Hommage à Patrick Dupond

In homage to Patrick Dupond, who passed away in 2021, the Paris Opera Ballet celebrates the artist who, throughout a dazzling and luminous career, embodied the face of the Company on every continent. Internationally renowned, trained at the Opera’s Ballet School, dancer Étoile in 1980, then Director of Dance at the Paris Opera from 1990 to 1995, Patrick Dupond danced and shone for the major choreographers of his time. Following the “Défilé”, which brings together all the dancers, from the School’s pupils to the Étoiles, Béjart’s Le Chant du compagnon errant (Song of the Wandering Companion) is a moving “pas de deux” that Patrick Dupond danced with his great friend Jean‑Marie Didière as well as with Nureyev. Neumeier’s Vaslaw, a work constructed around Patrick Dupond, celebrates the memory of another great dancer, Nijinsky. Études is a virtuoso synthesis of classical technique: with this ballet, dear to his heart, and which he often programmed as the Company’s director, the Paris Opera pays tribute to this immense figure of dance.