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Petit, Roland (b Villemomble, 13 Jan. 1924). French dancer, choreographer, and ballet director. He studied with Lifar and at the Paris Opera Ballet School from 1934, and entered the Paris Opera Ballet in 1940. Only four years later, however, he left to strike out on his own. He danced in the Vendredis de la Danse at the Théâtre Sarah-Bernhardt in 1944 (in works he choreographed himself) and the following year was one of the founders (with Boris Kochno and Christian Bérard) of the Ballets des Champs-Elysées, which featured Petit in the role of leading dancer and chief choreographer. Three years later he formed the Ballets de Paris, where again he was the star attraction. Petit took both companies on extensive tours, in France and abroad. His 1949 London staging of Carmen brought him to international attention. Ballets de Paris was eventually disbanded, but it was periodically brought back to life in order to present Petit's newest choreography. A product of the rigorous classical school, he was none the less a consummate showman who was just as happy working in revues, films, and television. From 1970 to 1975 he owned and directed the Casino de Paris, staging revues which starred his wife, Zizi Jeanmaire. For a few months in 1970 he was dance director of the Paris Opera Ballet. In 1972 he finally settled, becoming director and chief choreographer of the newly founded Ballet National de Marseilles, where he remained for the next 25 years. One of the most prolific and fashionable of 20th-century French choreographers, Petit always favoured glamour and style in his creations which were often sexually brazen and theatrically vibrant. His Carmen (which starred himself and his wife), so sexually explicit in its day, was a landmark in French ballet, while his 1946 work, Le Jeune Homme et la mort, in which a young man hangs himself, was no less shocking for a different reason. At Marseilles he concentrated on making full-length ballets, although none of them have entered the international repertoire. A list of the ballets he made for his own companies includes Les Forains (mus. Sauguet, 1945), Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe (mus. Lanner, Tcherepnin, 1945), Le Jeune Homme et la mort (mus. Bach, 1946), Le Bal des blanchisseuses (mus. V. Duke, 1946), Les Demoiselles de la nuit (mus. Françaix, 1948), Carmen (mus. Bizet, 1949), La Croqueuse de diamants (mus. Damase, 1950), Le Loup (mus. Dutilleux, 1953), Deuil en 24 heures (mus. M. Thiriet, 1953), La Chambre (mus. Auric, 1955), Cyrano de Bergerac (mus. Constant, 1959, Petit's first full-length ballet), Les Chants de Maldoror (mus. M. Jarre, 1962), Pink Floyd Ballet (mus. Pink Floyd, 1972), La Rose malade (mus. Mahler, 1973), La Dame de pique (mus. Tchaikovsky, 1978), La Chauve-souris (mus. J. Strauss, 1979), and Les Contes d'Hoffmann (mus. Offenbach, 1982). For the Paris Opera he made the full-length Notre-Dame de Paris (mus. M. Jarre, 1965, with himself as Quasimodo), Turangalila (mus. Messiaen, 1968), Shéhérazade (mus. Ravel, 1974), La Symphonie fantastique (mus. Berlioz, 1975), La Nuit transfigurée (mus. Schoenberg, 1976), Nana (mus. Constant, 1976), Le Fantôme de l'Opéra (mus. Landowski, 1980), Passacaille (mus. Webern, 1994), Rythme de Valses (mus. Johann Strauss II, 1994), Camera Obscura (mus. Schoenberg, 1994), Le Guépard (The Leopard, 1995), and Clavigo (mus. Gabriel Yared, 1999). In 1990 he staged his own Sleeping Beauty, with Jeanmaire as Carabosse. For Sadler's Wells Ballet he made Ballabile (mus. Chabrier, 1950); for the Royal Ballet he made Paradise Lost (mus. Constant, 1967, with Fonteyn and Nureyev) and Pelléas et Mélisande (mus. Schoenberg, 1969). For the National Ballet of Canada he created Kraanerg (mus. Xenakis, 1969) and for Berlin Opera Ballet he created Blue Angel (mus. Constant, 1985). He provided the choreography for several Hollywood films including Hans Christian Andersen (1952), Daddy Long Legs (1955), Glass Slipper (1954), and Anything Goes (1956). The 1960 film Black Tights (Les Collants noirs) featured shortened versions of four of Petit's ballets. Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur, 1974.

1924–, French dancer and choreographer, b. Villemoble. Petit joined the Paris Opéra company at 15 and in 1948 founded Les Ballets de Paris de Roland Petit. His best-known work, Carmen (1949), set to music from Georges Bizet's opera, was created for his company, with Renée (Zizi) Jeanmaire, who later (1954) became his wife, in the title role. Other well-known early works include Le Jeune homme et la mort (1946) and Ballabile (1950). Petit later turned to less classical forms, such as choreographing films, e.g., Hans Christian Andersen (1952) and Daddy Long Legs (1955), and music hall revues (1956–61). He returned to ballet in the 1960s when commissioned to present the Festivals populaires de ballet at the Chaillot theater in France. In 1972 he founded the Ballet de Marseilles, which he directed until 1997. Among his later dances are Symphonie Fantastique (1975), The Blue Angel (1985), and Clavigo (1999). Petit's chic and theatrical style have made him an extremely popular figure in French dance.

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