The dancer Sylvie Guillem has been awarded the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement by the 8th International Festival of Contemporary Dance in Venice. The ballerina, the longtime superstar of the Royal Ballet after her rise to glory at Nureyev's Paris Opera Ballet, turned contemporary dancer in her 40s, creating new work with the British choreographers Russell Maliphant and Akram Khan, and with leading international creators William Forsythe, Mats Ek and Robert Lepage.

She is currently touring a programme around the world which premiered at Sadler's Wells a year ago, 6,000 Miles Away, fielding commissions for her by Forsythe and Ek (pictured above, Guillem and Nicolas Le Riche in Forsythe's Rearray, © Charlotte MacMillan). The programme, which she has dedicated to the restoration of Japan after the tsunami and earthquake of March 2011 - see her interview on theartsdesk - is scheduled at the Venice Festival on 22 June after performances in St Poelten, Austria next week and Lyon, France in mid-June.

The Golden Lion will be presented to Guillem in Venice on 20 June - she joins an illustrious line of winners, including Forsythe, Pina Bausch, Merce Cunningham and Jiri Kylian. Her place among these choreographers is certainly due to her catalystic effect in generating new choreography of worldwide interest.

Her career move from classical ballet to contemporary dance with unbroken acclaim parallels that of Mikhail Baryshnikov, who like her has the artistic lustre and curiosity to inspire commissions from the finest choreographers in the world. Baryshnikov is 17 years older than Guillem and he gave up classical ballet with relief soon after 40 - see Mikhail Baryshnikov interview on theartsdesk - but the Parisienne remains a characteristically balletic phenomenon at 47, especially in the exacting work of Forsythe.

Her attitude to awards is ambivalent and it will be interesting to see what she says in accepting this one - when presented with the Nijinsky Prize for "the world's best ballerina" in 2001 she shocked the ceremony and dignitaries, including Prince Albert of Monaco, by attacking such popularity awards as being artistically damaging and encouraging a "cultural supermarket". She protested that the exceptional in dance had never needed such engineered awards to become popular.

Her website seems to back this stance up. It lists critical awards to particular works she has danced, her national decorations in France (la Légion d'Honneur, l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres and l'Ordre du Mérite), and her honorary CBE of 2003, but ignores the Nijinsky Prize and other dance industry accolades.

The citation from Venice is handsome, even if it tends to focus on her unusual physicality rather than the inquiring intelligence that is just as much key to her achievements:

“The superlative star of so many of ballet classics – from the nineteenth-century masterpieces to more recent titles – and a lithe interpreter of the great contemporary choreographers who have composed pieces especially for her – from William Forsythe and Mats Ek to the more recent Akram Khan and Russell Maliphant, - Sylvie Guillem – states the motivation – has shaped a vast repertoire that combines dramatic sensibility, physical power and extreme technique. On the basis of her natural gifts Guillem has transformed the figure of the dancer, defying the laws of physics with extensions heretofore unimaginable, and virtuoso acrobatics performed with extreme grace. This artist with her fulminating [sic] career, who was chosen by Nureyev to become an étoile at the early age of 19, following her brilliant performance in her first Swan Lake, continues to triumph today in the most important theatres, acclaimed by audiences around the world, combining popularity with the highest artistic quality.”

From early in her classical career Guillem thought outside the box, becoming a muse to Maurice Béjart, Robert Wilson and Carolyn Carlson in France, and in Britain seeking creative opportunities with radical choreographer Jonathan Burrows and the Ballet Boyz, William Trevitt and Michael Nunn - the breakaway ballet dancers who first brought her into contact with Russell Mailphant with a stunning trio Broken Fall, which led to her association with Sadler's Wells and Akram Khan...

• The Venice Biennale Contemporary Dance Festival runs from 8 to 24 June.
• Sylvie Guillem interview 2011 on theartsdesk
• Sylvie Guillem interview feature compilation on theartsdesk about her Ballet Boyz collaboration
• Mikhail Baryshnikov interview on theartsdesk
• William Forsythe interview feature on theartsdesk
• The European Festival Guide 2012 on theartsdesk