Monique Loudières, a white and ghostly shadow, runs, arms stretched out, in the maze-like corridors of the Palais Garnier. By depicting the fantasies of purity and lightness linked to the practice of dance at the Opéra, the film receives into the tradition of this century-old institution the dancer who was named Etoile in 1982. 

A variety of sequences show Monique Loudières at work. In a voice over, Violette Verdy, a former Opéra dancer, advises her and congratulates her on her career. We attend rehearsals of Mirages with Yvette Chauviré and Cyril Atanassoff, and of In the night by Jérome Robbins who asks the interpreter to dance not ‘on’ but ‘in’ the music. We bump into her friends and partners, Patrick Dupond and Manuel Legris, before, finally, rediscovering her ready to fly off the rooftops of the Opéra in the white cloud of her costume sculptured by the Paris wind. 

Source : Patrick Bossatti

After Beaux-Arts (Fine Art School) studies and musical classes (piano and classical singing), Dominique Delouche met Federico Fellini and became his assistant ("Nights of Cabiria"). In 1960, he directed his first film « Le Spectre de la Danse ». Until 1985, he produced and directed short films, like « Aurore » et « La dame de Monte Carlo ». In 1968, he staged Danielle Darieux in “Twenty-Four Hours in the Life of a Woman", a Stefan Sweig novel 's adaptation selected for the 1968 Cannes Film Festival, and the musical theatre “Divine” (1975). He filmed other features like « Une étoile pour l’exemple » (1988), « L’homme de désir » (1970). He produced and filmed the opera “La voix humaine” (The Human Voice) for French television (text by Cocteau and music by Poulenc; directed by Georges Prêtre), with the soprano Denise Duval. His last film is "Balanchine in Paris" (2011). He also directed, created decors and costumes for the Opéra de Paris and for the Festival of Aix en Provence: “Werther”, “Le Roi malgré lui” (The Reluctant King) (1978), “Didon et Énée” (Dido and Æneas) (1972).

Source: Dominique Delouche's website

More information

dominique.delouche.pagesperso-orange.fr

The Paris Opéra Ballet is the official ballet company of the Opéra national de Paris, otherwise known as the Palais Garnier, though known more popularly simply as the Paris Opéra. Its origins can be traced back to 1661 with the foundation of the Académie Royale de Danse and the Le Ballet de l'Opéra in 1713 by King Louis XIV of France.

The aim of the Académie Royale de Danse was to reestablish the perfection of dance. In the late seventeenth century, using 13  professional dancers to drive the academy, the Paris Opéra Ballet  successfully transformed ballet from court entertainment to a  professional performance art for the masses. It later gave birth to the  Romantic Ballet, the classical form of ballet known throughout the world. The Paris Opéra Ballet dominated European  ballet throughout the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and  remains a leading institution in the art of ballet today.

Source: New World Encyclopedia