Frenchman Laurent Hilaire is taking over the management of the Bavarian State Ballet with immediate effect. The appointment is to be announced on Thursday at the Bavarian State Opera’s season press conference. Born in Paris in 1962, the danseur étoile at the Paris Opera has had a meteoric dance career: Trained at the Opéra’s ballet school, he joined the mother company in 1979, was promoted there by ballet director Rudolf Nureyev and was promoted to the top of the dance class in 1985. Hilaire has danced countless leading roles from the classical repertoire and creations by contemporary choreographers such as William Forsythe and Angelin Preljocaj.
He asserted himself as an elegant and technically virtuoso ballerino on the stage of the Palais Garnier until he switched to the ballet master’s department in 2005. Nureyev’s successor Brigitte Lefèvre favored him for her own successor, but someone else won the race. Hilaire then left the Opéra and took over the ballet direction at the Moscow Stanislavski and Nemirovich-Danchenko Music Theater in 2017. He opened up his iron traditional course, brought avant-garde choreographers like Sharon Eyal to the house and earned a lot of applause for it.
Immediately after the Russian attack on Ukraine, Hilaire resigned and left Russia. In Munich he succeeds Igor Zelensky, who resigned as ballet director at the beginning of April, citing family reasons. Laurent Hilaire’s contract runs until 2026.