Jill’s World’s two year anniversary

The two year anniversary of Jill’s World

A belated celebration: This blog, Jill’s World, was two years old on May 30, 2011. Sigh! Late to my own party! (blushing) But still, I’m having a wonderful time! Time passes so quickly when you’re having fun.

I’d like to thank all my readers and especially the friends who have commented with compliments and criticisms. Some who have followed my career on Yahoo 360 and then moved with me to Blogger were Paul D and Eric with whom I’m BFF. Then there are the mysterious Jack, JJ, Paul S, balletlover and others as well as the prolific ‘anonymous’.

To all my readers my friends Anya, Taryn, Cyndi and I extend best wishes for good health and happiness and hope you will join us in raising a glass of virtual Champaign to toast the occasion.

Roland Petit’s Telegraph Obit

Roland Petit and Cyd Charisse in Black Tights 1960

This obit provides a more European perspective on RP’s life.

The Telegraph
Wednesday 13 July, 2011
Theatre Obituaries

Roland Petit

Roland Petit, the choreographer who died on July 10 aged 87, was France's major creative figure in post-war ballet, responsible for defining a new French chic and erotic frankness in dance, typified above all by his wife, the glamorous star Zizi Jeanmaire. He was also probably the favorite choreographer of the world's greatest ballerinas.

An outstanding classical dancer as a youth, Roland Petit swiftly decided on a career as a rebel against the traditionalism of the Paris Opera Ballet, and before the age of 25 had created two of his most iconic ballets, Le Jeune Homme et la mort and Carmen, with the sultry young Jeanmaire as the lethal female destroying a hapless male in both.

These ballets caused a sensation worldwide and Petit and Jeanmaire swiftly became the most exciting names in French dance, closely associating with Jean Cocteau, Edith Piaf, Yves Montand and the new intellectuals of Left Bank Paris.

However Petit was also wooing Margot Fonteyn, prima ballerina of Sadler's Wells Ballet, with whom he was having an affair. Fonteyn had cosmetic surgery to shorten her nose at his suggestion (though the operation was redone in London). When still in her twenties, she seriously considered leaving London to join him in Paris, which prompted his other mistress, Jeanmaire, to issue him with an ultimatum.

To reassure Jeanmaire, Petit created Carmen, an encapsulation of Bizet's opera in ballet, which premiered in 1949 at the Prince's Theatre, Shaftesbury Avenue, and became an instant world hit. Jeanmaire bobbed her hair short and wore a scant black corset, which, coupled with the candid seductiveness of her pas de deux with Petit, caused both shock and delight among the crowds who rushed to see it. One observer commented that he could see men's trouser buttons popping during the performance.

But the leading English choreographer, Frederick Ashton, then developing into a classical dancemaker of genius at Covent Garden, mourned that he would be seen as out of date.

Fonteyn herself soon decided that a Parisian ballet life with Petit would be more about style and short-term effects than about durably challenging choreography, and she resumed her career with the Sadler's Wells Ballet.

Petit and Renée Jeanmaire married in 1954, and the choreographer reinvented her as "Zizi", one of the immortal icons of Parisian nightlife.

Roland Petit was born on January 13 1924 in Villemomble, a Paris suburb, the elder son of a French café owner and an Italian shoemaker. His mother, Rose Repetto, would leave to set up the Repetto dance shoe business, now an international concern. His father,

Edmond Petit, encouraged his young son in dance lessons and at just 16 he was accepted by the Paris Opera Ballet, then suffering the first straits of the Second World War.

Fast-tracked as a soloist by the director Serge Lifar (Diaghilev's last protégé) the teenager was much influenced by the cosmopolitan artistic intellectualism erupting in wartime Paris, and was taken under the wing of two leading Diaghilev associates, Jean Cocteau and Boris Kochno.

At the end of the war, aged 21 and with backing from his father, Petit founded the anti-establishment Les Ballets des Champs-Elysées, taking two unorthodox but brilliant young dancers with him, Jean Babilée and Renée Jeanmaire, who would become icons of the new French dance.

