Thierry Malandain
French choreographer Thierry Malandain, born in Petit-Quevilly in 1959, has created a repertoire of more than 85 works to date.
He received his ballet training from teachers such as Monique Le Dily, René Bon, Daniel Franck, Gilbert Mayer and Raymond Franchetti. Engagements as a dancer followed from 1977 at the Ballet de l'Opéra de Paris, Ballet du Rhin and Ballet Théâtre Français de Nancy. At the end of his career, he founded the Compagnie Temps Présent in Élancourt (Yvelines) in 1986 which has been based at the Opéra de Saint-Étienne since 1992 as an “Associated company”. He soon established himself as an innovative artist on the French dance scene.
In 1998, he was appointed director of the new Centre Chorégraphique National in Biarritz by the French Ministry of Culture whose company has been known as the Malandain Ballet Biarritz since 2009. Here he continues to create important works and to develop the companyʼs international presence.
Many of his ballets are currently not only in the repertoire of many French ensembles – including the Ballet de lʼOpéra national du Rhin, Ballet National de Marseille, Ballet de lʼOpéra National de Bordeaux and the Ballet de lʼOpéra national du Capitole de Toulouse – but also of major companies worldwide, such as the Sadamatsu Hamada Ballet, Ballet of the Teatro di San Carlo in Naples, Vienna State Ballet, as well as ballet companies in Caracas, Hongkong, West Palm Beach, Aspen, Cairo, Riga, Tunis and Karlsruhe.
Thierry Malandain has received numerous awards, including 1984 the 1st Prize of the Volinine competition for Quatuor op3 three nominations for the Prix Benois de la Danse, 2004 the Criticʼs Award for “Best international performance” at the XIXth International Ballet Festival of Havana in Cuba for Les Créatures, 2005 the Culture Award of the Sabino Arana Foundation in Bilbao and 2012 the Criticʼs Award for Une Dernière chanson. He won the 2014 Taglioni European Ballet Award in the “Best Choreographer” category for Cendrillon. In 2017, his ensemble was honoured as “best company” of the year by the Association professionnelle de la Critique for Noé. In 2019, Malandain was appointed to the Académie des beaux-arts in the choreography department and the following year was awarded the SACD 2020 Prize in the choreography category.
Thierry Malandain made his debut at the Vienna Volksoper in 2014 with his one-act works Mozart à 2 and Don Juan, followed by his award-winning ballet Cendrillon in 2016. With Marie Antoinette – to be premiered by the Malandain Ballet Biarritz at the Opéra Royal du château de Versailles in 2019 – another full-length work by Malandain will join the repertoire of the Vienna State Ballet at the Volksoper Wien in the 2025/26 season.