Fans beg Paris ballet director to stay after he quits

Star choreographer Benjamin Millepied said Thursday he was quitting the Paris Opera Ballet after little more than a year in charge of one of the world’s grandest ensembles. The former dancer — who is married to Hollywood actress Natalie Portman — had faced stiff resistance to his plans to radically reform the institution, a bastion of classical ballet tradition.

“I have decided to end my time as director of dance,” he said in a statement, adding that he wanted to “concentrate 100 per cent on creating” rather than on administration. His shock departure came only a day before the world premiere of his latest work at the ballet, ironically titled The Night Ends.

Although Millepied, 38, insisted that “the ties that bind me to this beautiful institution mean that I will always be at its side”, his early exit is a major blow to both parties.

As fans bombarded his Facebook page with messages beseeching him to stay, Millepied said: “My functions as director... Take up so much time that they have considerably reduced that for artistic creation, which is essential in my view.”

One fan Genevieve Renaud wrote, “You gave dance a new breath of air, stay and continue to shake this crusty old lady that has mummified.”

The choreographer made his name as a dashing principal dancer at the New York City Ballet before returning in triumph to France in 2014 to head up the Paris Opera Ballet. But relations with the board appeared to have broken down after he lambasted the way the ballet was run in a documentary aired on the Canal+ channel just before Christmas.

He claimed that the ballet was too hierarchical and set in its ways.

Nor was it any longer as “excellent” as it claimed to be, he said, with dancers sometimes looking like “wallpaper... Bored to death”.

“I don’t think we’re in a golden age of ballet right now,” he said as his frustration boiled over in another recent interview with a fashion website.

“Even musicals are more daring than new ballets!” he told Style Report.

He was particularly irked by the ballet’s lack of diversity and the rigid methods of its school.

“I think it's very important that the company resembles Paris and not the old-school form of racism that ballet companies need to be white,” he added.