Dominique Khalfouni

Dominique Khalfouni (born 1951) is a French ballet dancer. Once a star (étoile) of the Paris Opera Ballet and a principal of the Ballet National de Marseille, she is now a ballet teacher.[1]

Biography

Born in 1951, she attended the Paris Opera Ballet School from the age of nine, joined the corps de ballet when she was 16 and became the company's étoile in 1976.[2] If not dancing, her other career aspirations were to be a musician: violinist or pianist.[3]

Career

In addition to dancing the leads in many of the classics, she performed roles created for her in Kenneth MacMillan's Métaboles, Oscar Araiz' Adagietto, Maurice Bejart's Serait-ce la Mort and Roland Petit's Le Fantome de l'Opéra.

In 1980 she left Paris to join the Ballet National de Marseille and the following year she appeared with the American Ballet Theatre at the invitation of Mikhail Baryshnikov, to dance Giselle at the Metropolitan Opera House with him.[4]

As a star dancer in Marseille, she excelled in La Pavlova especially created for her by Petit in 1986.[3] After being premiered in Barcelona's Liceu, the international press referred to her as the greatest French dancer of her time, calling her ballerina assoluta.[1]

Turning to teaching by the end of the 1990s, she lived and worked in Paris.

Her two children, Mathieu Ganio[5] and Marine Ganio,[6] are both dancers with the Paris Opera Ballet.[3]

Awards
gollark: "not too complex"HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
gollark: We might end up seeing Chinese (don't think Chinese is an actual language - Mandarin or whatever) with English technical terms mixed in.
gollark: Yes, because they have been (are? not sure) lagging behind with modern technological things, and so need(ed?) to use English-programmed English-documented things.
gollark: Which means piles of technical docs are in English, *programs* are in English, people working on technological things are using English a lot...It probably helps a bit that English is easy to type and ASCII text can be handled by basically any system around.
gollark: I don't think it was decided on for any sort of sane reason. English-speaking countries just dominated in technology.

References
  1. "Dominique Khalfouni". Benois Theatre. Retrieved 22 March 2014.
  2. Ivor Guest. Le Ballet de l'Opéra de Paris. Flammarion, 2001
  3. Gauthier, Marie-Astrid (28 February 2009). "Dominique Khalfouni et Mathieu Ganio, danseurs" (in French). ResMusica. Retrieved 23 March 2014.
  4. Kisselgoff, Anna (25 May 1981). "MISS KHALFOUNI IN BALLET THEATER 'GISELLE'". The New York Times. Retrieved 23 March 2014.
  5. "Mathieu Ganio". Opéra National de Paris. Retrieved 3 November 2015.
  6. "Marine Ganio". Opéra National de Paris. Retrieved 3 November 2015.
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