Janine Charrat
BORN JULY 24, 1924 DIED AUGUST 29, 2017, AGED 93
JANINE CHARRAT was a ballerina and, unusually for a woman at the time, a choreographer. She also survived a serious accident that left her badly burned and for a period seemed to threaten her career.
In 1961 she was filming a ballet called Les Algues (The Seaweed), set in an asylum, where she danced the role of Catherine, who has lost her mind. Entering one scene holding a lit candelabra, the skirt of her costume touched the open flame and was set on fire.
Charrat seemed to be at one with her character as she screamed for help, eventually passing out. She was left with 70 per cent burns but told French reporters: “I will dance again.” Photographed in her hospital gown, with nurses helping her rise on her heavily bandaged feet, she was as good as her word and was dancing again within four months.
Born in Grenoble, France, to the local fire brigade colonel, Charrat’s early ambition to be an actress turned to ballet.
She was choreographing by seven, performing by the age of 11 and took the leading role in the 1937 psychological thriller La Mort du Cygne (called Ballerina in the US) age 12.
It is about a child dancer who deliberately engineers an injury to another dancer. Her performance garnered worldwide acclaim and brought her to the attention of Serge Lifar, director of the Paris Opera Ballet, who sent her to be trained with the most famous Russian teachers in Paris.
A stellar career followed as France’s only female ballet choreographer. She helped Roland Petit launch the Ballets des ChampsElysées and later Les Ballets Janine Charrat, which later became Le Ballet de France.
She spent a decade touring as a dancer as well as choreographing her own ballets. She was married twice: the first to Gérard Bouret lasted only two years and little is known about her second marriage to Michel Humbert in 1967. She had no children.