Petit reinvented the suffering, virginal ballerina as a provocative, irresistible femme fatale of the modern day. His post-war works remain some of his most enduring, Les Forains, Le Jeune Homme et la mort (for Babilée), Les demoiselles de la nuit (for Fonteyn in Paris), Carmen, Le Loup, Cyrano de Bergerac and Notre-Dame de Paris, boldly theatrical in design, all recently performed by Paris Opera Ballet and the Bolshoi Ballet among other companies.

When Petit and Jeanmaire toured the Ballets de Paris to Hollywood in 1955 his charm conquered Elizabeth Taylor and Rita Hayworth, among others. Showered with Hollywood invitations, to Jeanmaire's chagrin he chose a younger lookalike, Leslie Caron, to be the lead in his 1955 Fred Astaire musical Daddy Long Legs. He also choreographed the films Hans Christian Andersen with Danny Kaye and Zizi Jeanmaire, The Glass Slipper, again for Caron, and Folies-Bergère, with Jeanmaire and Eddie Constantine.

He made the film Black Tights (1960) to show Zizi Jeanmaire's magnetic balletic gifts alongside Cyd Charisse and Moira Shearer, but he now set about reinventing the Paris revue around his wife, exploring new levels of luxury and sophistication for her many talents. Not only did Jeanmaire dance like an angel in any style, dressed flamboyantly (and sometimes minimally) by costumiers such as Erté, but she possessed an alluring singing voice and a worldly verbal wit that sold countless records.

They became the power couple of Sixties Parisian cultural life, wearing Yves Saint Laurent and collaborating with Andy Warhol.

Petit briefly returned to his alma mater, the Paris Opera Ballet, as director in 1970, but quit after a few months to buy the Casino de Paris specifically to feature Zizi in a supercharged new kind of music-hall, which flourished for five years.

In 1972 he took up leadership of the Ballet de Marseille, to which for the next 25 years the world's major ballerinas beat a trail, Maya Plisetskaya, Natalia Makarova, Alessandra Ferri and Altynai Asylmuratova among them, seeking to dance his flagrantly attractive female roles.

Meanwhile his early ballets proved a magnet for the great male ballet stars of the 1970s. Rudolf Nureyev and Mikhail Baryshnikov filmed Le Jeune Homme and Carmen, each partnering the evergreen Jeanmaire. Later Petit would choreograph for Baryshnikov's 1985 feature film White Nights.

In Britain, however, Roland Petit remained derided as a showman, compared unfavorably with the Royal Ballet's choreographers Frederick Ashton and Kenneth MacMillan. Petit created three ballets for Covent Garden, the slight Ballabile (1950), and two late Fonteyn-Nureyev vehicles, a pop-art Paradise Lost (which Mick Jagger loved) and a Pelléas et Mélisande, both of which were given discouraging critical receptions.

English National Ballet offers a rare British viewing of his more durable works, Carmen, Le Jeune Homme et la mort and L'Arlèsienne, at the London Coliseum next week, which Petit was overseeing when he died at home in Geneva.

Among his unusual ventures were the only ballet Orson Wells ever devised, The Lady in the Ice (1953, London), a 1972 Pink Floyd ballet and a Swan Lake with male swans (1998).

Among his many honours, Roland Petit was a Commander of the Légion d'honneur and a Commander of the French Order of Merit. His wife, now 87, and their daughter, Valentine Petit, survive him.

