From rififi to the Opera ballet: the promotion competition in question

Each year, the ballet of the Opéra national de Paris (ONP) organizes an internal promotion competition, open to the institution's 154 dancers. The latter consists of a classical variation imposed on the dancer and a free variation. Each dancer can thus, if they succeed, access the higher grade in the hierarchy of the corps de ballet. The ONP is the only company in the world to have practiced this competition, a guarantee for some of its excellence, while others see it as an outdated practice and a source of stress. A quarrel which has agitated the Opera for several years, but which has intensified since 2022 and the appointment of the new director José Carlos Martínez. Some are campaigning for its removal, even if this competition remains useful for some, as Laura Cappelle explains:

“There is a stress when you are in competition in front of your direction which is not the same as that on stage, which means that certain dancers are paralyzed by this and are less good in competition than they are on stage. stage, where they can free themselves in their roles At the same time, for the lowest ranks of the company, when you have just joined the corps de ballet or have remained in the corps de ballet, you have little. opportunities to dance roles soloist Generally, the competition is also a way for dancers who are not seen to present great variations, to show qualities.

News of the day

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• The novel by Marceau Millera novel written under a pseudonym and which will be published on January 17 by La Martinière has not even been published yet but is arousing the enthusiasm of European publishers since it was pre-empted in Spain, acquired at auction in the Netherlands, under offer in Germany. Presented at the last Frankfurt Book Fair, publishers spotted the potential of this “page-turner” whose plot takes place near Lake Geneva and concerns a manuscript left by a novelist after his death in which he reveals all the lies that allowed him to achieve success.