Mathieu Ganio

Etoile of the Paris Opera Ballet

Dance Open: 2012

Mathieu Ganio was born in Marseille, France, the son of Ballet National de Marseille principal dancers Dominique Khalfouni and Denys Ganio. He began dance lessons at the age of seven and studied at the École Nationale Supérieure de Danse de Marseille from 1992 to 1999, before completing his training at the Paris Opera Ballet School. In 2001 he joined the corps de ballet of the Paris Opera Ballet and won promotion to the rank of coryphée in 2002 and sujet in 2003. On 20 May 2004, following a performance of Don Quixote, he was appointed étoile, bypassing the rank of premier danseur. In 2005 he was awarded the Benois de la Danse as outstanding male dancer.

He has since added to his repertoire: Colas in La Fille mal gardée (Ashton), Émeraudes, Diamants / Joyaux, Les Quatre Tempéraments, Symphonie en ut, Apollon, Agon (Balanchine), Le Maître de ballet in La Petite danseuse de Degas (P. Bart), L’Oiseau de feu, Serait-ce la mort? (Béjart), Albrecht in Giselle (after Coralli and Perrot), the title role in Onéguine (Cranko), Artifact Suite (Forsythe), James in La Sylphide(Lacotte, after Taglioni), Lucien d’Hervilly in Paquita (Lacotte after Mazilier and Petipa), Etudes (Lander), the title role in Caligula (Le Riche), Suite en blanc (Lifar), Des Grieux in L’Histoire de Manon (MacMillan), Amoveo (Millepied), Armand in La Dame aux camélias, Troisième Symphonie de Gustav Mahler (Neumeier), Prince Désiré in La Belle au bois dormant, Prince Siegfried in Swan Lake, l'Acteur-vedette in Cendrillon, Drosselmeyer / Prince in The Nutcracker, Roméo in Roméo et Juliette (Nureyev), Eros in Psyché (Ratmansky), Dances at a Gathering (Robbins).