French ballet master and choreographer, member of the management of the National Opera Ballet in Paris. He has been affiliated with this theatre for over fifty years. He was a student and one of the leading soloists of the ballet company, and with time was appointed ballet master and became a member of the ballet management.

   He was born in Paris. He was 12 years old when he took his first steps at the Paris Opera Ballet School in 1957, but just two years later was accepted into the corps de ballet. He was not yet 15 at the time, so he was hired on the basis of a special permit. He became a coryphée in 1963 and also won the René Blum Prize as the most promising young French dancer. He was already the Paris ballet company's principal dancer when he won a Gold Medal at the 1st International Ballet Competition in Moscow in 1969, dancing the pas de deux from Maurice Béjart's ballet Bhakti with Francesca Zumbo.
 
   In 1972 he appeared as Prince Siegfried in Swan Lake and received the prestigious French title of "danseur étoile", thus joining the leading stars of the Paris Opera Ballet. He received the Prix Nijinski in 1974, an award granted to outstanding dancers by the Université de la Danse in Paris under Serge Lifar's leadership.

   He performed many leading roles from the Paris ballet repertoire: Prince Désiré in The Sleeping Beauty, Basilio in Don Quixote, the title roles in Fokin's Petrushka and Balanchine's The Prodigal Son. He was also the first performer of solo parts in new ballets by Serge Lifar (Constellations, 1969), Roland Petit (Mouvances, 1976), Kenneth MacMillan (Métaboles, 1978), and Rudolf Nureyev (Rothbart in his production of Swan Lake, 1984). He became famous as a dancer with excellent technique (Pas de six in Bournonville's Napoli and solo in Saint-Léon's La Vivandière), a brilliant partner (in Le Corsaire and in Balanchine's Palais de Crystal), but also as an artist of great comic talent (Lacotte's Coppélia based on Saint-Léon and Spoerl's La Fille Mal Gardée).

   He ended his dancing career in 1986, but continued to appear on stage in character parts for three more years. From then on, though, his used his passion for ballet and his knowledge of the repertoire in his new role of ballet master, working with dancers. At first he was a ballet coach, and has been a ballet master since 1987. He worked closely with Eugène Polyakov on the ballet company's artistic organization, until Rudolf Nureyev's tenure as director of the Paris Opera Ballet ended in November 1989. He was also a member of the ballet company's management in 1990.

   He won recognition for his active contribution to maintaining the high standard of the Paris Opera Ballet and preserving its great tradition. In 1991 he and Eugène Polyakov prepared a revival of the classic version of Giselle for the 150th anniversary of the world premiere. He was certainly familiar with the work, having danced the part of Prince Albert in Giselle in different versions and on many stages, including London where he was a regular guest dancer of the London Festival Ballet in 1970-1982. In 1992 he was Rudolf Nureyev's assistant during his famous production of La Bayadère at the Paris Opera.

   Since 1993 he has been invited by leading European ballet companies as an independent producer of classic ballet works and a designer of choreographies. He debuted in 1993 with a production of Don Quixote at Berlin's Staatsoper, reviving this version in 1995 with the Finnish National Ballet in Helsinki. In 1996 he staged Giselle at Milan's La Scala and Coppélia at the Paris Opera. In 1997 he presented his own version of Swan Lake with the Staatsballett of Berlin and prepared La Bayadère with the Bayerisches Staatsballett in Munich.

   In 1999 he designed his first original choreography, Verdiana with music selected from the operas of Giuseppe Verdi, and staged The Nutcracker with the Berliner Staatsballett, followed by Giselle with the same company a year later. In 2001 he presented Verdiana with the ballet company of the Teatro Comunale in Florence. In 2002 he retuned to the Staatsballett of Berlin to produce his own version of Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet, and in 2003 showed his next original ballet at the Paris Opera, La Petite Danseuse de Degas with original music by Denis Levaillant. His next original ballet was Tchaikovsky in 2005, prepared with the Finnish National Ballet in Helsinki. He was invited by the Royal Swedish Ballet in 2008 to produce a huge historical ballet show called Gustav III with music by Carl Maria von Weber and Joseph Martin Kraus.

   Before he accepted Director Waldemar Dąbrowski's invitation to prepare the world premiere of a new ballet, Chopin, with the Polish National Ballet in Warsaw, he once again appeared at the Staatsballett in 2009 to stage his original show based on the life and experiences of the English Romantic poet Percy Shelley, Das Flammende Herz, with music by Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy.

   Patrice Bart has received the following high French honours: Officier de l'Ordre des Arts et Lettres, Officier de l'Ordre National du Mérite, Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur.

Photo: Colette Masson