The Paris Opera Ballet superstar just may be what the dance world has been searching for: a new icon worthy of the Nureyev comparisons. When I first moved to New York City—16 hours after graduating from Tulane University—to begin my first day at Esquire , I bought season tickets to the New York City Ballet, the famous dance company that exclusively performed George Balanchine choreographed works.
I could barely afford to eat, but I needed to feed my soul. In many ways, the dance world has been looking for its next global icon ever since. And here he is. The very existence of Germain Louvet is nearly impossible to comprehend. How could they not? Nureyev, who himself led the Paris Opera Ballet to impossible heights as its director from to , was everything Louvet himself exudes. Male dancers were less important than the ballerina, they were more partners, porteurs for women on stage.
So, there was [Vaslav] Nijinsky at the beginning of the 20th century and after that we had to wait until Nureyev for a new generation of powerful, creative, male ballet dancers. He then got selected through a classical dance contest within the prestigious ballet of the Paris Opera securing the position as a quadrille.
In , Louvet was awarded with the prix carpeaux of dance, that same year he reached the position of coryphee only to pass on position of sujet in and finally becoming a premier danseur in When you hear your self being compared to Rudolf Nureyev, inarguably the greatest male ballet dancer ever, how do you do process that incredible flattery?
So, after being very flattered and honored by this kind of comparison, I think that actually the comparison is very difficult and is also an ideal for me because Rudolf Nureyev passed away a few months before my birth actually, in , so we are in very different times even though I feel linked to his passion and his thirst of life and of movement What do you believe separates you from so many other great dancers?
