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Muriel Maffre, Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres
December 3 at Residence de France Muriel Maffre, San Francisco Ballet principal, 1990-2007, has been awarded "Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres" by the French Republic’s Ministry of Culture. M. Pierre-Francois Mourier, French Consul General in San Francisco, has made the presentation.
In 1957 the French Ministry of Culture established the Order to honor and recognize significant contributions to the arts, literature and the propagation of these fields. In 1963 President Charles de Gaulle included the Ordre as part of the Ordre National de Merite. The Order has three levels, Chevalier, Officier and Commander.
Recipients of such awards have included choreographer Paul Taylor; Rudolph Nureyev; San Francisco-based literary figures Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Danielle Steel; singers Ella Fitzgerald, Jessye Norman, Elizabeth Schwarzkopf, Frederica von Stade; Bob Dylan was named a commander in 1990.
San Francisco Ballet Artistic Director Helgi Tommason was named an Officier in 2001; Charles Reinhardt, director of the American Dance Festival, received the Officier designation in 1986 and was raised to Commander status in 2002.
Muriel Maffre was born in Enghien-les-Bains, France; receiving her ballet training at the Paris Opera Ballet School before graduating from the Paris National Conservatory of Music, with a Premier Prix with honors. Dancing with Hamburg Ballet and Ballet de Monte Carlo before joining San Francisco Ballet as a principal dancer in 1990, Maffre was awarded a Gold Medal from the first Paris International Ballet Competition; she received two Isadora Duncan Dance Awards, 1990 and 2002. Maffre holds a B.A. in Performing Arts from St. Mary’s College in Moraga, California.