Dorothée Gilbert Dances Her Farewell Manon at Palais Garnier

By Tom Whitfield

Paris Opéra Ballet étoile Dorothée Gilbert gives her farewell performance with the company in Kenneth MacMillan's Manon at the Palais Garnier on October 15. She is 43 and has reached the company's mandatory retirement age after 26 years in the ranks. The performance will be livestreamed on POP, the Paris Opéra's on-demand platform — a first for a POB farewell.

Gilbert joined the company in 2000, trained at the POB School, and rose fast. Her promotion to étoile came in 2007, on the night of a strike, after she danced Rudolf Nureyev's The Nutcracker without set changes or costumes. A Toulouse native, she moved from the quick-footed virtuosity of her early Kitri to lyric dramatic roles in Giselle, Swan Lake and Onegin. Over the past decade she and fellow étoile Hugo Marchand formed one of the company's strongest dramatic partnerships, in ballets including Manon and Mayerling.

Speaking to Pointe ahead of the final shows, Gilbert was candid about a preparation disrupted by injury. "I have a minor calf tear, and one of my ribs hurts because of the lifts in Manon," she said. "It's not the preparation I would have wanted, but I feel at peace about leaving now."

How did a sunny technician become a dramatic ballerina?

Gilbert credits will, not temperament. "My personality is definitely more energetic and sunny than lyrical, but that [dramatic quality] was always something I was hugely drawn to, precisely because it wasn't me," she told Pointe. She pushed herself toward roles that sat outside her nature and let the repertoire do the rest.

She also reframeed her physical limits — flexibility and line — as assets rather than deficits. "You realize that your flaws are your strengths," she said. "Perfection is boring. It's the little imperfections that make the audience connect with you." Her Odette/Odile, a role often given to taller dancers, rested on deliberate work with angles and, above all, her arms.

What does the farewell actually change?

Not as much as the word suggests. October 15 closes her Paris chapter, but Gilbert will dance Manon again with Marchand at the Teatro Colón in Argentina next month, with further performances planned through next summer. "I'm saying goodbye to the company and the Paris Opéra's audience, but not yet to dance," she said. The staged goodbye, she added, spares her the emotional shock of stopping all at once — though it also means she will have to decline some offers, or, as she put it with a laugh, "my family won't see me anymore."

Beyond next summer, she has no fixed plans. She spent her early career dancing contemporary repertoire under director Brigitte Lefèvre; when Aurélie Dupont took over and told her she was not a contemporary dancer, Gilbert chose the classical repertoire as a personal decision, arguing that doing both is too hard on the body with age. She notes that étoiles eventually return to teach or lead rehearsals — but not her, not yet. After 26 years in the company, she says she needs a period of freedom.

The cameras will follow her either way. Her husband, the photographer and director James Bort, has been filming a documentary on her final seasons for two years. Gilbert admits dancers dislike live filming, but says audiences who could not get tickets make the livestream worth it. What comes after the freedom — teaching, coaching, directing — remains, deliberately, unsaid.