Since 1998, he has directed the National Choreographic Centre housed in the former Gare du Midi. Over twenty-five years in Biarritz, Thierry Malandain has made the city one of the European capitals of neoclassical dance. A member of the Académie des beaux-arts since 2022, he will pass the baton in 2027 after a career of rare intensity.
Born in 1959 in Petit-Quevilly, Thierry Malandain is not Basque by origin but is a Biarrot by conviction. His career began at the Paris Opéra, continued at the Ballet du Rhin and the Ballet Théâtre Français de Nancy, where he took his first steps as a choreographer between 1980 and 1986. When he left Nancy with eight dancers to found his own company, Temps Présent, he chose to build a body of work against the grain: neoclassical, demanding, deeply human.
In 1998, the French Ministry of Culture gave him an unprecedented mission: to create in Biarritz the first National Choreographic Centre in the classical-contemporary style. He installed the company in the former Gare du Midi and began building a repertoire that would tour the world. More than eighty choreographies over twenty-five years, performed in Paris, Versailles, Naples, Stockholm, Vienna and Buenos Aires. The Malandain Ballet Biarritz regularly reaches one hundred performances a year.
The awards followed: nominated for the Benois de la danse in Moscow (2004, 2006, 2018), Best Choreographer at the Taglioni European Ballet Awards in Berlin for Cinderella (2014), Grand Prix de la danse from the Critics’ Syndicate (2012), SACD choreography prize (2020). An Officer of Arts and Letters since 2010, he was inducted into the Académie des beaux-arts on 6 April 2022, in seat n°1 of the choreography section.
Thierry Malandain has also directed the festival ‘Le Temps d’aimer la danse’ since 2009, an annual September event that brings the world’s greatest ballet companies to Biarritz each year. His successor, Martin Harriague, will take over the direction of the CCN on 1 January 2027.