Throughout the 20th century, most of the great European opera houses presented classical ballet as a quintessentially 19th-century art form. But if one European artist should receive the principal credit for recognising and then addressing its arrested development, it is the French choreographer Maurice Béjart, who has died aged 80.
His vision was of ballet as a 20th-century art form that would be as popular as cinema. It is a vision to which Béjart remained committed throughout his life, both during his 17-year residency at the Brussels opera house, the Théâtre de la Monnaie, until 1987, and then in Lausanne, after changes in management at the Monnaie resulted in the relocation of both Béjart and his company (renamed Béjart Ballet Lausanne) to Switzerland. His approach to the realisation of his vision was always evolutionary rather than revolutionary. The traditions of classical ballet (both the Italian style he studied as a youth in Marseille, and the Russian style he studied later in Paris under his principal teacher, Mme Roussane) were to be augmented rather than thrown away.
Classical ballet technique was added to and enriched from the sensual and spiritual dance traditions of India, Africa, China and Japan. Opera house performances were supplemented by spectacular productions in circus arenas and sports centres. Performances involved not only the most ancient and modern music for dancing, but also words and dialogue. The stage became an Aladdin's cave of magical effects drawing from the traditions of ballet, opera, musicals, vaudeville, and oriental theatre, including kabuki.
What made Béjart's formula so successful with his audiences (if not always with British critics) was his unique blend of showmanship with sincerity, and virtuosity with artistry. But the approach was something more than a formula. His celebration of eastern cultures in his ballets reflected a personal commitment - his spiritual observances owed much to Sufi traditions and he made an annual retreat to a Buddhist monastery in Greece.
The influence of African dance on his work - and his commitment to the creation of the multi-disciplinary dance school Mudra-Afrique in Dakar, with the support of Senegal's President Léopold Sédar Senghor - marked Béjart's recognition of and tribute to his African grandmother. Mudra is the Hindi word for gesture. And the European artists and composers who took to the stage in Béjart's ballets - Nijinsky, Chaplin, Shakespeare, Molière, Wagner, Baudelaire, Nietzsche, Mozart, Berlioz - were also the artists and composers who peopled his life off-stage.
But while his productions, whether large-scale or intimate, were consummately crafted works of total theatre, it is their choreography that drew from Béjart his deepest creative contribution. Technically speaking, his dancers were always in the premier league of international companies, with soloists (most notably male dancers, including Germinal Casado, Paolo Bortuluzzi and Jorge Donn) who were stars in their own right. And, while Béjart was as inspired by the dancers in his company as they were by him, the luminaries of the ballet world - including Vladimir Vasiliev, Rudolf Nureyev, Mikhaïl Baryshnikov, Maïa Plissetskaïa, Suzanne Farrell, Maïna Gielgud, Marcia Haydée, Judith Jamison and Sylvie Guillem - travelled to dance for him or to work with him.
His choreography, while immediately recognisable, was also infinitely variable. The Rite of Spring (to the celebrated score by Stravinsky, 1959) spoke through orgasmic sexuality and flowing imagery of flowers, birds, chariots and ships. Ninth Symphony (to Beethoven, 1964) spoke through exhilarating patterns, drawing upon Indian dance for the slow movement and drawing in African dancers for the final movement. Boléro (to Ravel, 1961) achieved sublimity through repetition in an extended solo. Ring Around the Ring (to Wagner, 1990) intermingled rehearsal and performance sequences in scenes peopled by Wagnerian and contemporary characters.
During the course of five creative decades, Béjart was the principal author of almost 250 individual dance works (including more than 40 full-length ballets) for his own companies in Paris, Brussels and Lausanne and on tour, and for festivals and companies in France, Israel, Turkey, Egypt, Russia, Japan, Brazil, Austria, Greece and America. It is an output which attracted - and inspired, invigorated and informed - a much broader audience than is drawn to mainstream ballet.
