![]() In the same period, he began to perform high-wire walking at other famous places. During this period, he learned everything he could about the buildings and their construction. What was called the "artistic crime of the century" took Petit six years' planning. Petit was seized by the idea of performing there, and began collecting articles on the Towers whenever he could. Petit conceived his "coup" when he was 18, when he first read about the proposed construction of the Twin Towers and saw drawings of the project in a magazine he read in 1968 while sitting at a dentist's office. Office workers, construction crews and policemen cheered him on. He performed for 45 minutes, making eight passes along the wire, during which he walked, danced, lay down on the wire, and saluted watchers from a kneeling position. The towers were still under construction and had not yet been fully occupied. Petit's most famous performance was in August 1974, conducted on a wire between the roofs of the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan, New York City, 400 metres (1,312 feet) above the ground. Petit became known to New Yorkers in the early 1970s for his frequent tightrope-walking performances and magic shows in the city parks, especially Washington Square Park. On the morning of 26 June 1971, he "juggled balls" and "pranced back and forth" as he crossed the wire on foot to the applause of the crowd below. In June 1971, Petit secretly installed a cable between the two towers of Notre Dame de Paris. But I thought, "What is the big deal here? It looks almost ugly." So I started to discard those tricks and to reinvent my art. I learned the backward somersault, the front somersault, the unicycle, the bicycle, the chair on the wire, jumping through hoops. Within one year, I taught myself to do all the things you could do on a wire. He loved to climb, and at 16, he took his first steps on a tightrope wire. At an early age, Petit discovered magic and juggling. Petit was born in Nemours, Seine-et-Marne, France his father Edmond Petit was an author and an Army Pilot. In the early 1970s, he visited New York City, where he frequently juggled and worked on a slackline in Washington Square Park. Spurning circuses and their formulaic performances, he created his street persona on the sidewalks of Paris. He also became adept at equestrianism, juggling, fencing, carpentry, rock-climbing, and bullfighting. The Walk, a film based on Petit's walk, was released in September 2015, starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Petit and directed by Robert Zemeckis. He was also the subject of a children's book and an animated adaptation of it, released in 2005. In 2008, Man on Wire, a documentary directed by James Marsh about Petit's walk between the towers, won numerous awards. He has done wire walking as part of official celebrations in New York, across the United States, and in France and other countries, as well as teaching workshops on the art. John the Divine, also a location of other aerial performances. Since then, Petit has lived in New York, where he has been artist-in-residence at the Cathedral of St. He performed for 45 minutes, making eight passes along the wire. For his unauthorized feat 400 metres (1,312 feet) above the ground – which he referred to as "le coup" – he rigged a 200-kilogram (440-pound) cable and used a custom-made 8-metre (30-foot) long, 25-kilogram (55-pound) balancing pole. Philippe Petit ( French pronunciation: born 13 August 1949) is a French high-wire artist who gained fame for his unauthorized high-wire walks between the towers of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris in 1971 and of Sydney Harbour Bridge in 1973, as well as between the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City on the morning of 7 August 1974.
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