Louis-Guillaume Pécour

Louis Pécour (also spelled Pecoor, Pecour, Pécourt; 10 August 1653 – 12 April 1729) was a French dancer and choreographer. He is most well known for his work with the Académie Royale de Musique (the name of the Paris Opera at the time).

Biography Born Guillaume-Louis Pecour in Paris, he was the son of Jacques Pecour, a royal courier, and Marie Voisin (or Raisin), who lived in the rue des Petits-Champs.

He studied dance with Pierre Beauchamps, and likely made his debut in January 1671, as one of eight Zephyrs in the third intermezzo of Psyché at the theatre of the royal court in the Tuileries Palace.

He first danced at the Paris Opera in 1674 in Jean-Baptiste Lully's Cadmus et Hermione. Pécour performed as a principal dancer, both at the Opera's Théâtre du Palais-Royal in Paris and for the royal court at the Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye and Château de Chantilly, and created many dance parts in works by Lully, including the ballet Le triomphe de l'amour (1681), the opera Persée (1682, as premier danseur opposite Mlle Lafontaine), the opera Amadis (1684), the ballet Le temple de la paix (1685), and the opera Armide (1686).

According to the Parfaict brothers in their history of the Paris Opera, "he was handsome, well-built, and danced with the noblest air possible." He mostly created ballets in operas, including ones by Pascal Collasse, Henri Desmarets, and Toussaint Bertin de la Doué and choreographed André Campra's first opéra-ballet L'Europe galante in 1697, as well as his Le carnaval de Venise (1699), Hésione (1700), Tancrède (1702), and Les fêtes vénitiennes (1710).

Pécour was listed as a member of the Académie Royale de Danse in 1695, when Beauchamps was its director, and in 1719, when Claude Ballon was director.

Pécour died in Paris and was buried in the church of Saint Roche.