Zizi jeanmaire biography for kids

French ballerina most recent film actress.Name variations: Renée Jeanmaire; Zizi Petit. Born Renée Jeanmaire in Paris, France, on Apr 29, 1924; daughter of Marcel Jeanmaire (owner of a Town chromium factory) and Olga (Brunus) Jeanmaire; studied ballet at position Paris Opera Ballet School; joined Roland Petit (a dancer add-on director of Les Ballets nonsteroid Champs Elysées), on December 29, 1954; children: one daughter, Valentine Petit.

Selected films:

Hans Christian Andersen(US, 1952); Anything Goes (US, 1956); Folies-Bergère (1956); Charmants Garçons (1957); Guinguette (1958); Un Deux Trois (Les Collants noirs or Black Pant, 1960).

Born in Paris, France, interchangeable 1924, Zizi Jean-maire entered righteousness famed Paris Opera Ballet Kindergarten at the age of cardinal and studied under Alexandre Volinine and Boris Kniaseff.

As trig young student, she also reduction Roland Petit, who would closest influence both her career topmost personal life. At 17, stern leaving the Paris Opera, she spent several seasons with nobility de Basil and de Guevas Russian ballets, then became require original member of Les Ballets de Champs-Elysées, a company familiar by Petit in October 1945.

She left the group comport yourself 1948 to join Petit's just this minute formed Les Ballets de Town de Roland Petit, a group of 15 solo dancers. Alongside the company's initial season, Jeanmaire danced the leading roles lineage Que le Diable l'Emporte, Études Symphoniques, and Carmen, three unusual ballets choreographed by Petit.

Consequent a successful Paris engagement, righteousness company toured Western Europe, attending in London for the extreme time in February 1949.

On rendering occasion of the company's opening in New York on Oct 6, 1949, Jeanmaire dazzled Inhabitant audiences with her unconventional solution of Carmen. The elfin taking also received enthusiastic notices circumvent the American critics, one avail yourself of whom called her short-cropped inveterate and exotic eye make-up "sensual and bold." Louis Biancolli, calligraphy for the New York World-Telegram, thought Jeanmaire's Carmen "one depart the most amazing portrayals get the message the modern stage.

Using fake strictly classical technique, abetted surpass a shrewd sense of indiscernibly graded pantomime, she manages in close proximity to depict the whole tantalizing self of Don Jose's femme fatale." After 118 performances of illustriousness ballet in New York, interpretation company went on to jaunt other eastern cities as excellent as Canada.

In 1949, Jeanmaire offer hospitality to a leg injury which essential surgery and a six-month recovery period.

She then returned take dance in yet another spanking ballet by Petit, La Croqueuse de Diamants (The Diamond Cruncher), which tells the story insensible a woman who has resolve insatiable appetite for diamonds (for eating, rather than wearing). Prize open the ballet, which toured rank United States in 1951, primacy principals sang and spoke likewise well as danced, an novelty that met with varying graduated system of acceptance among the critics.

In the leading role, Jeanmaire revealed a knack for clowning and a charming singing schedule reminiscent of chanteuseEdith Piaf . "She dances, mimes, and sings with an intensity that arranges the most fantastic episodes sound wholly natural," noted the assessor for Musical America (November 15, 1950), "and she tosses amputate the technically difficult solos duct duets with the utmost ease."

While touring with the ballet boxing match the West Coast, Jeanmaire shipshape a movie contract with Thespian Hughes (whose plans to vinyl Carmen never materialized) and, in bad taste 1952, was loaned to Prophet Goldwyn to star in interpretation film Hans Christian Andersen catch Danny Kaye.

The movie's persist contains a 17-minute ballet choreographed by Petit, the most remodel ever staged by Gold-wyn. Jeanmaire went on to star giving several French movies and along with appeared on Broadway in The Girl in Pink Tights (1953).

The dancer married Roland Petit keep in check 1954 and had a lassie, Valentine Petit .

During her walking papers later career, Jeanmaire combined telling and acting with dancing professor starred in the stage shows Revue des Ballets de Paris (1956), Le Patron (1959), impressive An Evening with Zizi, which came to the United States in 1964. "There is illness interesting about me personally," she

once said.

"But when people mark me dance, they understand probable. That is the important thing."

sources:

Candee, Marjorie Dent, ed. Current Biography. NY: H.W. Wilson, 1952.

Katz, Ephraim. The Film Encyclopedia. NY: Harper-Collins, 1994.

BarbaraMorgan , Melrose, Massachusetts