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Chicago Opera Ballet was a Chicago dance company located in downtown Chicago.
| This article includes a list of references, related reading or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks inline citations .(January 2022) |
Chicago Opera Ballet was a Chicago dance company located in downtown Chicago.
Founded in 1956, [1] it is a Chicago dance company located in downtown Chicago. Chicago Grand Opera Company's first ballet master was Luigi Albertieri (protégé of Enrico Cecchetti). The opera became a base from which successful Chicago resident dance companies emerged. In 1922, two émigré dancers, Andreas Pavley and Serge Oukrainsky, among the opera's most illustrious early ballet masters, created Chicago's first independent ballet company, the Pavley-Oukrainsky Ballet, which toured nationally and internationally until Pavley died in 1931. In 1919, Adolph Bolm was invited by the opera to stage an original ballet. Based on a story by Oscar Wilde, Bolm's The Birthday of the Infanta had music by Chicago composer John Alden Carpenter and decor by the American designer Robert Edmond Jones. Midwest dancer Ruth Page initially starred as the Infanta. In a later presentation of this ballet a young Chicago ballerina, Betty Felsen, starred as the Infanta. Born in 1905, Betty became a principle dancer before she was twenty years old. When Pavley and Oukrainsky left the opera in 1922 to form their company, Betty joined their new company and Bolm became the Chicago Opera's ballet master. Subsequently, he helped establish Chicago's Allied Arts, considered the first ballet theater in the United States, which he directed from 1924 to 1927. Allied Arts ceased for lack of funds, but the Adolph Bolm Ballet continued. Experimentation continued in the 1930s and included a pioneering attempt by Mark Turbyfill (Chicago Opera) and his former student Katherine Dunham to organize an African American ballet company in Chicago. In 1933, Ruth Page choreographed La Guiablesse , which featured Page along with Dunham and an all-black supporting cast. Dunham, Ruth Page and Bentley Stone formed the Chicago Works Progress Administration (WPA) Dance Project and had significant success. Two important ballets emerged by Page and Stone; American Patterns (1937), the first feminist ballet, and the landmark Frankie & Johnnie.
Following the WPA, The Page-Stone Ballet was the first American ballet company to tour South America. Ruth Page became the leading force of ballet in Chicago, establishing many Chicago companies with various names: Chicago Grand Opera Company, Ravinia Opera Festival, the Lyric Opera of Chicago, Chicago Opera Ballet, Ruth Page's International Ballet and Chicago Ballet, with Ben Stevenson and Larry Long as co-artistic directors in 1974. Chicago Ballet was well known for Page's version of The Nutcracker at Chicago's Arie Crown Theater in McCormick Place. It premiered in 1965 and continued until 1997. Many international ballet stars appeared with the company during the long Nutcracker seasons.
Helen Tamiris was an American choreographer, modern dancer, and teacher.
Elizabeth Marie Tallchief was an American ballerina. She was considered America's first major prima ballerina. She was the first Native American to hold the rank, and is said to have revolutionized ballet.
Mark William Morris is an American dancer, choreographer and director whose work is acclaimed for its craftsmanship, ingenuity, humor, and at times eclectic musical accompaniments. Morris is popular among dance aficionados, the music world, as well as mainstream audiences.
The Joffrey Ballet is one of the premier dance companies and training institutions in the world today. Located in Chicago, Illinois, the Joffrey regularly performs classical and contemporary ballets during its annual performance season at Lyric Opera House, including its annual presentation of The Nutcracker.
Ruth Page was an American ballerina and choreographer, who created innovative works on American themes.
San Francisco Ballet is a ballet company, founded in 1933 as the San Francisco Opera Ballet under the leadership of ballet master Adolph Bolm. The company is currently based in the War Memorial Opera House, San Francisco, under the direction of Helgi Tomasson. San Francisco Ballet was the first professional ballet company in the United States. It is among the world's leading dance companies, presenting more than 100 performances annually, with a repertoire that spans both classical and contemporary ballet. Along with American Ballet Theatre and the New York City Ballet, San Francisco Ballet has been described as part of the "triumvirate of great classical companies defining the American style on the world stage today".
