Daily Times

“I would develop children’s curiosity by bringing them to the theatre to see great actors… or even to fashion shows where they’ve made clothes out of bin bags so that they have creativity in them instead of just commands and orders all the time,” the star, who is taking her final bow on Saturday, told AFP.

“We need to work so that they do not lose their personalities and their creativity, because actually we are stifling the children,” she added.

Gillot — who is regarded as the last great French ballerina of her generation — insisted her comments were not criticism of anyone at the prestigious Paris Opera Ballet school, from which she graduated.

But the dancer, one of the world’s most admired contemporary dancers despite having had to wear a corset until she was 18, said there needed to be change in ballet education.

“We cannot break 10,000 children for one little prodigy. We have to cherish their imagination and not rein it in,” she told Paris Match earlier.

“Things are more relaxed now (in the Paris school) than they were in my day but still we have a lot to do to bring it up to date,” she said.

Gillot said critics’ complaints that there were now so few dancers with “personality” may be linked to the way dancers are drilled.