Union representatives of the Paris Opera Ballet (POB) are calling for the abolition of the internal promotion competition for dancers. For the first time, the annual examination, which allows dancers to reach the next rank in the hierarchy of the corps de ballet, has been partially postponed.
Since 1860, the competition for internal promotions has been held at the Palais Garnier, which allows the dancers of the Paris Opera to reach the next grade: from quadrille to coryphée to sujet to premier danseur – only the étoiles are nominated by the company director.
Each dancer presents a compulsory classical variation and a variation of their choice in front of a jury of ten, composed of the director of the ballet company, his maître de ballet adjoint, the director of the Paris Opera, two external judges and five dancers from the company.
Already in 2014, when Benjamin Millepied took over as director of the POB, he had said that “this competition, which is not practised in any other company in the world, puts the dancers in a state of absolute stress”. This view was shared by Laurent Hilaire, who was the assistant ballet master.
On the other hand, former dancer Bruno Bouché, now director of the Ballet of the Opéra national du Rhin, says, “In the very first years, when I was quadrille or coryphée, dwarfed by the mass of the ballet’s 150 dancers, I was happy for this opportunity – it allowed me to progress and show all my potential and my commitment on stage.” Brigitte Lefèvre, a former director, believes that the competition allows us to “identify artists that we had not seen (…) It gives ideas for distributing them.”
Alexander Neef, the director of the Paris Opera, and José Martinez, the current director of POB, have set themselves the task “to define, before 1 June 2025, a permanent promotion process which will ensure equity and diversity of career paths within the Paris Opera Ballet“. The current “transitory and experimental decisions” will be followed by “discussions with the dancers, the management and trade unions”, said the POB.
Last year, Martinez decided on promotions from sujets to premiers danseurs himself.
Visits by tourists to the Palais Garnier this Saturday, 16 November, will be suspended while the selection of 11 coryphées takes place (6 women and 5 men). Of the 154 in the company, only the 55 quadrilles will be seen for the chance to be promoted to coryphées. The women will dance the pizzicato variation from Raymonda, and the men the variation from Gsovsky’s Grand pas Classique. The dancers go on in alphabetical order starting with a letter drawn at random.
The POB said that the “internal promotion for sujets to premières danseuses and premiers danseurs and for coryphées to sujets will be defined by the Management, in close collaboration with the dancers’s representatives, by 15 December 2024″.
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Graham Spicer, aka ‘Gramilano’, is a writer, director and photographer based in Milan. He was a regular columnist for Opera Now magazine and wrote for the BBC until transferring to Italy. His articles have appeared in various publications from Woman’s Weekly to Gay Times, and he wrote the Danza in Italia column for Dancing Times magazine. Graham was the historical advisor on Codice Carla, the 2023 documentary on Carla Fracci.
