' as well as in ballets by Roland Petit and Maurice Béjart. Mr. Bonnefoux danced as a guest artist with the Bolshoi Ballet and the Kirov Ballet. He also befriended Rudolf Nureyev and played a part in the Russian dancer's dramatic defection at Paris' Le Bourget airport in 1961. (He telephoned Nureyev's friend Clara Saint to warn her ahead of time that Nureyev was being sent back to Moscow, rather than going on to London with the rest of the Kirov company.) Advertisement But, frustrated by mediocre ballets and infrequent performances at the Paris Opera -- and inspired by Balanchine -- Mr. Bonnefoux decided to leave for City Ballet. Gradually, he absorbed City Ballet style. It was not, he told Newman, 'so much a way of moving; it was more about the contact with the music, how you almost precede the music.' Mr. Bonnefoux retired from City Ballet in 1980. He took the position of ballet master and choreographer at Pittsburgh Ballet Theater and then moved to Bloomington to become head of the dance department at Indiana University. In 1983, he began to run a summer ballet program at the Chautauqua Institution, a gated arts community in the northwestern corner of New York state and the site of the oldest summer arts festival in North America. He brought in prestigious City Ballet alumni including McBride and Violette Verdy to stage Balanchine pieces, formed a professional summer company, and invited a broad variety of choreographers to work with the dancers. 'He was such a good teacher, and he and Patti were a formidable team in Chautauqua,' said Christine Redpath, a former dancer and a repertory director at City Ballet. 'That beautiful French training really fed into his teaching.' By the time he stepped down in 2021, Mr. Bonnefoux had transformed the summer program into one of the country's most coveted destinations for aspiring dancers. 'He had a quiet presence, but behind his soft accent there was clarity, detail, precision and, always, encouragement,' said Daniel Ulbricht, a City Ballet principal. In 1996, Mr. Bonnefoux became the artistic director of what was then called North Carolina Dance Theater, in Charlotte, with McBride as associate artistic director. He remained there until 2017, and the couple transformed the company into a strong classical troupe that was also a vibrant home for contemporary choreography, adding works by Dwight Rhoden, Alonzo King, Paul Taylor, Twyla Tharp, and William Forsythe to the repertoire. Advertisement Mr. Bonnefoux choreographed, too: His ballets included 'Carmina Burana' and versions of 'Sleeping Beauty,' 'Cinderella,' and 'The Nutcracker.' In 2010, the company opened the Patricia McBride and Jean-Pierre Bonnefoux Center for Dance, housing its rehearsal and administrative spaces as well as a 200-seat theater. Four years later, the company was renamed Charlotte Ballet. McBride and Mr. Bonnefoux divorced in 2018, but remained close. He leaves their children, Christopher and Melanie (Bonnefoux) DeCoudres, and three grandchildren. Mr. Bonnefoux's qualities as a director and a teacher were transformative, said Sasha Janes, a former Charlotte Ballet dancer who succeeded him as director of the School of Dance at Chautauqua. 'He could see things in people they couldn't see in themselves,' Janes said. 'He wasn't interested in cookie-cutter perfect dancers; he wanted to see humanity on stage.' This article originally appeared in
New York Times
28-04-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Jean-Pierre Bonnefoux, Sinuous Ballet Dancer and Choreographer, Dies at 82
Jean-Pierre Bonnefoux, a star dancer at the Paris Opera Ballet and an elegantly refined principal dancer at New York City Ballet who later nurtured generations of dancers as a teacher and as the director of the Charlotte Ballet, died on April 13 in Charlotte, N.C. He was 82. His ex-wife, the former City Ballet ballerina Patricia McBride, said the cause of his death, at an assisted-living facility, was heart failure. Mr. Bonnefoux (pronounced bon-FOO) — or Bonnefous, the name he used professionally during his dancing career — had been an étoile (the word means 'star') at the Paris Opera Ballet for five years when, at 27, he joined City Ballet as a principal dancer in 1970. He had worked briefly with George Balanchine, the co-founder and principal choreographer of City Ballet, at the Paris Opera in 1963, when the company performed Balanchine's 'The Four Temperaments.' Six years later, Balanchine asked Mr. Bonnefoux to replace an injured dancer in the title role of 'Apollo,' which he was staging at the German Opera Ballet in Berlin. The four days Mr. Bonnefoux spent with Balanchine, who coached him in the role, were life-changing. 