Jérôme Kaplan 

Born in Paris, Jérôme Kaplan studied Scenography at the Ecole de la Rue Blanche (ENSATT) in his native city. After graduating in 1987, he began working extensively, designing sets and costumes for theatre and opera.

In 1992, he collaborated with the Ballets de Monte-Carlo and Jean-Christophe Maillot for the first time on L’Enfant et les Sortilèges. Since then, he has designed sets and costumes for the productions of Romeo and Juliet, Cinderella, Casse-Noisette Circus, Œil pour Œil and Scheherazade.

In 2001, Jérôme Kaplan became the first French scenographer to collaborate with the National Ballet of China in Beijing, where he created costumes for Raise the Red Lantern, staged by director Zhang Yimou.

Jérôme Kaplan showcased his talents in many ballets: with Bertrand d’At for Le Prince des Pagodes at the Opéra de Strasbourg, In the Mood for Love performed by the Shanghai Ballet Company, and with Karine Saporta for Feu le Music Hall at the Comédie-Française and Dans le Regard de la Nuit at the Cairo Opera House. He also teamed up with David Nixon on Northern Ballet’s Ondine, A Sleeping Beauty Tale and The Great Gatsby. Other recent ballet work includes: Christopher Wheeldon’s The Sleeping Beauty, Ib Andersen’s The Kermesse in Bruges for the Royal Danish Ballet, Nacho Duato’s The Nutcracker for the Mikhailovsky Theatre in Saint Petersburg, the Teatro alla Scala in Milan and the Deutsche Oper in Berlin, Johan Kobborg’s Don Quixote for the Yacobson Ballet of Saint Petersburg, Lucas Jervies’s Spartacus for the Australian Ballet and Stanton Welch’s Sylvia for the Houston Ballet.

Since 2010, Jérôme Kaplan has joined forces with Alexei Ratmansky to create the sets and costumes for Don Quixote for the Dutch National Ballet, the world premiere of Lost Illusions for the Bolshoi in Moscow, for which he won a Golden Mask Award in 2012 for Costume Design, Cinderella for the Australian Ballet in Melbourne, Paquita for the Bayerisches Staatsballett in Munich, Swan Lake for the Ballet Zürich in coproduction with the Teatro alla Scala in Milan, Serenade after Plato’s Symposium for the American Ballet Theatre at the New York Metropolitan Opera House, The Fairy’s Kiss for the Miami City Ballet and La Bayadère for the Staatsballett Berlin.