Giselle
The company's signature since 1957, danced this year with the 1949 Marchant second act restored — the Wilis enter from the house, not the wings.
Paris · Fondé 1946 · Salle Odéon
OdeonBallet
Eight decades en pointe. The oldest independent ballet company in Paris opens its eightieth season on 2 October — four ballets, one world premiere, and the Grand Défilé of all 154 dancers.
14 Rue de la Volière, Paris 9ᵉ
Curtain 19:30 · Matinées Sun 14:30
№ 80
The eightieth season, in four arcs.
I · Le programme
Each title below is choreographed: as you scroll, its letters travel an arc, turning as a dancer turns. Scroll to move the line
La Sylphide
Bournonville's Highland ghost story for the holidays, with 118 hand-sewn tartans and a forest that lowers in full view of the audience.
Vermilion Hour
The first commission of the anniversary year: forty minutes for sixteen dancers, two pianos, and a curtain that never fully rises.
Swan Lake
The season closes on the lake. Salomé Ferreira and Kiyo Tanaka alternate Odette/Odile across all twenty-six nights.
One evening, three acts.
II · Gala d'ouverture
The programme for Friday 2 October 2026, printed here as it will be printed at the door.
IActe
Le Foyer
Choreography Élise Marchant, 1949. Music Camille Ferrand, for string octet. Sixteen dancers in the rehearsal-room ballet that founded the house style.
First danced 14 March 1949, in this theatre, by eleven dancers who had rehearsed it in coats.
28 min◆ Entracte — vingt minutes · the bar opens in the Marchant Rotunda ◆
IIActe
Vermilion Hour — first movement
Choreography Mara Okonjo. Music Noor Haddad, for strings and two pianos. A preview of February's world premiere, danced by its original sixteen.
The gala audience sees eleven minutes no one else will see until 12 February.
31 min◆ Entracte — quinze minutes ◆
IIIActe
Grand Défilé
The full company, 154 dancers, descend the Rotunda stair in order of rank — the school's youngest first, the four étoiles last. Music Hector Beaulieu.
Held once a year since 1946. The only piece in the repertoire never rehearsed in full.
22 min
Curtain 19:30 précises
Evening dress requested, not required
Carriages at 21:26
La Compagnie
III · The dancers
Ranked as ballet has always ranked itself — and promoted, by tradition, onstage.
154 dancers. Four are étoiles.
Rank at Odeon is earned in public: a dancer learns of promotion when the artistic director walks onstage at curtain call and says the new title aloud. It has been done this way since Élise Marchant promoted her first étoile in 1951, mid-applause, because she could not wait.
4
Étoiles
9
Premiers danseurs
22
Sujets
119
Corps de ballet
Les Étoiles
Maren DelacroixÉtoile since 2017 · farewell season
Kiyo TanakaÉtoile since 2019 · Odette/Odile, Apr–May
Théo RassineÉtoile since 2021 · Albrecht, all 24 nights
Salomé FerreiraNamed onstage, 14 May 2025
Direction — Odile Marchant-Bey, artistic director since 2012, granddaughter of the founder.
Eight decades, one address.
IV · Chronique
A short ledger of a long company.
1946
A cinema, requisitioned. Élise Marchant opens the company in a former newsreel house on Rue de la Volière. Eleven dancers, one upright piano, no heating until December.
1957
Giselle runs sixty-one nights. The queue for returns reaches the Boulevard Haussmann; the prefecture asks, politely, that it stop.
1979
The Salle Odéon rebuilt. A horseshoe of 1,238 seats, its proscenium gilded by hand over fourteen months by three retired framers from the Marais.
1994
First world tour. Nineteen cities, ninety-one performances, one costume trunk lost in transit and recovered, intact, in Osaka.
2008
The Odeon School opens across the courtyard: eight years of training, sixty pupils a year, tuition free since the first bell.
2026
The eightieth season. Four étoiles, 119 in the corps, a world premiere in February — and the same address.
The hall, priced plainly.
V · Billetterie
Every seat in the horseshoe sees the whole stage. The prices below hold for the entire season.
| Parterre | rows A–M, flat floor | €96 | |
| Corbeille | the horseshoe's first ring | €118 | |
| Premier Balcon | best acoustics in the house | €72 | |
| Amphithéâtre | steepest, dearest to dancers | €26 | |
| Debout | 40 places, sold at 18:30 day-of | €12 |
Box officeTue–Sat 11:00–18:30, and until curtain on performance days.
+33 1 47 63 08 14
+33 1 47 63 08 14
Under 28€15 for any unsold seat, one hour before curtain, identification in hand.
L'Abonnement · Saison 80
Take your seat for the eightieth.
Four ballets from €88, priority for the Gala d'Ouverture, and the season brochure by post — set in the same type as this page, as it has been since 1979.
Booking for Giselle opens Tuesday 8 July at 11:00, at the window and by telephone first.