Deer stalking, Crag Abbey and the heir

A red deer stag

Deer Stalking: The Duke, Cyndi’s grandfather, invited us all to one of his hunting lodges in the Scottish highlands for a few days of deer stalking, what we call hunting in the U.S. Deer stalking is primarily a male sport, but I think he offered because he knew from an earlier conversation that I want to see his hunting lodge and he would have me where I couldn’t easily escape his amorous attention. I know that sounds conceited of me to say that, but he told me as much when he said it was extremely isolated and was I sure I wouldn’t mind being with him for that length of time. I asked him straight out what about his mistress, Penelope, and he said she would have to make do with my escort, Colin, for the time we were all at Crag Abbey, the 13th century ruin parts of which he converted to a hunting lodge. Cyndi said Red deer stags come in season on July 1st in Scotland, but a detail like didn’t stop the Duke from stalking on his own land. She said he routinely takes high profile guests hunting regardless of the season if there are quality animals to shoot. So, for the past several weeks Anya, Cyndi and I and our men have been enjoying more of the hospitality of the Duke. He was looking forward to some company in the field, especially of men with military backgrounds who understand that silence is a hunter’s friend and don’t need to carry on conversations while stalking. He also wants companions who are good shots as it’s a terrible bother to send a guide out to track and kill a wounded buck that got away because of a poorly placed shot.

The heir: His Grace’s son, John, Marquis of M …, who at 37 is taking an advanced degree in archeology at Oxford after years as an officer in the Royal Marines, joined us at Crag Abbey for deer stalking. His arrival was a surprise to all but his father and he is gorgeous! He has a beautiful hard body, is quite strong, has a great sense of humor, is an expert shot and is amazing in bed. Not necessarily in that order. After my last three hour session with his Grace (which, as this is written, was more than a week ago) he had to take a nitro tablet under his tongue and finally realized he has to reduce his bedroom athletics a bit, at least with me. And quite rightly I think since I clearly remember the Duchesses caution to me about not killing him during sex. That has left Penelope, his mistress, still with Colin, who is nominally my escort for our stay at the Abbey. So I became the intimate partner of Lord John who hadn’t brought a girlfriend with him. At lunch on the day Himself fell ill, John asked if I would like to have a tour of the Abbey and while the Duke had shown me around briefly I was anxious to be in the company of the handsome budding archeologist who offered to “slake my fascination with the chapel and other subjects of mutual interest”. In a later entry I will write more about my tour of the Abbey with John and especially the early Roman temple(s) over which the chapel was built.

Hunting rifles: Several years ago His Grace bought four hunting rifles from a London gun maker, J. Roberts & Son (Gunmakers) Ltd. He bought J. Rigby mountain rifles with 26 inch barrels bored for a 7x64 Brenneke cartridge that fires a 154 grain bullet at 2,900 FPS. All have Zeiss 3x12 VARI telescopic sights. One of the Rigbys is crafted as a left hand rifle to his Grace’s personal specifications and three have standard right hand actions for guests who didn’t bring their own rifles. His son, John, the Marquis, Fiona’s brother and Cyndi’s Uncle who will eventually inherit the Duchy, bought a similar left hand action Rigby 7x64 Brenneke. The first day we were here His Grace took the men out to a small range to let them fire the Rigbys to check the zeros and see what firing them was like. His gillies had been spotting deer during the previous week knowing that Himself was having guests to hunt and said they had found some lovely bucks. The five men have been out most days stalking and have had great results. The meat that doesn’t go to the Duke’s table is distributed to the villagers who work at the Abbey so none goes to waste. On the coast and in the valleys the temperature has been in the 60s (Fahrenheit) and at the Abbey the temp has been in the 50s and is often shrouded in low clouds in the mornings. So for us girls tights and legwarmers under jeans as well as anoraks are needed if we go out on the terraces and ramparts.

Crag Abbey: Begun by the Benedictines in the early 12th century as a place of refuge and contemplation it was overrun in the mid 13th C by the local Clan whose Laird then added greatly to its fortification. Built over a natural spring of fresh water the Abbey was never again captured by force, but due to its isolation its occupants were either starved into surrendering or it was bypassed. One of the Dukes ancestors came by the Abbey and the thousands of hectares surrounding it as part of the marriage settlement when he married the Laird’s only daughter. Even so an English Duke owning Scottish land has never set well with the local population even though the family has owned the Scottish estate for several hundred years and the surrounding villages are dependent on the estate for their livelihoods. So the estate agent has been instructed to go out of his way to get along with the villagers and surrounding landowners and (according to the Duke) that has significantly reduced any local discontent. Much of the fabric of the Abbey was left to deteriorate over the centuries, but the present Duke and his father before him reclaimed and refurbished a range of apartments and the original chapel which contains the Roman temples. From the upper stories the apartments have splendid views of the surrounding mountains and lochs and when the weather is clear even views of the Atlantic in the distance. In recent years the Abbey has been fitted out with modern conveniences and there is a large generator to power them all. Located in the mountains of Western Scotland the Abbey gets heavy rains from weather systems coming off the Atlantic and even in mid-summer the weather can be cold and damp since at the elevation of 2600 feet the Abbey is often in the clouds for days at a time. So the many fireplaces are kept lit throughout the year since central heating, while available, is insufficient to thoroughly warm the stone of the walls, even though tapestries cover the walls to insulate the rooms from most of the chill.

