Farewell Éric Vu An

On 8th June, 2024, one of the most brilliant and best-known French dancers of his generation has died at the age of 60 in Nice after a couple of years of serious illness which had affected his work as artistic director of the Ballet de l’Opéra de Nice, or Ballet Nice Méditerranée, as he had succeeded in renaming.
Born in Paris to a French mother and legitimised by a Vietnamese father (his natural father being a black Guadeloupean), he trained at the Paris Opéra Ballet School where he became a favorite pupil of the then director Claude Bessy for whom he would always retain great affection and real devotion. Having joined the Opéra Ballet at a very young age, he was already a sujet (soloist) by the age of 18, and went on to dance several major roles before became a premier danseur. Having met Maurice Béjart, he then became a favoured interpreter of his work. In 1986, having created Arépo at the Opéra with Vu An as the protagonist, the choreographer took it upon himself to promote him to the rank of étoile on stage before an enthusiastic audience. However, Rudolf Nureyev, the company director, refused to confirm his impromptu gesture. Vu-An then left the Opéra to follow Béjart and dance his works the world over, and then persued a freelance international career as a guest artist with major companies and theatres (even returning occasionally to the Paris Opéra). He became ballet director in Bordeaux, Avignon and Marseille before his appointment at the Nice Opéra in 2009, where he worked tirelessly to promote the company, expand its repertoire, including his own versions of the classics, and improve technical and artistic standards.
An artist who looked good on stage and possessed a strong and elegant classical technique and real personality even in modern works, Éric Vu An was a rare example of the ‘cultured’ dancer who was aware of the wider worlds of art and culture, partly thanks to mixing from a young age with high-profile artistic figures. He was for many years the partner of Hugues Gall, a longstanding and powerful figure in the French art policy who died suddenly only a few days before him.

Alfio Agostini

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