Philippe Petit Marks the 50th Anniversary of His World Trade Center Walk With a New High Wire Act

Fifty years after Philippe Petit walked on a high wire between the twin towers of the World Trade Center, he’s still completing daring stunts.

This week, the artist performed a new act called “Towering!!”—the two exclamation points represent the two towers—to celebrate the anniversary. Instead of balancing between skyscrapers more than 1,000 feet above the street, Petit (who is approaching his 75th birthday) walked a tightrope about 20 feet above a seated audience at Manhattan’s Cathedral of St. John the Divine.

According to the New York Times’ Annie Aguiar, the show included 19 scenes that told the story of Petit’s walk in 1974. In one, the artist discussed ways that he hurt some of his friends in the stunt’s aftermath. Another featured ballet students, who danced along an imaginary high wire (a red line taped to the stage). As a bonus, the British musician Sting, who is a friend of Petit’s, also performed.

“Sting wrote a song about me,” Petit tells Daniel Jonas Roche of the Architect’s Newspaper. “This will be the first time he sings it in front of people.”

Tightrope walking at any height requires immense discipline and balance. Just as he did 50 years ago, Petit uses a long pole to help him balance on his narrow line.

“People think in old age you cannot do anything anymore,” he tells the Times. “I think it’s the opposite. I think I’m more majestic, more in control, more beautiful to look at today at 74 than I was at 18.”

Petit came up with the idea to walk between the twin towers when he was a teenager. He was reading a newspaper in a dentist’s office when he saw drawings of the planned New York skyscrapers.

By the time he was ready for the World Trade Center walk at age 24, he had already gained a reputation for his high-wire stunts, which he performed at sites such as Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris and the Sydney Harbor Bridge in Australia.

For the walk, Petit and his team snuck to the top of one of the towers and got his wire across to the other with a bow and arrow. He stayed on the wire for about 45 minutes. When he got off, he was arrested.

“Every detail, the wind, the vibration of the cable. It’s in my body and soul, you know, it’s interesting, 50 years later,” he tells Spectrum News NY1’s Roger Clark.

Multiple films have been made about Petit’s stunt, including the Academy Award-winning documentary Man on Wire (2008) and Robert Zemeckis’ The Walk (2015), which starred Joseph Gordon-Levitt. A children’s book, The Man Who Walked Between the Towers, was published in 2003.

The daring walk took on new meaning after the September 11 attacks. People often ask Petit how he felt when the towers fell. “I cannot really compare the loss of 9/11, the loss of two buildings, with the loss of thousands of human lives," he tells Spectrum News NY1. “You cannot mix that up, so I let people imagine how I felt that day.”

The Cathedral of St. John the Divine holds significant meaning for Petit. He has been an artist in residence there since the 1980s, and the ashes of his daughter Gypsy, who died at age 9 from a cerebral hemorrhage, were interred at the site.

While some may find it hard to comprehend why a 74-year-old would continue to put his life on the line, Petit has no fear.

“I know that my last step will be victorious and that I’m not risking my life. So it’s a strange thing,” he tells the Architect's Newspaper. “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.”

Julia Binswanger | READ MORE

Julia Binswanger is a freelance arts and culture reporter based in Chicago. Her work has been featured in WBEZ, Chicago magazine, Rebellious magazine and PC magazine.