PARIS     -      Pierre Lacotte, a French choreographer who as a young man helped ballet superstar Rudolf Nureyev defect from the Soviet Union, died aged 91 on Monday, his wife said. “Our Pierre left us at 4:00 am,” said his wife, retired principal dancer Ghislaine Thesmar.

“It’s very sad. He still had so many projects and was writing a book.” The artist, known in his later years for his revival of 19th-century ballet productions, passed away in a clinic in the southern French town of Seyne-sur-Mer after he suffered a cut that became septic, she said. Born in the French capital in 1932, Lacotte became a dancer at the Paris Opera Ballet aged just 19. From the late 1950s, he worked as an independent dancer and choreographer.

In 1961, after becoming friends with Soviet-born ballet legend Nureyev while he was on tour in Paris, Lacotte was among those who helped the dancer escape KGB agents and seek asylum at the capital’s Le Bourget airport, according to his account in a BBC documentary. His role in the famous defection was also recounted in a 2018 biopic titled “The White Crow” directed by Britain’s Ralph Fiennes.