The Roman Empire and the Abbey: It was while at Ascot hearing the Duke talk about the Roman iconography in the chapel that caused me to ask Himself if I could see the chapel and hunting lodge. I was particularly interested in the mosaic images of Roman Goddesses in the floor of the chapel which is the part of the abbey that was the least damaged by neglect over the centuries. The part that archeologists have found puzzling is that the mosaics appear to be of Roman origin perhaps of the 1st or 2nd centuries CE, long before Christianity became the state religion of the Roman Empire. There are representations of four powerful Roman Goddesses; Venus, Diana, Minerva, and Juno, which together are said to be unique. The Abbey wasn’t founded until the 12th C and none of the founding documents of the Abbey exist to tell us why it was built directly over an earlier Pagan holy site, but it probably had to do with the location of the spring and in order to co-opt the beliefs of the local population in order to convert them to Christianity as was done with placing Christmas near the Winter Solstice to appease the Celts etc. That seems to have been what happened, but why the pagan mosaics weren’t destroyed or paved over by the Benedictines is a puzzle. During the Roman occupation of the Britain tribes from Scandinavia were actively raiding coastal communities in the British Isles so perhaps the original site was a mountain sanctuary from Scandinavian raiders of the time. The site hasn’t been the subject of proper scholarly study so this is mostly conjecture by the Duke.

The Abbey is far north of the Antonine Wall, a stone and turf fortification built by the Romans across what is now the Central Belt of Scotland, between the Firth of Forth and the Firth of Clyde (just north of Glasgow and Edinburgh). Construction began in AD 142 at the order of Emperor Antoninus Pius and the barrier represented the northernmost frontier of the Roman Empire. So perhaps they had outposts in the hills along the coast and pulled back to a more defensable position when the wall was completed.

Roland Petit, Choreographer, Dies at 87

Zizi Jeanmaire and Roland Petit in Carmen

The New York Times
July 10, 2011

Roland Petit, Choreographer, Dies at 87; Conquered Ballet Taboos and Hollywood

By ANNA KISSELGOFF
Roland Petit, France’s leading choreographer after World War II, who swept away time-honored ballet taboos and whose mix of entertainment and art also made his work popular in Hollywood, died Sunday in Geneva. He was 87 and had lived in Switzerland for more than a decade.

His death was reported by his wife, the ballerina Zizi Jeanmaire, the Paris Opera Ballet said.

Although Mr. Petit choreographed cheerful films like “Hans Christian Andersen” with Danny Kaye, sex and suffering were the themes of the two early ballets that became his international signature pieces: “Carmen” and “Le Jeune Homme et la Mort.”

Mr. Petit stunned dance and theater audiences in London in New York in 1949 with a frank new eroticism in his ballet version of “Carmen.” Renée (later Zizi) Jeanmaire was the femme fatale in a short tunic and a gamine hairdo who seduced Mr. Petit, as Don José, in an acrobatic duet on the floor. The headline of the positive review by The New York Herald Tribune’s dance critic, Walter Terry, read “Sex and More Sex.”

John Martin, the critic for The New York Times, was less impressed. “Passion and the classical pas de deux are poles apart,” he wrote.

