Jean-Marc Puissant

Jean-Marc Puissant is an award-winning set and costume designer working internationally in opera, theatre, dance and musicals.  For The Royal Ballet he has designed Christopher Wheeldon’s Aeternum, Electric Counterpoint, DGV: Danse à grande vitesse and Tryst and designed sets for George Balanchine’s Jewels and Javier De Frutos’s Les Enfants Terribles.  For The Royal Opera, he designed sets for David McVicar’s production of Aida.  Further work at The Royal Opera House includes Whelan/Watson: Other Stories for The Royal Ballet, Arthur Pita’s A Dream within a Midsummer Night’s Dream for Ballet Black, Arthur Pita’s God’s Garden and Alexander Whitley’s The Measures Taken.  He has also appeared on the main stage as a dancer with Birmingham Royal Ballet.

Puissant began his career as a dancer, training at the Paris Opera School and dancing professionally with Birmingham Royal Ballet and Stuttgart Ballet.  He later enrolled in the Motley Theatre Design Course and studied art history at the Sorbonne. He has designed for leading international companies including New York City Ballet, Birmingham Royal Ballet, Dutch National Ballet, Rambert, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Los Angeles Opera, Santa Fe Opera, Scottish Opera, Norwegian National Opera, Palau de les Arts Reina Sofía, Valencia, Menier Chocolate Factory and Théâtre du Châtelet.

Puissant’s designs have won Olivier, South Bank Show and Critics’ Circle awards.  He was nominated for Best Scenographer at the 2016 Benois de la danse and was a finalist at World Stage Design 2013.  He has given talks about his work at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London and the Guggenheim Museum in New York, has tutored theatre design at Central School of Speech and Drama and is on the Board of Directors of Dance Umbrella Ltd.  He was a 2018 Fellow at New York University’s Center for Ballet and the Arts.

Of Love and Rage is Puissant’s first work for American Ballet Theatre.