A star dancer from the Paris Opera joins the cast of the jury of the French show that popularized the discipline, Dance with the stars, announces the daily Le Parisien. The dancer Marie-Agnès Gillot will be part of the jury for the new edition and will sit, among others, alongside a another star of the Paris Opera, François Alu, who was already part of the jury last year.
Since 2011, the TF1 television channel has made thousands of viewers want to put on dancing shoes and take lessons in rumba, cha-cha-cha, jive, Charleston or even contemporary dance with its program Dance with the stars. Coming from the United Kingdom, this program puts in competition professional dancers and their partners of a few months, who are none other than stars of the small screen, song or cinema.
And from the first season of the French version of the television show, we find among the members of the jury a dancer or a dancer from the world of ballet. For the first two seasons, TF1 called on the former Franco-Italian prima ballerina Alessandra Martineswhich will then be replaced for the next 5 seasons by the star dancer of the Paris Opera Marie-Claude Piétragalla. Finally, for the 9th and 10th editions, it was the star dancer Patrick Dupond who occupied one of the judges’ seats. Patrick Dupond who tragically died in March 2021, following a devastating illness. It was the French dancer François Alu, who was then principal dancer of the Opéra national de Paris – he has meanwhile been promoted to star of the Ballet de l’Opéra de Paris -, who succeeded the French dance legend, on the jury of Dance with the stars, during the 2021 edition.
And this year, Marie-Agnès Gillot, also a star dancer at the Paris Opera and choreographer, will join François Alu and Chris Marquès on the show’s jury. An arrival that enchants the deputy director of TF1 Production, Frederic Pedraza: “She’s a terrific performer and dancer. Above all, she’s a very daring and visionary artist. She was one of the first to push back the walls of the Paris Opera, she choreographed hip-hop, she created her own academy… She is extremely pedagogical, with an endearing personality that is different from anything we’ve seen so far. She’s a real crush.”
The dancer said goodbye to the stage of the Paris Opera in 2018, at the age of 42, as tradition dictates, but remains very active in the world of ballet.
The fourth member of the jury for this next edition is the singer Bilal Hassani, whose participation last year was particularly noticed and unanimously welcomed.
