This August marks 50 years since Philippe Petit traversed Minoru Yamasaki’s Twin Towers. It was a hot summer morning in Lower Manhattan when the artist tiptoed across a ¾-inch cable hung 1,368 feet above the ground, traversing the 130 feet separating the two skyscrapers not once, but multiple times. It was August 7, 1974, and New Yorkers held their breath, watching in awe as Petit walked back and forth between the towers, performing “knee bends and other stunts,” as reported by The New York Times. The whole affair lasted an unforgettable 45 minutes.
Petit began his performance career in France as a magician and street juggler at age 6. He was 24 years old when he did Man on Wire at the Twin Towers, but he started planning the performance when he was 18. Now, Petit is 74, but he has no plans on stopping. On August 7 and 8, 2024, Petit will perform a dramatic re-creation of the Twin Towers walk at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in Morningside Heights.
AN’s news editor Daniel Jonas Roche interviewed Petit to learn why he walks on rope.
AN: Were you nervous?
Philippe Petit: No! No, I was the opposite of nervous. I was impatient!
Why did you choose the Twin Towers? What drew you to them?
I taught myself how to walk on tightrope when I was a kid. And from the time I was a kid I wanted to put my rope higher and longer between beautiful places, both natural and man-made. So of course I became enraptured by architecture and engineering after I started looking at beautiful buildings around the world. And when I heard that the Twin Towers were being built, I ran to New York. I went to study them and plot my illegal walk.
What attracted me to the Twin Towers was their uniqueness. The fact that they were the tallest in the world was interesting and strange. I just found them very beautiful. And the more I studied architecture and engineering, the more I fell in love with those very unusual, futuristic structures.
It’s often been said that Man on Wire changed the way New Yorkers thought about the Twin Towers. Do you think that’s true?
It’s not so much what I think. But after my walk, journalists, art, and architecture critics all said, “Philippe changed the way New Yorkers see those two towers.” Before then, people disliked them. People said they were inhuman, and they were, in some eyes, not even beautiful. So after my walk, people started loving them because I made them human. I danced between them! As a performer, this was a great compliment to receive.
How old were you when you began walking rope?
I was a teenager. One day, I put a little rope between two trees at about the height of my chin. I had heard about the tightrope walkers. I said to myself, “That’s not a big deal.” I had climbed trees and rocks and used ropes for, you know, making bridges and rappelling. So walking on a rope shouldn’t be too hard. But actually, it proved to be very hard.
Where did you find inspiration as an artist?
I was interested in tightrope walkers, and also musicians, singers, and painters. But I don’t have gods or gurus. I admire people very much for their work. Picasso, for example, invited me to perform at his 90th birthday.
You knew Picasso?
Yes. I had a front seat at his birthday! I have a long list of inspiration, though, like the world’s greatest jugglers and ventriloquists like Señor Wences, who was a friend, and also the painter Julio Larraz. All those people inspire me to walk on the theater in the sky. It’s not a circus, what I do. It’s theater.
When I think of your work, I think about how you create suspense, similar to Hitchcock or painters like André Breton. Surrealists.
I’m happy you brought up this word, suspense. Because the word suspense means that you’re not totally in control. It means that something you might not have planned might happen! When I first put my foot on rope, I know exactly what will happen: I know that my last step will be victorious and that I’m not risking my life. So it’s a strange thing. Most people say, “Oh, come on, you’re wasting your life walking rope.” No, I say, I am actually driving my life! I drive my life on that wire. I am carrying my life. This is what I think inspires people.
Were you influenced at all by the situationists? Guy Debord? Any of that stuff?
No, not really. You know, my world is very narrow. No pun intended! When I walk on the wire, I focus exactly on that. But before I walk, it’s the reverse. I open my mind to the space between each building where I’m going to install my cable. I study them. I marvel at them. It brings me joy when I know exactly where I’m going to put my cable. So yeah, I think I may be an architect and engineer at heart.
What are some other walks you’re proud of?
I don’t have a favorite. I have several favorites! My walk at Notre Dame in Paris, of course, which everyone knows from the postcards. Then I did the Sydney Harbour Bridge in Australia, the Paris Opera House, and Lincoln Center in New York. All the works are so different. Sometimes I wear a costume, other times there is music. I am an actor in the sky.
Where did the idea to re-create the Twin Tower walk at St. John’s come from?
It started two or three years ago. It seemed like a natural thing to do to celebrate the 50th anniversary of my illegal work. I have been for more than 40 years an artist-in-residence of St. John the Divine, one of the largest cathedrals in the world, so it felt natural to re-create the performance in that space. One thing I think will surprise people is that Sting will be there. Sting wrote a song about me, and this will be the first time he sings it in front of people.
How have you been preparing?
Today I live near Woodstock on a very secluded piece of land. I have two poles about 20 feet high in my yard that are spaced 38 feet apart, connected by a cable. There, I’ve been practicing and rehearsing the show. I still want to leave room for improvisation, but I need to be in control. Hopefully the show is entertaining and inspiring, because it obviously has a lot to do with what happened that day in 1974.