In the early fifties, in Paris, Maurice Béjart created choreogrphies for his first company, Les Ballets de l’Etoile. In 1960, he formed Le Ballet du XXe siècle in Brussels. A quarter of a century later, he moved his company to Lausanne, giving birth to the Béjart Ballet Lausanne.

Maurice Béjart was born in Marseille on January 1, 1927. He began his career in Vichy in 1946, continued with Janine Charrat, Roland Petit and especially in London as part of the International Ballet. During a tour in Sweden with the Cullberg Ballet (1949), he discovered the resources of choreographic expressionism. A Swedish film project confronted him for the first time with Stravinsky, but back in Paris, he gathered choreographic experience with compositions by Chopin, with support of the critic Jean Laurent. From then on, the dancer was doubled as a choreographer.

In 1955, he confirmed his thinking outside the box with the choreography of Symphonie pour un homme seul, performed by his company, Les Ballets de l’Etoile. Noticed by Maurice Huisman, the new director of the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie, in Brussels, he created a triumphant The Rite of Spring (1959).

In 1960 Maurice Béjart launched, in Brussels, Le Ballet du XXe Siècle, an international company touring around the world, and the number of his creations was steadily increasing: Boléro (1961), Messe pour le emps présent (1967) and L’Oiseau de Feu (1970).

In 1987, Le Ballet du XXe Siècle became the Béjart Ballet Lausanne and the great choreographer settled in the Olympic capital. In 1992, he decided to downsize his company to about thirty dancers to “recapture the essence of the performer” and he founded the Ecole-Atelier Rudra Béjart. Among the many ballets for this company, we find Le Mandarin merveilleux, King Lear - Prospero, À propos de Shéhérazade, Ballet for Life, MutationX, La Route de la soie, Le Manteau, Enfant-Roi, La Lumière des eaux and Lumière.

As well as directing plays (La Reine verte, Casta Diva, Cinq Nô modernes, A-6- Roc), operas (Salomé, La Traviata and Don Giovanni) and films (Bhakti, Paradoxe sur le comédien...), Maurice Béjart had also published several books (novels, memories, a personal diary and a play). In 2007, on the eve of his eightieth birthday, the choreographer created La Vie du danseur racontée par Zig et Puce. While working on what would be his last creation, Le Tour du Monde en 80 minutes, Maurice Béjart passed away in Lausanne on November 22, 2007.