“Carmen” might have been directly accessible in its stylized realism. But Mr. Petit, a dancer as well as a choreographer, displayed a deeper side in his 1946 masterpiece, “Le Jeune Homme et la Mort” (“The Young Man and Death”). Here, he showed the resonant poetic dimension seen in the pieces in which he collaborated with some of France’s major writers, poets, composers and visual artists.

For “Le Jeune Homme,” Jean Cocteau devised a scenario about a bohemian painter in his garret, ostensibly waiting for his sweetheart but eventually embroiled in an existential battle for survival. Jean Babilée, that ballet’s unforgettable star (who also contributed some of the choreography), smoked a real cigarette onstage on a real bed, looked at his real watch and kicked real furniture around before engaging in a violent confrontation with his girlfriend.

The painter hanged himself in despair and his lover revealed herself as an allegorical figure of death before leading the antihero across a surreal rooftop panorama of Paris. Cocteau’s typical touch of the mythic made commonplace fused wonderfully with Petit’s naturalism (as opposed to realism) and use of ballet bravura.

A metaphor for postwar disillusion, the ballet struck a nerve in Europe but also impressed in New York when Ballet Theater presented it in 1951, with Mr. Babilée and Nathalie Philippart.

But it was also an experimental, conceptual work. After the cast had rehearsed it only to jazz, Cocteau suddenly substituted Bach’s Passacaglia for the performances.

Working within two extremes, as represented by the show-business-flavored "Carmen" and the poetic “Jeune Homme,” Mr. Petit remained a subject for debate throughout more than a half-century, in which he choreographed some 150 ballets.

American critics often called him chic. Even French critics began to find him superficial. Yet after he turned to creating ballets based on opera and literature, he could surprise.

In New York in 1980, the National Ballet of Marseille (headed by Mr. Petit since 1972), presented Mr. Petit’s eloquent commentary on Marcel Proust and his work in “Marcel Proust Remembered.” Ms. Jeanmaire carried his ballet version of “Fledermaus” in “The Bat.” His updated view of “Coppélia” had a witty if kinky approach: as Coppélius, he waltzed with a female dummy (the doll Coppélia) strapped to his body.

Karen Kain, now artistic director of the National Ballet of Canada, was a guest artist in this “Coppélia.” Among the many ballet stars for whom he choreographed were Margot Fonteyn, Rudolf Nureyev, Maya Plisetskaya, Mikhail Baryshnikov and Natalia Makarova. Both Mr. Baryshnikov and Mr. Nureyev danced in “Jeune Homme” shortly after they left the Soviet Union for the West.

Mr. Petit also developed the talents of two future stars. When he co-founded Les Ballets des Champs-Élysées, he engaged two teenage dancers, Leslie Caron and Violette Verdy.

Roland Petit was born on Jan. 13, 1924, in Villemomble, near Paris. His father, Edmond Petit, had a restaurant in the Halles district; his mother founded the dancewear company Repetto. Fond of dancing to a player piano in the restaurant, the young Roland was enrolled in the Paris Opera Ballet School at 9 and joined the company’s corps at 16.

Chafing at the company’s restrictions, he left to choreograph in a series organized by the critic Irene Lidova. These performances led Mr. Petit and Lidova to found Les Ballets des Champs-Élysées with Boris Kochno, Serge Diaghilev’s collaborator and secretary.

Mr. Petit left in 1947 to form his own company, Les Ballets de Paris de Roland Petit. Wooed by Hollywood, he choreographed “Hans Christian Andersen” in 1951 before marrying Ms. Jeanmaire, who survives him, as does their daughter, Valentine Petit. Among the other films he choreographed were “Daddy Long Legs” (1955) “The Glass Slipper” (1955) and “Anything Goes” (1956).

Mr. Petit returned to Paris to choreograph for ballets and music hall revues (some starring his wife). He briefly served as director of the Paris Opera Ballet but resigned after a dispute and later moved to Marseille, where he was director until he left in 1998, reportedly in a disagreement with the management.

Like Maurice Béjart, Mr. Petit sought to reach a wide audience. Yet he had a more solid choreographic foundation, and his early ballets work on an artistic level still valid today.

