Serge Perrault

Serge Perrault (born Serge Leplat, Paris, 1920 – 13 March 2014) was a French ballet dancer, comedian-dancer, and teacher whose career spanned performance and pedagogy across several decades. He was the half-brother of dancer Lycette Darsonval, and trained at the Paris Opera School alongside Lucette Almanzor, who became the second wife of writer Louis-Ferdinand Céline. Perrault joined the ballet corps of the Paris Opera, where he remained from 1943 to 1947.

During the German occupation of France in the Second World War, Perrault avoided the Service du travail obligatoire by taking refuge with Gen Paul and Céline. Following the war, he performed the role of the Toreador in Roland Petit's Carmen in London in 1949, and danced alongside figures including Michel Renaud, Lycette Darsonval, and Yvette Chauviré.

Perrault's Broadway career ran from 1949 to 1952, during which he appeared in Hamlet, Amphitryon 38, Baptiste, and L'Oeuf á la Coque. His stage work in the United States was connected to his role as a comedian-dancer in the troupe of Jean-Louis Barrault, which toured America in a production of Hamlet in 1952.

In 1957, Perrault appeared on screen in the film Folies-Bergère, directed by Henri Decoin, in the role of Max. That same year he began teaching dance at the Conservatoire de Créteil. He subsequently joined the School of the Paris Opera as a professor of improvement, a position he held from 1977 to 1987, and in 1996 he was appointed professor of pedagogy at the Paris Opera. Perrault died on 13 March 2014 in Agon, Normandy, at the age of 93.