'It gave me the strength to go through 10 more years of dancing,' he told Barbara Newman in an interview for her 1982 book, 'Striking a Balance: Dancers Talk About Dancing.' Knowing that 'someone like that exists somewhere,' he said, gave him a goal: 'You need to be amazed all the time, to be fresh, to be interested always.' Mr. Bonnefoux had an additional reason for wanting to join City Ballet. During a guest appearance at a gala with the Eglevsky Ballet on Long Island in 1968, he had fallen for Ms. McBride. It was 'love at first sight,' Ms. McBride said. 'I had never met anyone like him.' They married in 1973. Over his 10-year career with City Ballet, Mr. Bonnefoux performed in a wide range of works, by Balanchine, Jerome Robbins and other choreographers, which showcased his pure classical technique as well as his aptitude for contemporary movement. 'He was so beautiful physically,' Jean-Pierre Frohlich, a former dancer and a repertory director at City Ballet, said in an interview. 'He had a look that was very different to the dancers here, very sophisticated and elegant.' Although not considered a virtuoso dancer, Mr. Bonnefoux brought a sinuous grace and power to his roles, as well as a sharp theatrical intelligence. 'Mr. Bonnefous shaped the role with a cursive styling that suggested a Japanese woodcut,' Don McDonagh of The New York Times wrote of his performance in Balanchine's 'Bugaku' in 1975. 'He was powerful, but with the litheness of a large cat rather than a blunt muscularity.' Mr. McDonagh added that his reading of the role 'gave it a tactile grace that one sees in well‐formed sculpture.' Balanchine created roles for Mr. Bonnefoux in 'Stravinsky Violin Concerto' (1972), 'Cortège Hongrois' (1973), 'Sonatine' (1975), 'Union Jack' (1976), 'Étude for Piano' (1977), 'Vienna Waltzes' (1977) and 'Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme' (1979); Robbins created roles for him in 'A Beethoven Pas de Deux' (1973), later known as 'Four Bagatelles,' and 'An Evening's Waltzes' (1973). In 1977, after noticing that there were no dedicated classes for young boys at the School of American Ballet, Mr. Bonnefoux approached Balanchine about teaching there. 'I wanted the young ones here to feel right away like male dancers and understand the technical differences,' he told The Times. That same year, he tore all the ligaments in an ankle while performing. During the enforced rest period that followed, encouraged by Balanchine, he began to choreograph. In 1978, he created 'Pas Degas' as part of City Ballet's French-themed evening 'Tricolore.' ('I have a few things I will have to tell you for your next ballet,' Balanchine remarked after the premiere.) That year, he also created 'Quadrille' for students at the School of American Ballet and 'Une Nuit a Lisbonne' for the Syracuse Ballet. 'This strange time, when it was supposed to be the end for me,' Mr. Bonnefoux told The Times, 'was finally maybe the richest part of my life.' Jean-Pierre Bonnefoux and his twin sister, Dominique, were born on April 9, 1943, in Bourg-en-Bresse, in eastern France, to Marie Therèse (Bouhy) Bonnefoux and Laurent Bonnefoux, a tax adviser. A few years later, the family moved to Paris, where the twins began to take dance classes. Jean-Pierre's teacher suggested that he audition for the Paris Opera Ballet School. While studying there, he also pursued acting, appearing in 'Les Fruits Sauvages' (1954), 'Les Diaboliques' (1955), 'Les Carottes Sont Cuites' (1956) and other films. 'At one point, I really didn't know what to do between dance and acting,' he told Ms. Newman. His parents consulted 'an Indian man, a Hindu, one who could see the future,' he recalled. 