Principal Dancer at the Paris Opera Ballet
As she starts dancing in her hometown Caen, Marie-Agnès Gillot enters the Paris Opera Ballet School in 1985. First years later, she is admitted early in the Corps de Ballet. After being finalist at the 15th Varna International Dance Competition in 1992, she is promoted Sujet in 1994, First Soloist in 1999, and is nominated as Principal Dancer after a representation of Carolyn Carlson’s Signes on March, 18th 2004, thus becoming the first dancer nominated on a contemporary piece. Marie-Agnès Gillot, while being a perfect performer in classical ballets, is indeed very much requested by contemporary choreographers. Mixing strength and frailty, she can be either the femme fatale (L’Etrangère in Clavigo by Roland Petit or The Melody in Béjart’s Bolero), a romantic character (Catherine in Wuthering Heights by Kader Belarbi or the Pina Bausch’s Eurydice), cruel (Médée in Le Songe de Médée y Angelin Prejlocaj), free and sassy (The Maid in Mats Ek’s La Maison de Bernarda). A virtuosity she has also given to Edouard Lock (AndréAuria), Wayne McGRegor (Genus, L’Anatomie de la Sensation), Benjamin Millepied (Triade), Jiři Kylián (Kaguyahime), William Forsythe (The Vertiginous Thrill of Exactitude, Approximate Sonata), Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and Damien Jalet (Boléro), and many more… For Sophie Calle, who represents France at the Venice Biennale in 2007, she interprets Prenez soin de vous and dances in Swan, a piece by Luc Petton created at the Théâtre National de Chaillot in June 2012.
Marie-Agnès Gillot plays with her taste for eclecticism in the choreographic field. She has thus created small pieces presented at the Paris Opera for charity events and has got recognized for her Rare Differences, created in 2007 for three dancers, two of them being hip hop performers, at the Suresnes Cités Danse. With this autobiographic piece, Marie-Agnès Gillot takes here inspiration from Rodin’s work by shaping the material on the dancers themselves. She has also created ART ERE, on Serguei Rachmaninov’s Trio élégiaque, for the Junior Classical Ballet of the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse in Paris in 2009. Eventually, in 2011, she performs two pieces with Alice Renavand at the Royan Festival « Un Violon sur le sable » : Blanche marine, choreographed on Aquarium, an extract from Camille Saint-Saëns’s Carnaval des Animaux, and Black Back on Mozart’s Concerto pour clarinette. In October 2012, her first creation for the Paris Opera Ballet, Sous Apparence, is presented on stage.
Numerous reruns (Palais de Cristal by George Balanchine, Orphée et Eurydice by Pina Bausch, La Nuit Transfigurée by Anna Theresa de Keersmaker) and creations (for Benjamin Millepied or Wayne McGregor in 2015, and for Crystal Pite in 2016) have been added to her repertoire since.
In November 2009 she creates a flashmob for the association La Chaine de l’Espoir, under the Louvre Pyramide. She is also involved in the association ICCARRE, for which she creates a duet with Blanca Li in December 2014 at the Maison Jean-Paul Gaultier.
After music vidos for REM and Benjamin Biolay, she has danced with Marianne Faithful, Katia or Murielle Labèque, or for the annual show of Les Enfoirés.
She has also appeared in plays and movies with Pippo Delbono and is the spokesperson for several luxury brands such as Celine or Repetto.
Two of her art pieces are exhibited at the Palais the Tokyo in Paris. She has created TU ES for the 2016 Nuit Blanche, on Ravel’s Boléro, a duet she has created and danced with movements inspired from her work with the inmates of the Maison centrale d’arrêt d’Arles.
She officially leaves the Paris Opera Ballet on March, 31th 2018 after performing in Pina Bausch’s Orphée et Eurydice.
She holds several national honors, such as the Légion d’Honneur, the Ordre du Mérite and the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.