Influential ballerina, choreographer
The New York Times
Janine Charrat, a noted French ballerina who became a major choreographer at a time when few women were engaged in that pursuit and survived a midcareer accident that left her badly burned, died on Tuesday in Paris. She was 93.
Her death was confirmed by a friend, Sylvie Negre.
Best known later in life as a choreographer, Ms. Charrat began her career as a child star. At 12, she appeared to great acclaim in Jean Benoît-Levy’s 1937 film “La Mort du Cygne” (“The Death of the Swan,” released the next year in the United States as “Ballerina”). The older ballerinas Yvette Chauvire and Mia Slavenska also were in the film.
Her talent and charisma, as well as her unusually early interest in choreography, led to a collaboration with Roland Petit while she was still in her teens.
Out of that alliance came the creation of her first major piece, “Jeu de Cartes,” which established Ms. Charrat as an important new and notably female voice in the dance world.
She continued to perform major roles while maintaining her choreographic career. In 1951 she founded her own company, the Ballets Janine Charrat (which became the Ballet de France in 1955), and went on to create for it some of her most important works, including “Concerto de Grieg” (1951), a homage to the dancer and choreographer Serge Lifar; “Les Algues” (1953), to music by Guy Bernard; and “Herakles” (1953).
The company toured extensively, appearing in the United States in 1957. Reviewing a performance at the Brooklyn Academy that October, John Martin wrote in The New York Times: “There is no doubt whatever that Miss Charrat is an authentic talent of a high order. Her movement and her invention are always informed by inner feeling, even when she is working in the strictly classic idiom.”
Besides creating pieces for her own company, Ms. Charrat choreographed ballets for La Scala in Milan, Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires, La Monnaie in Brussels, the Geneva Ballet, the Vienna State Ballet and the Paris Opera.
In 1961 she worked with Maurice Bejart and his Ballets of the 20th Century, choreographing “Les Quatre Fils Aymon” with him.
That same year she made international headlines when her costume caught fire during the filming of “Les Algues.” Although severely burned, she was determined to return to the stage as dancer and choreographer. Less than two years later, she created and starred in “Tu Auras Ton Nom Tristan” at the Grand Theater in Geneva, where her company was based from 1962 to 1964.
Janine Charrat was born on July 24, 1924, in Grenoble, France. Her family moved to Paris, where her father was a senior official in the fire department. She began to study ballet with a series of Russian teachers — Olga Preobrajenska, Lubov Egorova and Alexander Volinine — and won the part of Rose Souris, a student at the Paris Opera Ballet School, in Benoît-Levy’s film.
Her last piece, “Passion de Jesus-Christ,” using actors and dancers, was staged in 1994 at the Palais de Papes in Avignon.
In 1999 she was awarded the title Commander of the Legion of Honor by the French government.
Ms. Charrat’s work is no longer performed by dance companies, but her influence has been underestimated, wrote Luc Riolon and Rachel Seddoh, the directors of the documentary film “Janine Charrat, L’Instinct de la Danse” (2001). “She was the first,” they wrote, “to explore the paths that were followed years later by the great choreographers of the 20th century.”