Ganio, Mathieu

Mathieu Ganio (born 16 March 1984) is a French danseur étoile of the Paris Opera Ballet. Mathieu Ganio was born in Marseille, France, the son of Ballet National de Marseille principal dancers Dominique Khalfouni and Denys Ganio. He made his stage debut at two years of age, performing alonside his mother in Roland Petit's Ma Pavlova. He began dance lessons at the age of seven with Colette Armand, mother of dancer Patrick Armand, and studied at the École Nationale Supérieure de Danse de Marseille from 1992 to 1999, before completing his training at the Paris Opera Ballet School. In 2001 he joined the corps de ballet of the Paris Opera Ballet and won promotion to the rank of coryphée in 2002 and sujet in 2003. On 20 May 2004, following a performance of Don Quixote, he was appointed étoile, bypassing the rank of premier danseur. In 2005 he was awarded the Benois de la Danse as outstanding male dancer. On 18 December 2020 he was appointed an officier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. Ganio's repertoire includes principal roles in Romantic, Classical and dramatic ballets, a broad repertoire of neo-classical works by George Balanchine and Jerome Robbins, ballets by Serge Lifar, Roland Petit, Maurice Béjart, Pierre Lacotte and Angelin Preljocaj, as well as multiple works by John Neumeier, William Forsythe and Wayne McGregor. With the Paris Opera Ballet he has performed in the United States of America, Switzerland, United Arab Emirates, Singapore, Japan and Australia. On 29 September 2004 Ganio performed in a joint gala by the Paris Opera Ballet and Royal Ballet at the Palais Garnier to mark the centennary of the Entente Cordiale. In August 2005 he performed in The Sleeping Beauty with the Tokyo Ballet at the Bunka Kaikan. At the Mariinsky Theatre in Saint Petersburg he performed in Don Quixote in 2006 and Giselle in 2007. In 2010 appeared in Giselle at Moscow's Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Theatre. In July 2016 Ganio returned to the Mariinsky Theatre to dance in Giselle. In November 2017 he participated in the Men in Motion project, organized by Ivan Putrov, at the London Coliseum. In 2018 Ganio danced the title role in Onegin with the Stuttgart Ballet during a tour to Japan. In April 2019 he returned to London's Coliseum to participate in Putrov's Against the Stream program. On 19 March 2022 Ganio performed at a benefit gala at the Coliseum for Ukrainian war relief. His younger sister, Marine Ganio, is a première danseuse of the Paris Opera Ballet.