He had a James Dean side, and a Delon-like blue gaze that would blow you away.
To look at Patrick Dupond at 25 is to be seized by a wisp.
He knows he is.
His mother wanted him to be a judoka, he doesn't want to beat anyone but to become one with his partner, after being dazzled as a kid by a dance performance.
His Olympic Games, he won a gold medal for “best dancer in the world” at 17 in Bulgaria.
Star dancer at 20.
Nureyev, who then directed the Paris Opera, consecrated him "genius".
We only live twice: Patrick Dupond died at the age of 61, from a "devastating illness" at the Bordeaux hospital.
He was resuscitated for the first time, in 2000. After falling asleep at the wheel, on the Normandy highway, the ballet superstar had been discovered by firefighters literally in pieces, 134 fractures.
Death for the dance?
No way.
Leïla Da Rocha, belly dancer, helps her get up.
Together, they will create a show, “Fusion”, then a dance school in Gironde.
It was she, who had become his companion, who announced his disappearance.
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"Patrick Dupond had the talent to transmit", remembers Gautier Capuçon
who was he?
The prodigy of “The Afternoon of a Faun” and of “Swan Lake”, director of the Paris Opera at the age of 30, venerated by Maurice Béjart whom he calls “Momo”.
But also the jury of the Cannes Film Festival in 1997. The singer who devotes a show to the scoundrel soul of Paris while dancing.
The TV beast who was sworn for "France has an incredible talent" on M 6, "Prodigies" on France 2, and recently the last two seasons of "Dance with the stars", on TF1, after having even participated in 2005 in "La Ferme Celebrities".
He had always wanted to be one and assumed it: "To please, to seduce, to enchant, I have the impression that I have never lived except for that".
"He was a tumultuous man who wanted to do everything"
The former Minister of Culture Jean-Jacques Aillagon, who was very close to Patrick Dupond, remembers a tour in Japan: “Very young girls besieged him, and he loved it.
He was very happy to be worshiped.
He was the first dancer to become a very mainstream character.
Dance is such a codified and somewhat closed universe.
He brought him his formidable generosity, and even savagery.
He was an artist through all the fibers of his skin.
He was a tumultuous man who wanted to do everything, dance, sing, be an actor.
"
VIDEO. Death of Patrick Dupond: in 1982, the star dancer confided his emotion to turn in a film
Patrick Dupond had theorized it very young.
At a time when we only spoke of the Russian or American school, he claimed that French dancers, "who are above all actors and great technicians, are the best in the world".
Whoever conducted the Ballet de Nancy before that of the Paris Opera will wear the colors of France all over the world.
“To dance well, you have to live”, he also said, and he burned his own at both ends, of bisexual love that he recounts in his autobiography “Etoile”.
He fought all his life to make the world more beautiful
He who grew up without his father built himself through mentors: Max Bozzoni, a former principal dancer who discovered him at the age of 8 and modeled his talent, then Roland Petit, Maurice Béjart and Rudolf Nureyev with whom he has such strong relationships. that explosives: “Nureyev was the pope of classical dance, a tyrannical director.
He was pissed off by Patrick's impetuosity.
They annoyed each other but each knew what the other was worth, ”recalls Jean-Jacques Aillagon.
In his memoirs, Patrick Dupond recounts how he accompanied Nureyev's last months, alone in the face of AIDS.
Faithful when the curtain falls.
His TV years had allowed him to let go, to share with the greatest number, to transmit.
The star loves the popular spectacle.
“He came to see me at the circus.
He was also very fond of animals.
He was a true kind of great tenderness, "recalls Sophie Edelstein, his co-juror of" Incredible talent ".
The cellist Gautier Capuçon, who had participated with him in the adventure of "Prodigies", had it again by text last Saturday: "He was advising me young dancers for the auditions of my next tour of
Un été en France
.
He was always kind to everyone.
He gave himself fully in the transmission.
"
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Elizabeth Vidal, the coloratura soprano also sworn on the France 2 show, shared with him a taste for meditation: “Patrick had great faith and a connection with the universe.
He fed on spirituality, read a lot, never complained.
He believed that artistic strength could change the world.
This wounded dancer, a moment almost ruined, so often touched but not sunk, fought all his life to make the world more beautiful.
Body and soul.
