Benjamin Millepied is known to be the husband of actress Nathalie Portmann, but he is above all an outstanding choreographer.

A great choregrapher

Born in Bordeaux in 1977, Benjamin Millepied spent part of his childhood in Senegal. He was introduced to dance by his mother, a contemporary dance teacher, then at the age of thirteen entered the National Conservatory of Music and Dance in Lyon / CNSMD. In 1992, he completed an internship at the New York City Ballet school, before being admitted on a scholarship. Winner of the Prix de Lausanne in 1994, he was hired in 1995 at the New York City Ballet. Promoted to soloist in 1998, he was named ‘principal dancer’ (the equivalent of a star) in 2002. He then began a career as an independent choreographer for various companies – including his own, called Danses Concertantes – such as the Ballet du Grand Théâtre de Genève, the Paris Opera Ballet or the American Ballet Theater.

A multicultural approach

Since childhood, Benjamin Millepied has worked on this original multicultural approach, reinforced by his years spent in the United States. He also developed a hedonistic vision of dance. This approach and this vision, Benjamin Millepied puts them today at the service of an ambition: to project his discipline into a twenty-first century that is more collaborative, more mixed, more open to others and to other disciplines, from art to cinema. An almost political program including the dancer, choreographer and soon to be director of a musical inspired by Bizet’s Carmen

Director of Black Swan

In 2010, he choreographed and appeared in the Oscar-winning film Black Swan before founding the L.A. Dance Project in 2012. Then in 2014, Benjamin Millepied was appointed Director of Dance at the Paris Opera, whose repertoire he deeply renewed by appealing to great contemporary choreographers such as William Forsythe or Crystal Pite. Today, several of his ballets are included in the repertoires of the greatest international companies, such as the New York City Ballet, the Paris Opera, the Mariinsky Ballet or the Lyon Opera. During his career, Benjamin Millepied multiplies collaborations with creators with diverse artistic expressions from the world of music, plastic arts or design. While he already has several short films to his credit, he is shooting his first musical feature film in 2021, inspired by Georges Bizet’s opera Carmen.