The son of shoe designer
Rose Repetto, Petit was born in
Villemomble, near Paris. He trained at the
Paris Opéra Ballet school under Gustave Ricaux and
Serge Lifar and began to dance with the corps de ballet in 1940. He founded the Ballets des Champs-Élysées in 1945 and the Ballets de Paris in 1948, at
Théâtre Marigny, with
Zizi Jeanmaire as star dancer. Petit collaborated with
Constant Lambert (
Ballabile - 1950),
Henri Dutilleux (
Le Loup - 1953),
Serge Gainsbourg,
Yves Saint-Laurent and
César Baldaccini and participated in several French and American films. He returned to the Paris Opéra in 1965 to mount a production of
Notre Dame de Paris (with music by
Maurice Jarre). He continued to direct ballets for the largest theatres of France, Italy, Germany, Great Britain, Canada and Cuba. In 1970 Petit resigned after only four months as director of ballet at the Paris Opera. He resigned by letter from home (because he had no telephone in his office) protesting about poor working conditions, the failure in labour contract negotiations, and thwarting of his plans for three new ballet productions of which management only accepted one. In 1968, his ballet
Turangalîla provoked a small revolution within the Paris Opéra. Four years later, in 1972, he founded the
Ballet National de Marseille with the piece "Pink Floyd Ballet", created in collaboration with the
band of the same name. He directed the Ballet National de Marseille for the next 26 years. For the décor of his ballets, he would work in close collaboration with the painter
Jean Carzou (1907–2000), but also with other artists such as
Max Ernst. The creator of more than 50 ballets across all genres, he choreographed for a plethora of famed international dancers. He refused the free technical effects; he did not stop reinventing his style, language, and became a master in the arts of
pas de deux and of narrative ballet, but he succeeded also in abstract ballets. He collaborated also with the
nouveaux réalistes including
Martial Raysse,
Niki de Saint Phalle and
Jean Tinguely.
Le jeune homme et la mort ("The Young Man and Death") of 1946 (libretto by
Jean Cocteau) is considered his magnum opus and it is also his most well-known work; the choreography and the costumes are of astonishing modernity. In his 1949 ballet
Carmen, he made an unusual use of the
en dedans, while he gave a non-figurative treatment to
Turangalîla. Among the films to which he contributed are
Symphonie en blanc by
René Chanas and François Ardoin (1942 short film on history of dance) in which he appeared as a dancer; the choreography for the 1948 film
Alice in Wonderland,
The Glass Slipper in 1954,
Anything Goes (with others) in 1956, and
Black Tights as choreographer, writer, and dancer in 1960. ==Honours ==