'He said very good things about what I would do in ballet.' In 1957, at 14, he joined the Paris Opera Ballet, then directed by Serge Lifar, a Kyiv-born former star of the Ballets Russes. He disliked Lifar's ballets but loved his teachers, Gérard Mulys, Raymond Franchetti and Serge Peretti, whose examples would later give him a foundation for teaching. He moved quickly through the ranks of the company, becoming an étoile at 21 and performing lead roles in 19th-century classics like 'Swan Lake,' 'Giselle' and 'Sleeping Beauty,' as well as in ballets by Roland Petit and Maurice Béjart. (Étoile is the only title at the Paris Opera that is bestowed at the discretion of the management.) Mr. Bonnefoux danced as a guest artist with the Bolshoi Ballet and the Kirov Ballet. He also befriended Rudolf Nureyev and played a part in the Russian dancer's dramatic defection at Paris's Le Bourget airport in 1961. (He telephoned Nureyev's friend Clara Saint to warn her ahead of time that Nureyev was being sent back to Moscow, rather than going on to London with the rest of the Kirov company.) But, frustrated by mediocre ballets and infrequent performances at the Paris Opera — and inspired by Balanchine — Mr. Bonnefoux decided to leave for City Ballet. Gradually, he absorbed City Ballet style. It was not, he told Ms. Newman, 'so much a way of moving; it was more about the contact with the music, how you almost precede the music.' Mr. Bonnefoux retired from City Ballet in 1980. He took the position of ballet master and choreographer at Pittsburgh Ballet Theater and then moved to Bloomington, Ind., to become head of the dance department at Indiana University. In 1983, he began to run a summer ballet program at the Chautauqua Institution, a gated arts community in the northwestern corner of New York State and the site of the oldest summer arts festival in North America. He brought in prestigious City Ballet alumni like Ms. McBride and Violette Verdy to stage Balanchine pieces, formed a professional summer company and invited a broad variety of choreographers to work with the dancers. 'He was such a good teacher, and he and Patti were a formidable team in Chautauqua,' said Christine Redpath, a former dancer and a repertory director at City Ballet. 'That beautiful French training really fed into his teaching.' By the time he stepped down in 2021, Mr. Bonnefoux had transformed the summer program into one of the country's most coveted destinations for aspiring dancers. 'He had a quiet presence, but behind his soft accent there was clarity, detail, precision and, always, encouragement,' said Daniel Ulbricht, a City Ballet principal. 'He was part of the reason why I, and many other dancers, were ready to make that commitment to pursuing a career.' In 1996, Mr. Bonnefoux became the artistic director of what was then called North Carolina Dance Theater, in Charlotte, with Ms. McBride as associate artistic director. He remained there until 2017, and the couple transformed the company into a strong classical troupe that was also a vibrant home for contemporary choreography, adding works by Dwight Rhoden, Alonzo King, Paul Taylor, Twyla Tharp and William Forsythe to the repertoire, as well staging pieces by Balanchine and Robbins. Mr. Bonnefoux choreographed, too: His ballets included 'Carmina Burana,' 'Peter Pan' and versions of 'Sleeping Beauty,' 'Cinderella' and 'The Nutcracker.' In 2010, the company opened the Patricia McBride and Jean-Pierre Bonnefoux Center for Dance, housing its rehearsal and administrative spaces as well as a 200-seat theater. Four years later, the company was renamed Charlotte Ballet. Ms. McBride and Mr. Bonnefoux divorced in 2018, but remained close. He is survived by their children, Christopher Bonnefoux and Melanie (Bonnefoux) DeCoudres, and three grandchildren. Mr. Bonnefoux's qualities as a director and a teacher were transformative, said Sasha Janes, a former Charlotte Ballet dancer who succeeded Mr. Bonnefoux as director of the School of Dance at Chautauqua. 'He could see things in people they couldn't see in themselves,' Mr. Janes said, adding that Mr. Bonnefoux was ahead of his time: 'He wasn't interested in cookie-cutter perfect dancers; he wanted to see humanity on stage.'
