Cyril
Atanassoff

Jury member of Benois de la Danse

Cyril Atanassoff — French dancer. His connection with ballet started with the Paris Opera Ballet which he joined in 1957 when he graduated from the School of Dance at the Opera, where in 1964 he attained the highest level of his artistic carrier as Etoile.

During that time he reinterpreted numerous classical as well as modern coreographies: Swan Lake, staged by V. Burmaister and R. Nureyev, Giselle. Coppelia, La Sylphide, The Sleeping Beauty, Sylvia, Don Quixote and Raimonda (version by Nureyev), La Fille Mal Gardee, Petruska by M. Fokin, Svadebka hy B. Nizhinskij. Romeo and Juliet, Ghosts and Fedra hy S. Lifar, The Caucasian Prisoner hy J. Skihin, Agon, The Waltzr, The Gypsy, The Violin Concert hy G. Balanchine, Damnation of Faust and Lc Sacre du Printemps by M. Be/art, The Cathedral of the Virgin in Paris, Nana and The Blue Angel hy R. Petit, Ivan the Terrible byYury Grigorovich, The Seasons of the Year hy K. MacMillan, Romeo and Juliet hy Nureyev and numerous others.

He danced together with Ivette Shovire, Claude Bessy, Novella Pontois, Claire Molt, Aliciti Alonco, Ekaterina Maksimova, Elisabeth Platel and Sylrie Gilem. Cyril Atanassoff won the Nizhinzkij Prize in 1965 and received the title of Knight of the National French Order on merit, Knight of the Arts and Literature and Professor of ballet at the Paris Opera in 1991.

He toured the Soviet Union in 1969-1970 and 1977 with the ballet company and also alone. In 1994 he danced during the first Serge Lifar International Ballet Competition in Kiev in the Ucraine where he executed Lifar's 1935 version of Afternoon of a Faun by Claude Debussy.

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