Patrick Dupond went to dance with the stars … Friday March 5, 2021, the dancer's relatives informed AFP that the ex-juror of Dance with the stars had breathed his last at the age of sixty-one. According to the statements of his family, Patrick Dupond would have succumbed to a "lightning disease", can we read in the press release. The former dance director of the ballet of the Opéra national de Paris, who left the television sets in 2019 after season 10 of Dance with the stars, leaves behind a colossal cultural heritage, but also his companion, Leila Da Rocha. It was on the arm of the oriental dancer, met sixteen years earlier, that he had succeeded in overcoming the tragedy of his life: a terrible accident in 2000 which brought his career to a halt.
"Homosexuality was a mistake …"
When they met in 2004, Patrick Dupond and Leila Da Rocha thought they were mere collaborators … The former dancer tried to get rid of his alcohol addictions and planned to move to China. But fate will decide otherwise … Leila Da Rocha, director of a dance school in Soissons wishes to meet him: "She found the words, I accepted a date. The interview was to last thirty minutes. At three in the morning, we could not leave each other", he confided to Paris Match in 2017. For her part, the belly dancer, still living with her husband at the time, decides to give up everything for Patrick Dupond. The latter realizes that for the first time in his life, he falls in love with a woman: "It suited me to lie to myself. As far as I'm concerned, homosexuality was a mistake", he confided to Release in 2011.
For sixteen years, Patrick Dupond and Leila Da rocha had spun the perfect love and had recently settled in Bordeaux to give their dance lessons in an international academy. Asked about his new daily life with the one he considered to be his "soul mate", the dancer had very romantic words: "I believe that it was necessary for me to go through all these trials to be worthy of her love. (…) I wake up every day with the growing certainty that she is the woman of my life.". An unexpected love that put stars in the life of Patrick Dupond.
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