Born in Marseille, Béjart was brought up by his French-Senegalese father, Gaston Berger, a self-taught and much admired teacher, inspector of education, and philosopher, after whom Senegal's second university is now named. Although his mother died when he was aged seven, she remained throughout his life an inner inspiration and beacon. He studied at the Lycée de Marseille where he was awarded his baccalaureate cum laude at 16, graduated from the faculty of philosophy in Aix-en-Provence with a bachelor of letters degree, and crucially took up dancing on the advice of his family's doctor.
The enthusiasm he then developed for classical dance changed both his life and his name (for stage appearances Berger became Béjart, reflecting both his connection to art and his admiration for Molière, whose relationships included both Madeleine Béjart, lover, and Armande Béjart, wife). Just 5ft 4in tall, he made his debut as a ballet dancer at the Marseille Opéra in 1945, moving on in the same year to the Paris Opéra.
There were no early indications that Béjart was to become a moderniser. He first came to the attention of London audiences in Mona Inglesby's International Ballet company in 1947 dancing the virtuoso Bluebird variation in Sleeping Beauty and partnering the ballerina Claudia Algeranova as a youthful classical prince in Swan Lake.
But when he returned to London in 1960, as both choreographer and dancer, things had changed, through the work he had done with his Paris-based company, Les Ballets de l'Etoile, later Le Ballet-théâtre de Paris, from 1954 to 1959. He had, principally through his exploration of contemporary music and contact with Pierre Schaeffer, the father of musique concrète, and Pierre Boulez experienced what he described as une rupture, and had already created his seminal work Symphonie pour un Homme Seul (1955) to the electronic music of Pierre Henry. Five years later, he presented at Sadler's Wells a programme of astonishing contemporary work, including a full-length ballet, Orphée, to electronic music by Henry, and his dramatic, African-influenced version of The Rite of Spring.
The commission to choreograph this last work had come from Maurice Huisman, the perceptive director of the Théâtre de la Monnaie, who had recognised the remarkable talents displayed by Béjart during in these early works. Thus, the following year The Ballet of the 20th Century was born, and Béjart himself said: "I started living at the age of 33 or 34."
However, after that time, as the Béjart phenomenon developed, London, of all the major cities, benefited least. Relatively few of his works were performed in Britain, though enthusiasts for his work could keep in touch through imported publications, and films and video recordings - from the film of Symphonie Pour un Homme Seul to the video recording of his joyous recreation of The Nutcracker (1998), featuring the original choreographer, Marius Petipa, as a principal character. His early creation Sonate à Trois (1957), based on the sexual triangle of Jean-Paul Sartre's Huis Clos, had featured in the repertoire of Western Theatre Ballet (later Scottish Ballet) in the 1960s. And his Four Sons Of Aymon, a danced fable featuring giant puppets and giant sculptures, took over Murrayfield ice rink during the 1961 Edinburgh festival.
However, thereafter, appearances by his company and performances of his works by other companies were relatively rare - though Nijinsky Clown of God (1971) and Our Faust (1975) reached London in the 1970s, and both Boléro (on tour with English National Ballet) and Ring Around the Ring (at the Edinburgh Festival), as well as a brief season in London by Béjart Ballet Lausanne, featured on the dance calendar in the early 1990s.
It was, however, a season in September 2000 which brought Béjart and the Lausanne company back to London and to audience (if not critical) acclamation. His Ballet for Life (1997), a dance tapestry celebrating the lives of dancer Jorge Donn (Béjart's longterm companion and the inspiration for his most impassioned choreography) and of Queen singer Freddie Mercury, both of whom died of Aids (in 1992 and 1991 respectively) attracted the most diverse and enthusiastic of audiences. Music by Queen and by Mozart provided the musical magic carpet for a journey through death into life. Hospital trolleys rubbed shoulders with angels, and beach antics with desolation as the company, in costumes designed by Gianni Versace, danced their way through 20 episodes to conclude with I Want to Be Free and The Show Must Go On. The final choreographed and ecstatic curtain call was an extended work in its own right.
