Jean-Pierre Bonnefoux, a star dancer with the Paris Opera Ballet and an elegantly refined principal dancer with New York Metropolis Ballet who later nurtured generations of dancers as a instructor and because the director of the Charlotte Ballet, died on April 13 in Charlotte, N.C. He was 82.
His ex-wife, the previous Metropolis Ballet ballerina Patricia McBride, mentioned the reason for his demise, at an assisted-living facility, was coronary heart failure.
Mr. Bonnefoux (pronounced bon-FOO) — or Bonnefous, the identify he used professionally throughout his dancing profession — had been an étoile (the phrase means “star”) on the Paris Opera Ballet for 5 years when, at 27, he joined Metropolis Ballet as a principal dancer in 1970.
He had labored briefly with George Balanchine, the co-founder and principal choreographer of Metropolis Ballet, on the Paris Opera in 1963, when the corporate carried out Balanchine’s “The 4 Temperaments.” Six years later, Balanchine requested Mr. Bonnefoux to exchange an injured dancer within the title position of “Apollo,” which he was staging on the German Opera Ballet in Berlin.
The 4 days Mr. Bonnefoux spent with Balanchine, who coached him within the position, have been life-changing. “It gave me the power to undergo 10 extra years of dancing,” he informed Barbara Newman in an interview for her 1982 e-book, “Placing a Steadiness: Dancers Speak About Dancing.”
Realizing that “somebody like that exists someplace,” he mentioned, gave him a purpose: “That you must be amazed on a regular basis, to be recent, to have an interest all the time.”
Mr. Bonnefoux had an extra motive for wanting to affix Metropolis Ballet. Throughout a visitor look at a gala with the Eglevsky Ballet on Lengthy Island in 1968, he had fallen for Ms. McBride. It was “love at first sight,” Ms. McBride mentioned. “I had by no means met anybody like him.” They married in 1973.
Over his 10-year profession with Metropolis Ballet, Mr. Bonnefoux carried out in a variety of works, by Balanchine, Jerome Robbins and different choreographers, which showcased his pure classical method in addition to his aptitude for modern motion.
“He was so stunning bodily,” Jean-Pierre Frohlich, a former dancer and a repertory director at Metropolis Ballet, mentioned in an interview. “He had a glance that was very totally different to the dancers right here, very subtle and stylish.”
Though not thought of a virtuoso dancer, Mr. Bonnefoux introduced a sinuous grace and energy to his roles, in addition to a pointy theatrical intelligence.
“Mr. Bonnefous formed the position with a cursive styling that steered a Japanese woodcut,” Don McDonagh of The New York Occasions wrote of his efficiency in Balanchine’s “Bugaku” in 1975. “He was highly effective, however with the litheness of a giant cat reasonably than a blunt muscularity.”
Balanchine created roles for Mr. Bonnefoux in “Stravinsky Violin Concerto” (1972), “Cortège Hongrois” (1973), “Sonatine” (1975), “Union Jack” (1976), “Étude for Piano” (1977), “Vienna Waltzes” (1977) and “Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme” (1979); Robbins created roles for him in “A Beethoven Pas de Deux” (1973), later referred to as “4 Bagatelles,” and “An Night’s Waltzes” (1973).
In 1977, after noticing that there have been no devoted courses for boys on the Faculty of American Ballet, Mr. Bonnefoux approached Balanchine about instructing there. “I needed the younger ones right here to really feel instantly like male dancers and perceive the technical variations,” he informed The Occasions.
That very same yr, he tore all of the ligaments in an ankle whereas performing. Through the enforced relaxation interval that adopted, inspired by Balanchine, he started to choreograph.
In 1978, Mr. Bonnefoux created “Pas Degas” as a part of Metropolis Ballet’s French-themed night “Tricolore.” (“I’ve just a few issues I must inform you on your subsequent ballet,” Balanchine remarked after the premiere.) That yr, he additionally created “Quadrille” for college kids on the Faculty of American Ballet and “Une Nuit a Lisbonne” for the Syracuse Ballet.
“This unusual time, when it was imagined to be the top for me,” Mr. Bonnefoux informed The Occasions, “was lastly perhaps the richest a part of my life.”
Jean-Pierre Bonnefoux and his twin sister, Dominique, have been born on April 9, 1943, in Bourg-en-Bresse, in japanese France, to Marie Therèse (Bouhy) Bonnefoux and Laurent Bonnefoux, a tax adviser. Just a few years later, the household moved to Paris, the place the twins started to take dance courses.
Jean-Pierre’s instructor steered that he audition for the Paris Opera Ballet Faculty. Whereas learning there, he additionally pursued appearing, showing in numerous French movies, together with Henri-Georges Clouzot’s “Les Diaboliques” (1955).
