Olivier Patey
Olivier Patey began his career in 1966 at the Paris National Opera Ballet School. A student of Christiane Vaussard, Raymond Franchetti and then Gilbert Mayer and Alexandre Kalioujny, he joined the corps de ballet of the Opéra National de Paris in 1973, first in his class. Alicia Alonso, George Balanchine, Yuri Grigorovitch, Jérôme Robbins and Pierre Lacotte, guest choreographers, immediately chose him to perform solo roles. In 1976, Roland Petit created for him the role of Georges Hugon in his Ballet Nana.
Among her partners at the Opera: Dominique Khalfouni, Karen Kain, Wilfride Piollet, Ghislaine Thesmar, Elisabeth Platel, Sylvie Guillem, Monique Loudières, Marie-Claude Pietragalla, Yannick Stéphant…
In 1983, after numerous roles including Sylvia, La Sylphide, Vaslaw, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Etudes, Don Quixote, Romeo and Juliet, and creations by choreographers such as Alvin Nikolaïs, John Neumeier, Karole Armitage, he was appointed Premier Danseur. Rudolf Nureyev, Director of Dance, entrusted him with the roles of Frantz in Coppélia and the young man in Serge Lifar’s Les Mirages. He also created the main male role in Anthony Tudor’s Jardin aux lilas at the Opera.
From 1981, the date of his first choreography for Marie-Claude Pietragalla at the Opéra-Comique in Paris, he created ballets that later entered the repertoire of major companies (notably Histoire du Soldat for the National Ballet of Cuba in 1996).
Since 1983, he has organised and produced tours all over the world (Madagascar, India, Nigeria, Japan, Latin America, Spain, etc.). From 1988, the Association Française d’Action Artistique (now the Institut Français) has called on him to carry out tours, missions and choreographic residencies abroad (Syria, Paraguay, Cuba, Indonesia, Chile, Mexico, Argentina, Ukraine, Romania, Russia, etc.).
In 1997, after new creations for the Opera with Lucinda Childs, Mark Morris and Daniel Larrieu, he left the Opéra National de Paris to embark on an international freelance career.
In 2000 he was appointed Assistant Director of the Ballet of the Staatstheater Braunschweig in the Federal Republic of Germany, he then collaborated with the German opera houses of Rostock, Düsseldorf, Dresden, Eisenach, Chemnitz… He also sits on various juries of international competitions (Rome, Osaka, Kiev, Budapest, Novossibirsk, Istanbul).
Since 2001 he has been invited for master-classes: Compañia Nacional de Danza de Mexico, Kiev National Opera, Korean National University of Arts in Seoul and South Korea National Ballet, Perm State Opera Ballet in Russia, Perm Ballet School, Belgrade National Theatre Ballet, among others.
In 2004 he created two ballets: Calatori in Infern and Patetica for the Bucharest National Opera Ballet. In 2007 he taught at the Novosibirsk State Theatre Ballet in Russia and at the Scottish Ballet in Glasgow. In 2009, Nina Ananiashvili, star of the Bolshoi Ballet and the American Ballet Theatre, invited her to Tbilisi to give master classes at the Z. Paliashvili National Opera Ballet, which she has directed since 2004. Paliashvili National Opera Ballet, which she has directed since 2004.
In 2010, he teaches at the Béjart Ballet Lausanne and the Wielki Theatre in Warsaw. In 2011 and 2012, he was invited to the National Theatre of Macedonia in Skopje, in Astana in Kazhakstan, in Russia in Ufa, Perm, Novosibirsk and Sochi. In 2013, he was invited again to Perm and Astrakhan in Russia and Tbilisi in Georgia.
In 2017, he was invited by Yuri Grigorovitch to join the Jury of the Moscow International Competition. In 2018, he gives Master Classes at the Perm Ballet, co-chairs the Jury of the Krasnoyarsk International Competition with Vyacheslav Gordeev. In 2019 Altynai Asylmuratova invites him to Nursultan to teach at the Kazhak National Ballet and in September he joins Maestro Grigorovitch again for the Sochi Competition.
It is on his initiative that Pathé-Live provides live broadcasts of the Bolshoi ballets to more than a thousand cinemas around the world.
Olivier Patey is a member of the SACD (Society of Dramatic Authors and Composers), a member of the International Dance Council of UNESCO. He was named Chevalier des Arts et Lettres in November 1996.