Roland Petit (January 13, 1924 – July 10, 2011) was a French choreographer and dancer. He trained at the Paris Opéra Ballet school, and became well known for his creative ballets.

Petit was born in Villemomble, France an area near Paris, France. Petit 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 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 rule ballets for the largest theatres of France, Italy, Germany, Great Britain, Canada, and Cuba.

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”. He directed the Ballet 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.^{[citation needed]}

Roland (Frankish: Hruodland) (died 14 August 778) was a Frankish military leader under Charlemagne who became one of the principal figures in the literary cycle known as the Matter of France. Historically, Roland was military governor of the Breton March, with responsibility for defending the frontier of Francia against the Bretons. His only historical attestation is in Einhard's Vita Karoli Magni, which describes him as Hruodlandus Brittannici limitis praefectus ("Roland, prefect of the limits of Brittany") when narrating his death at the Battle of Roncesvalles, when the rearguard, under his command, and the baggage train of a Frankish army was beset by rebellious Basques.

Roland's death during retreat from the Battle of Roncevaux Pass in Iberia was transmogrified in later medieval and Renaissance literature. He became the chief paladin of the emperor Charlemagne and a central figure in the legendary material surrounding him, collectively known as the Matter of France. The first and most famous of these epic treatments was the Old French Chanson de Roland of the eleventh century. Two masterpieces of Italian Renaissance poetry, the Orlando innamorato and Orlando furioso, are even further detached from history than the earlier Chansons. Roland is poetically associated with his sword Durendal, his horse Veillantif, and his horn Oliphaunt.

Zizi Jeanmaire (born 29 April 1924) is a ballet dancer and widow of renowned dancer and choreographer Roland Petit. She became famous in the 1950s after playing the title role in the ballet version of Carmen, produced in London in 1949, and went on to appear in several Hollywood films.

Born in Paris, France, as Renée Marcelle Jeanmaire, she met her future husband and long-time collaborator Roland Petit at the Paris Opera Ballet at the age of nine. She joined his company, Petit's ballets de Paris in 1949. In 1954 they married, and their successful shows put her on the road to stardom. This led to a brief stint in Hollywood (where she was credited simply as Jeanmaire), appearing in the musicals Hans Christian Andersen (1952) and Anything Goes (1956). After that, she concentrated on ballet, producing more than 60 shows with Petit. From the 1960s on, she also had a career in music with such hits as "Mon truc en plumes".

She and Petit had one daughter, Valentine Petit, a dancer and actress.[1][2][3]

Rudolf Khametovich Nureyev (Bashkir: Рудольф Хәмит улы Нуриев, Tatar: Rudolf Xämit ulı Nuriev, Russian: Рудо́льф Хаме́тович Нуре́ев) (17 March 1938 – 6 January 1993) was a ballet dancer, one of the most celebrated of the 20th century. Nureyev's artistic skills explored expressive areas of the dance, providing a new role to the male ballet dancer who once served only as support to the women.

Originally a Soviet citizen, Nureyev defected to the West in 1961, despite KGB efforts to stop him. According to KGB archives studied by Peter Watson, Nikita Khrushchev personally signed an order to have Nureyev killed.

Nureyev was born on a Trans-Siberian train near Irkutsk, Siberia, Soviet Union, while his mother Feride was travelling to Vladivostok, where his father Hamit, a Red Army political commissar, was stationed. He was raised as the only son in a Bashkir-Tatar family in a village near Ufa in Soviet republic of Bashkortostan. When his mother took him and his sisters into a performance of the ballet "Song of the Cranes", he fell in love with dance. As a child he was encouraged to dance in Bashkir folk performances and his precocity was soon noticed by teachers who encouraged him to train in Leningrad. On a tour stop in Moscow with a local ballet company, Nureyev auditioned for the Bolshoi ballet company and was accepted. However, he felt that the Kirov Ballet school was the best, so he left the local touring company and bought a ticket to Leningrad.

Nicolas Le Riche (born 1972 in Sartrouvilles, Yvelines) is a French ballet dancer. He entered the Paris Opera Ballet school at age ten and joined the corps de ballet six years later; his first ròle was in Gsovsky's Grand Pas Classique. He was promoted to sujet in 1990 and premier danseur in 1991. Balletmaster Rudolf Nureyev cast him as Mercutio and subsequently Romeo in his version of Romeo and Juliet; he then performed in Nijinska's Le Train Bleu, in Robbins' In the Night, Neumeier's Vaslaw, Lander's Etudes, Nureyev's La Bayadère, Mats Ek's version of Giselle, and Petit's Le Jeune Homme et la Mort and Les Forains.

Le Riche was promoted to the Paris Opera Ballet's highest rank, that of étoile (literally, star), after his debut in the róle of Albrecht in the traditional version of Giselle. He performed A Suite of Dances as guest artist at New York City Ballet's Jerome Robbins celebration in June 2008. As choreographer he has made ballets since 2001, including Caligula to Vivaldi's The Four Seasons in 2005.