“At one level, I actually didn’t know what to do between dance and appearing,” he informed Ms. Newman.
His dad and mom consulted “an Indian man, a Hindu, one who may see the long run,” he recalled. “He mentioned superb issues about what I might do in ballet.”
In 1957, at 14, he joined the Paris Opera Ballet, then directed by Serge Lifar, a Kyiv-born former star of the Ballets Russes. He disliked Lifar’s ballets however liked his lecturers, Gérard Mulys, Raymond Franchetti and Serge Peretti, whose examples would later give him a basis for instructing.
Mr. Bonnefoux rose rapidly within the firm, turning into an étoile at 21 and performing lead roles in Nineteenth-century classics like “Swan Lake,” “Giselle” and “Sleeping Magnificence,” in addition to in ballets by Roland Petit and Maurice Béjart. (Étoile is the one title on the Paris Opera that’s bestowed on the discretion of the administration.)
Mr. Bonnefoux danced as a visitor artist with the Bolshoi Ballet and the Kirov Ballet. He additionally befriended Rudolf Nureyev and performed an element within the Russian dancer’s dramatic defection at Paris’s Le Bourget airport in 1961. (He telephoned Nureyev’s good friend Clara Saint to warn her forward of time that Nureyev was being despatched again to Moscow, reasonably than occurring to London with the remainder of the Kirov firm.)
However, annoyed by mediocre ballets and rare performances on the Paris Opera — and impressed by Balanchine — Mr. Bonnefoux determined to go away for Metropolis Ballet.
Progressively, he absorbed Metropolis Ballet fashion. It was not, he informed Ms. Newman, “a lot a manner of transferring; it was extra in regards to the contact with the music, the way you virtually precede the music.”
Mr. Bonnefoux retired from Metropolis Ballet in 1980. He took the place of ballet grasp and choreographer at Pittsburgh Ballet Theater after which moved to Bloomington, Ind., to grow to be head of the dance division at Indiana College.
In 1983, he started to run a summer time ballet program on the Chautauqua Establishment, a gated arts group within the northwestern nook of New York State and the positioning of the oldest summer time arts pageant in North America. He introduced in prestigious Metropolis Ballet alumni like Ms. McBride and Violette Verdy to stage Balanchine items, fashioned knowledgeable summer time firm and invited a broad number of choreographers to work with the dancers.
“He was such instructor, and he and Patti have been a formidable crew in Chautauqua,” mentioned Christine Redpath, a former dancer and a repertory director at Metropolis Ballet. “That lovely French coaching actually fed into his instructing.”
By the point he stepped down in 2021, Mr. Bonnefoux had remodeled the summer time program into one of many nation’s most coveted locations for aspiring dancers.
“He had a quiet presence, however behind his tender accent there was readability, element, precision and, all the time, encouragement,” mentioned Daniel Ulbricht, a Metropolis Ballet principal. “He was a part of the explanation why I, and plenty of different dancers, have been able to make that dedication to pursuing a profession.”
In 1996, Mr. Bonnefoux grew to become the inventive director of what was then known as North Carolina Dance Theater, in Charlotte, with Ms. McBride as affiliate inventive director. He remained there till 2017. The couple remodeled the corporate into a robust classical troupe that was additionally a vibrant house for modern choreography, including works by Dwight Rhoden, Alonzo King, Paul Taylor, Twyla Tharp and William Forsythe to the repertoire, as effectively staging items by Balanchine and Robbins.
Mr. Bonnefoux choreographed, too: His ballets included “Carmina Burana,” “Peter Pan” and variations of “Sleeping Magnificence,” “Cinderella” and “The Nutcracker.”
In 2010, the corporate opened the Patricia McBride and Jean-Pierre Bonnefoux Middle for Dance, housing its rehearsal and administrative areas in addition to a 200-seat theater. 4 years later, the corporate was renamed Charlotte Ballet.
Ms. McBride and Mr. Bonnefoux divorced in 2018 however remained shut. He’s survived by their youngsters, Christopher Bonnefoux and Melanie (Bonnefoux) DeCoudres, and three grandchildren.
Mr. Bonnefoux’s qualities as a director and a instructor have been transformative, mentioned Sasha Janes, a former Charlotte Ballet dancer who succeeded Mr. Bonnefoux as director of the Faculty of Dance at Chautauqua.
“He may see issues in individuals they couldn’t see in themselves,” Mr. Janes mentioned, including that Mr. Bonnefoux was forward of his time: “He wasn’t considering cookie-cutter good dancers; he needed to see humanity on stage.”
