Philippe Petit (1949, Nemours, Seine-et-Marne) is a French high wire artist who gained fame for his high-wire walk between the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City on 7 August 1974, says Wikipedia.[1]
For his feat (that he referred to as "le coup"[2]), he used a 450-pound cable and a 26-foot long, 55-pound balancing pole.
At an early age he discovered magic and juggling. At 16, he took his first steps on the wire. He taught himself as he was being expelled from five different schools.
He also became adept at equestrianism, fencing, carpentry, rock-climbing and the art of bullfighting.
In the early 1970s, he frequently juggled and worked on a slack rope in New York City's Washington Square Park as well as in Paris.
In the 1970s, Petit began wire walking on world-famous structures as a combination of circus act and public performance. He performed a walk between the towers of the Notre Dame de Paris. In 1973, he walked a wire rigged between the two north pylons of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, Australia.[4]
In his 1974 World Trade Center walk he began on the South Tower. He walked the wire for 45 minutes, making eight crossings between the towers, a quarter mile above the sidewalks of Manhattan. In addition to walking, he sat on the wire, gave knee salutes and, while lying on the wire, spoke with a gull circling above his head.
Petit has extended the boundaries of theater, music, writing, poetry, drawing and filmmaking to become an inimitable high wire artist, says Wikipedia.[citation needed]
He has made dozens of public high-wire performances in his career; in 1986 he re-enacted the crossing of the Niagara River by Blondin for an Imax film. In 1989, to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the French Revolution, mayor Jacques Chirac welcomed him to walk a wire strung from the ground, at the Place du Trocadéro, to the second level of the Eiffel Tower.
Among the numerous additional feats is the 1975 wire walk in the Louisiana Superdome, New Orleans, for the opening of the "largest covered stadium in the world."
More recently: an Inclined Walk, fourteen stories high, for The Late Show with David Letterman, in 2002.
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