JULIEN LESTEL

Choreographer – Director of Ballet Julien Lestel
Principal Dancer with the Ballet National de Marseille (1999-2011)
Paris Opera Ballet (1993-1998)

Following in the line of Jirí Kylián, Ohad Naharin and Crystal Pite, choreographer Julien Lestel asserts a singular style through creations that are resolutely modern, aesthetic and powerful.

Trained at the Paris Opera Ballet School and at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Paris, where he was awarded a First Prize, Julien Lestel then worked with Rudolf Nureyev, who invited him to dance Cinderella at the Teatro San Carlo in Naples. He went on to join Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo, the Paris Opera Ballet, the Zurich Ballet, where he was engaged as a principal dancer, and finally the Ballet National de Marseille as Marie-Claude Pietragalla’s partner.

He worked with Rudolf Nureyev, Jerome Robbins, Jirí Kylián, William Forsythe, Angelin Preljocaj, Roland Petit, Pina Bausch, Thierry Malandain and others, and performed choreographies by Marius Petipa, George Balanchine, John Neumeier, Uwe Scholz, Serge Lifar, Frederick Ashton and Vaslav Nijinsky.
As a choreographer and dancer, he has accompanied actors Pierre Arditi, Marie-Christine Barrault and Macha Méril in readings of literary texts.

As a choreographer and dancer, he has accompanied actors Pierre Arditi, Marie-Christine Barrault and Macha Méril in readings of literary texts.
He then collaborated with pianist François-René Duchâble, who performed on stage in several of his creations — Anastylose, Rachmaninov, Solo and Opus — as well as with composer Karol Beffa, who created the music for Corps et Âmes. He took part in the Gala des Étoiles du XXIe siècle at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, where he danced Les Âmes Frères, one of his creations. He also choreographed the danced sections of operas: Les Pêcheurs de perles and Aïda at the Opéra de Massy, Manon, as well as La Vie parisienne at the Opéra de Marseille.

Ballet Julien Lestel was founded in January 2007 at the Espace Pierre Cardin during the performance of his first choreography, Les Âmes Frères. Today, it brings together eleven dancers from diverse backgrounds and has more than twenty choreographies in its repertoire, performed in France and abroad, in which each dancer can reveal their individuality while remaining faithful to the modern neoclassical style that characterizes his choreographic work.

In 2018, he collaborated with Éléonora Abbagnato, Director of the Rome Opera Ballet, adapting his choreography Puccini for the dancers of Ballet Julien Lestel and the Rome Opera Ballet.

In 2021, he created a fourteen-episode web series, L’éternel et l’éphémère, in collaboration with Alexandra Cardinale — choreographies filmed at the Musée Rodin, the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris and the Musée du Quai Branly – Jacques Chirac.

Julien Lestel is committed to outreach initiatives. He reaches out to a wide range of audiences through educational projects and choreographic workshops — for example in schools from nursery to high school, with teenagers with autistic disorders or mental disabilities, as well as in prisons, retirement homes and hospitals.
In Marseille, since January 2023, he has been leading workshops for a group of blind and psychotic adults living in an IRSAM residence (Institut Régional Sourds et Aveugles de Marseille), developing choreographic workshops with stage presentations.

In April 2025, he created a choreography in China for the dancers of the Shenyang Academy on the occasion of the inauguration of the Croisements Festival, established by President Emmanuel Macron.

“My research focuses on creating fluid, unrestrained movement, as well as broken movements with rhythmic ruptures, so that the spectator can be carried toward emotion while also being drawn into a dynamic where power, sensuality and poetry coexist, enhanced by the performers.”

Ballet Julien Lestel was in residence for an exceptionally long period at the Opéra de Massy (2012-2021). Today, the Ballet receives support from the City of Marseille and the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur Region, as well as grants from foundations and private partners.

With the support of the Ministry of Culture / Directorate-General for Artistic Creation and the Regional Directorate for Cultural Affairs of Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur.

Julien Lestel is also a teacher at the École Nationale de Danse de Marseille.