GENEVA (AFP) — French choreographer Maurice Bejart has died at the age of 80, according to an official from the ballet company in the Swiss city of Lausanne which he ran for 20 years.
"We are informing the dancers. An official statement will be issued at 2:00 pm (1300 GMT)," said Eric Trol, deputy administrator of the BBL ballet company.
He gave no further details on the circumstances of the death.
Bejart was hospitalised for the second time in a month last week to undergo cardiac and kidney treatment.
Born on January 1, 1927 in Marseilles, Bejart -- real name Maurice Berger -- studied dance in London and Paris before becoming a leading avant-garde choreographer in the 1950s.
He changed his surname in honour of Armande Bejart, wife of French literary icon Moliere.
His physical and sensual style met with resistance in traditional Paris circles, leading him to relocate to Brussels where his version of Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring" was rapturously received in 1959.
His last work, "Around the World in Eighty Minutes," is due to be premiered in Lausanne on December 20.
In the course of his glittering career, Bejart directed stars such as Sylvie Guillem and Mikhail Baryshnikov and was honoured by Japan's late emperor Hirohito and Belgium's King Baudouin.
This acclaim was in stark contrast to his early years as a choreographer, when he struggled to find an audience for his innovative work.
"When we made 'Symphony for a Lonely Man' ("Symphonie pour un homme seul") I was told 'people will run away'. We were happy when we had 80 people in the hall," Bejart told AFP in an interview in 2004, to mark his 50 years as a choreographer.
"We didn't have a studio of our own. We had to work for an hour in a place on loan from a ballet teacher and then take the metro to rehearse on the other side of Paris," he recalled.
Bejart's willingness to experiment meant that he "was not ashamed to do lots of bad ballets," he said.
"There aren't many that are good, and maybe five or six things that are not too bad," Bejart claimed.
His work found an enthusiastic audience in Europe and Japan, though he never achieved great success in the English-speaking world.
His Bejart Ballet Lausanne is the latest generation of his proteges. The original group began in Paris in 1954, then moved on to Brussels for 27 years from where it toured the world as the "Ballet of the 20th Century".
"There has never been a break. It has been the same ballet company for 50 years under different names, with the help of different countries," Bejart said in 2004.
For all his success and international acclaim, and despite being elected into the presitigious Academie Francaise in 1994, Bejart never forgot the frosty reception and lack of support he first received in his native France.
"I never received a cent from the French government," he said.
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