Ms. Lidova once admitted that Mr. Petit could fall into a “Champagne style.” But she also noted, rightly, that he was an artist of contrasts, “who can be both frivolous and serious, passionate and cruel.”

Personal comment: I first remember seeing Roland Petit in a video of the 1960 film Black Tights with Moira Shearer, Zizi Jeanmaire and Cyd Charisse. Black Tights as well as The Red Shoes were the two films that reinforced my desire to be a ballet dancer.

Pointe shoe quiz July 3, 2011

Who is the maker of these shoes?

A great talent says farewell

Julie Kent & José Manuel Carreño during his farewell at the Met

The New York Times
July 1, 2011
By ROSLYN SULCAS

A Crowd Favorite Takes His Leave

“The love for José Manuel Carreño poured across the Metropolitan Opera House stage in almost palpable waves as one by one, his fellow dancers, his colleagues and his daughters delivered bouquets of flowers at the end of his final New York performance on Thursday with American Ballet Theater, where he had been a principal since 1995.

There are few dancers as adored by both balletomanes and the general public as Mr. Carreño. Handsome, but not untouchably so; charming; infallibly courteous; a superb partner with a virile stage presence and a reliably plush, polished technique, he has been one of the standard-bearers of Ballet Theater’s reputation for brilliant male dancers.

His role of choice for his departure was Prince Siegfried in “Swan Lake.” That wasn’t taking the easy route; the part is full of the big jumps that are always the first technical casualty for male dancers as they get older. (Mr. Carreño is just 43, but that’s a lifetime of back strain from lifting ballerinas over his head.)

Mr. Carreño can still jump, although he no longer has the buoyancy he possessed years ago. His line is impeccable, his turns a thing of beauty: perfectly centered and upright as he spins, the unsupported leg outlining perfect geometric shapes. When he does execute a jump turn called “tour en l’air,” he lands with a luxurious bend in perfect fifth position, bang on the music.

Those details are a thrill for ballet nerds. More important, every step is permeated by an innate elegance and authority. You have no doubt, watching Mr. Carreño, that he is a star, although of the nicest, most un-divo-like kind.

On Thursday there were two dancers embodying the dual role of Odette-Odile. (Once customary, such casting is rare today.) Presumably this was Mr. Carreño’s choice — Julie Kent as the innocent Odette, Gillian Murphy as her evil alter ego, Odile — as was the guest appearance of the former Ballet Theater dancer Joaquin de Luz (now a New York City Ballet principal) as the prince’s friend Benno.

Oddly, the emotional rapport onstage that Mr. Carreño shared with Mr. de Luz (who danced with energy and panache) was far greater than what he had with Ms. Kent, a longtime partner who is celebrating her 25th anniversary with Ballet Theater this season. With her lyrical, elongated lines, Ms. Kent can look picture-perfect, but so mannered and grand ballerina was her performance, so languorous the tempo of music and dancing, that you could doze off between positions.

This didn’t help Mr. Carreño, who has never been a great actor, but things perked up considerably in Act III with the arrival of Ms. Murphy and of David Hallberg as the sorcerer von Rothbart. (Isaac Stappas played his nonhuman alter ego). Both Ms. Murphy and Mr. Hallberg put an over-the-top spin on their roles, neatly skirting the line between vulgarity and fun, as Mr. Hallberg seduced the Queen (Susan Jaffe, a former Odette-Odile of Mr. Carreño’s) and the princesses with callous magnetism and hilariously exaggerated timing.

Ms. Murphy and Mr. Carreño offered no less. For once that gala staple, the black swan pas de deux, was the showstopper it’s meant to be. In the coda Ms. Murphy offered quadruple and quintuple fouettés, and Mr. Carreño rose to the occasion with a bravura exhibition of his own that seemed as much an expression of excitement about finding his Swan Queen as it was a display of audience-pleasing feats.

This production of “Swan Lake,” by Ballet Theater’s artistic director, Kevin McKenzie, so effectively ruins Act IV as to make the dancers quite inconsequential. It’s a pity that Mr. Carreño’s final exit here is to turn his back on the audience, run up a ramp (left! sharp right!) and throw himself into the lake in bad lighting, but so be it.