Then again Britain missed out, though the company could be seen in Switzerland, Belgium, France, Italy, Spain, Holland, Greece, Cyprus, Hungary, Russia, Estonia, Slovenia, Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong and China. However, in February 2003 Bejart's La Compagnie M - a company of young graduates from his school in Lausanne, Rudra (the name of a fierce Hindu god also credited with healing powers) - appeared in London to perform with guest artist Marcia Haydée. The phenomenal abilities of these performers - drawn from nine countries and acting, singing, and dancing in ancient and modern cultural forms drawn from the east and the west - reaffirmed the importance Béjart always gave to the young. He personally financed La Compagnie M, while the substantial royalties from his works performed by companies around the world are used for a foundation to help young dancers in training.
The period leading up to his 80th birthday this year saw celebration, retrospection and renewal for Béjart and his company. Earlier works and excerpts from them were revived, rearranged, anthologised - and sometimes given new meanings - in large- and small-scale performances. Productions paid tribute to Léopold Sédar Senghor (who died in 2001), to the partnership with Pierre Henry, and to Béjart's leading dancer (at his side for 25 years), Gil Roman.
Béjart's golden anniversary as a choreographer was celebrated in a grand gala in Lille in 2005. Béjart himself created new works, including L'Art d'Être Grand-père, Zarathoustra, Le Chant de la Danse and his own celebration of turning 80, his humorously serious and seriously humorous La Vie du Danseur. His company are currently rehearsing for a new production called Around the World in 80 Minutes, to be premiered next month in Lausanne.
Bejart's work, however, is now more than an on-stage phenomenon. For in addition to his published writings (including a diary and a novel), and in addition to extensive literature on his work (mainly in French) plus numerous film records of his earlier body of work, we now have recently issued DVDs of Ballet for Life, of Bejart's L'Amour - La Danse programme, and full-length films for television by Serge Korber (Béjart! Vous Avez Dit Béjart?, 2005) and Marcel Schüpbach (B Comme Béjart, 2002). It is this library which will surely secure for Béjart the recognition that not only did he direct ballet on to a path into the 20th century, but also - with his respect for the past equalled by his enthusiasm for the future - showed the way forward into the 21st century.
Pamela Payne writes: All 2,000 seats in the Théâtre Cirque Royal, Brussels, were filled, and as the music built to a final crescendo the sexual frisson was palpable. Then all hell was let loose. The audience rose to its feet, screaming and stamping. Flowers rained on to the stage.
Jorge Donn, doyen of the Ballet of the 20th Century since 1961, lay perspiring on the huge red table where he had danced throughout the subtly varied repetitions of the Ravel score that had inspired the the ballet Boléro. The 40-strong all-male corps-de-ballet, seated on red chairs around the back of the large apron stage, had moved forward in ones and twos to dance sensually before prostrating themselves around him.
Before the final curtain, Béjart slipped on to the stage and the frenzy increased. This small, handsome, blue-eyed man, dressed as always in T-shirt, baggy trousers and sneakers - all as black as his hair and goatee - was the hero of balletomanes of all ages.
A frighteningly clever man, Béjart benefited from his father's interest in philosophy, and his ballets are littered with references to classical works; his books and programme notes reflected the breadth of his scholarship. He was stubborn, but only occasionally lost his temper, and was known to enjoy solitude. Kind and tolerant, he was adored by his family, worshipped by his dancers and staff, and idolised by his legion of fans throughout the world.
His formula for enthralling them was to surprise in the first five minutes of a work, and then by turns shock, delight and amuse, finally reducing them to tears with a poignant ending. There will be many tears at this finale.
· Maurice Jean Béjart (Berger), choreographer and dance company director, born January 1 1927; died November 22 2007