Lifar

Martinez said that, under his leadership, the Paris Opera Ballet would keep showing a number of its classic Rudolf Nureyev productions — though not necessarily all — and works by important French choreographers including Serge Lifar and Maurice Béjart.

The staging of works by Petit, Serge Lifar, Pierre Lacotte or the mostly forgotten Janine Charrat is patchy and dependent on who is running the major companies.

After he died, the graduates of his troupe more or less staffed the directorships of Western ballet—Léonide Massine and Bronislava Nijinska in Europe and America, Marie Rambert and Ninette de Valois in London, Serge Lifar in Paris, and, notably, George Balanchine in New York.

Ms. Charrat met Mr. Lifar during the making of “La Mort du Cygne”; he was the film’s choreographer and, more significantly, the director of the Paris Opera Ballet.

It was Lifar who encouraged Ms. Chauviré to retrain herself with two Russian émigré teachers, Victor Gsovsky and especially Boris Kniaseff, who softened the academic side of her schooling, gave her an elongated line and developed the lyricism that distinguished her style.