The audience members — who screamed, threw flowers, held up phones to record the moment and sobbed as Mr. Carreño, looking overwhelmed, opened his arms to us all — weren’t going to let him go so easily anyway.”

Personal comment: This is the performance I mentioned last year [in my entry for September 9, 2010] when I was talking about the dual role of Odette/Odile usually being danced by the same ballerina in productions of Swan Lake performed by major companies and smaller ones who have ballerinas up to the task. I wish I could have seen this perf as the combination of Murphy as Odile and Hallberg as von Rothbart not to mention the marvelous talent of José Manuel Carreño was an occasion not to be missed. Sigh!

English National Ballet 2011 Charity Auction

Louboutin ballet heels were on offer at ENB auction

Tutu sad: I’ve missed out on the charity auction of designer Tutus (that was held on June 29 – 30th) that I mentioned in my blog entry for June 18th. I had originally thought I would be able to bid at the sale that was held in London in the Orangery at Kensington Palace. However since I've been at the Duke’s hunting lodge in Scotland for the last few days I had to forgo that opportunity, but I wouldn’t have missed seeing Crag Abbey for the world! For more about the auction here is an article from a British newspaper:

Eat your heart out Victoria Beckham! Presenting the eight-inch pair of Louboutins...

MAIL ONLINE
By Sadie Whitelocks
June 30, 2011

"You can't turn the page of a magazine without seeing the likes of Victoria Beckham or Coleen Rooney teetering around in a pair of sky-high Christian Louboutins. But now the 47-year-old, French shoe designer has taken height to the next level producing a pair of eight-inch, red-soled stilettos.

Based on the ballet shoe, the towering silk and Swarovski-encrusted heels are being auctioned off along with a number of other fashion wares to raise funds for the English National Ballet (ENB).

High feat: Christian Louboutin has designed a pair of eight-inch stilettos for a silent charity auction which closes at 10.30pm tonight to help raise funds for the English National Ballet

These are one of a number of unique lot items which have been specifically created by some of the leading names in fashion. Designers including Erdem, Giles Deacon, Moschino, Roksanda Ilincic and Julien Macdonald have donated ballet-inspired pieces, modeled by professional dancers.

The current sale - which is hoped to raise over £50,000 for the ENB - comes following the Arts Council's decision to cut its grant by around £2 million.

Louboutin said: 'I could not help being inspired by English National Ballet... after all... isn’t the classical dancing ballet slipper the ultimate heel? 'The heel which makes dancers closer than any other women to the sky, closer to heaven!

Test run: A dancer tries on the latest pair of stilettos from Christian Louboutin, which are based on the ballet pointe shoe

Without raising necessary funds the world famous ballet company will be forced to cutback performances and touring.

The Summer Party Silent Auction opened last Thursday (June 29th) and will close at 10.30pm tonight.

Roksanda Ilincic added: 'It was a challenge to develop an individual slant on a piece that’s so famous for looking a certain way but a challenge is always inspiring.

Inspiration: Above, A dancer showcasing one of the lot items designed by Erdem who has used ballet as a theme for his current fashion collections

Centre stage: Above, Giles Deacon's tutu is based on the character of the Black Swan in Swan Lake

'Also, I think every girl has her fantasy ballet tutu in mind so to have the opportunity to create has been magical.'

Founded in 1950 by Dame Alicia Markova and Sir Anton Dolin, the English National Ballet employs 65 dancers and a symphony orchestra. There has traditionally been collaboration between ballet and fashion dating back to Coco Chanel and dance director Sergei Diaghilev in the 1920s”

The one that got away: The tutu that I was particularly interested in bidding on is the one designed by the team from Agent-Provocateur shown below.

A Romantic Tutu by Agent Provocateur

With a romantic length skirt like that a girl can go commando in crotchless tights so with a flip of the skirt a lover can quickly penetrate me while I’m in full costume. I can have a knockoff made I suppose, but I would have loved to have the original. The dark colors are ideal to hide semen stains.