Sylvie Guillem (born February 25,1965 in Paris)is a French ballet dancer who has performed with the Paris Opera Ballet and is currently a guest principal dancer with the Royal Ballet.
As a child, Guillem trained in gymnastics under the instruction of her mother, and at age 11, she began training at the Paris Opera Ballet School. Eventually she joined their company in the corps de ballet at 16 years old. In 1983 Guillem won the gold medal at the Varna International Ballet Competition. On December 29, 1984, at the young age of 19, Guillem became an etoile of the company after her first performance of Swan Lake. She created the leading role in William Forsythe's contemporary ballet, In the Middle, Somewhat Elevated in 1987. In 1989, Guillem shocked Rudolf Nureyev when she left the Paris Opera Ballet to become the principal guest artist at the Royal Ballet.
Extremely flexible, Guillem became controversial for her high extensions, which some detractors said ruined the line of classical ballet. They called it "ear whacking." However, many dancers have since become if anything even more flexible than Guillem. And Guillem's style allowed her to dance both the classical roles and more contemporary works with equal success.
Sylvie and the Boyz
(29/11/2003)
"Trust me," says Michael Nunn, grinning untrustworthily. Sylvie Guillem, superstar ballerina, grimaces as she sits on the floor. Suddenly, electrifyingly, she launches herself into the air, to be caught by her bird-like hip-bones by Nunn,way over his head. "Don't worry, you're insured!" he quips. "I'm not!" she protests,looking like Concorde being plucked out of the sky.
My jaw drops. I have never seen any dance look so fantastically risky as what is going on in rehearsals for Broken Fall.
Sylvie's wake-up call
30 March 2002:
Sylvie Guillem is 37 now, with a host of young dancers rising to challenge her. But the queen of the Royal Ballet is as passionately committed to excellence as ever. She talks to Ismene Brown
'SHE'S fighting the world most of the time - and she's fighting against herself too. An extreme character,like a wild animal - someone who is not understood, someone who is loved and hated at the same time, who has her own rules of life. A revoltee."
The French ballerina Sylvie Guillem is describing her next role at the Royal Ballet, that of the cigar-smoking Carmen in Mats Ek's modern dance version of the Bizet opera.
Adventures on the dance floor
(09/09/2006)
Two of the world's most exciting movers are collaborating for the first time. Sarah Crompton reports
'I really think I am someone masochistic, mentally and physically," says Sylvie Guillem. And her laughter fills the drab, grey conference room in which we are sitting, transforming it into somewhere more exotic than a breeze-blocked space in north London.
She is talking about the challenge of her first collaboration with Akram Khan, a dancer as skilled in the Indian classical style of Kathak as she is in classical ballet – describing just how far she has been prepared to push her remarkable body and her restless, questing mind in a search for new terrain.
In Sacred Monsters, which premières at Sadler's Wells on September 19, they not only dance, but also speak. Alone on stage together, they describe themselves as embarking on a journey which examines where they have come from – and where they are heading. Hence Guillem's amused discovery of her masochistic tendencies. "When I saw Akram on stage I already knew that his energy was completely different to mine, so I knew that I was already going somewhere that I didn't know and it was going to be physically painful.