Adolph Rudolphovich Bolm was a Russian-born American ballet dancer and choreographer, of German descent.
François Perron is a French ballet dancer, choreographer and teacher, who now works and resides in the United States. Perron is a graduate of the Paris Opera Ballet School where he studied under the direction of Claude Bessy. In 2011, Perron founded the French Academie of Ballet, based in New York City.
Janet Collins was an African American ballet dancer, choreographer, and teacher. She performed on Broadway, in films, and appeared frequently on television. She was among the pioneers of black ballet dancing, one of the few classically trained Black dancers of her generation.
Kenneth von Heidecke was an American dancer, choreographer, and the founder and artistic director of Von Heidecke's Chicago Festival Ballet and Von Heidecke School of Ballet.
The Oakland Ballet Company is a non-profit ballet company based in Oakland, California. OBC was founded in 1965 by Ronn Guidi, an Oakland native, and gained international recognition through its historical reconstructions of ballets from the legendary Ballets Russes of Serge Diaghilev; the mounting of classic works of Americana; and the creation of innovative contemporary choreography.
Jocelyn Vollmar was an American ballerina, known for her career with the San Francisco Ballet.
Vincenzo Celli was a noted Italian-American ballet dancer, choreographer, and teacher. Celebrated as a performer and choreographer in Italy, he was renowned in America as a master teacher of the Cecchetti method of ballet training.
Margot Grimmer rose to prominence as a dancer in several companies, including the Lyric Opera Ballet, the Ruth Page International Ballet, the New York City Ballet, and the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. She studied ballet as a child in Chicago, and was among 50 from 3,000 applicants selected for the children’s ensemble of the New York City Ballet’s Chicago production of George Balanchine’s Nutcracker at the Opera House. At age 14, she danced professionally in Broadway musicals at the Kansas City Starlight Theatre and continued at the St. Louis Municipal Theatre and Music Theater in Highland Park. After high school, Grimmer’s career flourished. In 1962, she appeared with Ruth Page’s Chicago Opera Ballet in the American debut of Russian defector superstar Rudolf Nureyev at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. In 1965, she danced a principal role in the Lyric Opera of Chicago’s production of Carmina Burana at the Opera House. From 1965-1968, she performed in the International Ballet’s Nutcracker, starring Erik Bruhn, Carla Fracci, Henning Kronstam and Kirsten Simone, at McCormick Place and the Opera House. From 1965-1968, she gave lecture-demonstration performances in ballet and modern dance, under a federal grant from the National Endowment for Arts, for the War On Poverty’s Cultural Enrichment program in Chicago’s inner city schools. In 1967, she was featured in the experimental dance movie Statics, which won awards in cinematography and art direction at International Film Festivals. On off-seasons, she attended Northwestern University, majoring in acting and English Literature.
Harriet Lundgren was prima ballerina for the Chicago Civic Opera Company from 1922 until 1932. As a teenager, she trained with several prominent ballet companies, including the Hazel Wallack Studio, the Pavley-Oukrainsky Ballet, and the Adolph Bolm Company. While dancing with the Civic Opera, she also toured extensively in Europe. After her tenure at the opera, Lundgren taught Russian and Italian ballet at the Bush Conservatory, eventually opening her own school in the Edgewater Beach Apartments, which remained open until the 1960s. She died in 1996.
San Francisco Ballet School was founded in 1933 as part of the San Francisco Operatic and Ballet School when Gaetano Merola, the founder of the San Francisco Opera, perceived a need for an institution where dancers could be trained to perform in opera productions.
Edna L. McRae was an American dancer, choreographer and dance teacher, often called the grand dame of the Chicago ballet community.
Val Caniparoli is an American ballet dancer and international choreographer. His work includes more than 100 productions for ballet, opera, and theater for over 50 companies, and his career as a choreographer progressed globally even as he continued his professional dance career with the San Francisco Ballet.
Anna Ludmilla, born Jean Marie Kaley, was a ballet dancer based in Chicago, New York City, and then France. She toured widely before injuring her leg in 1930 and after that focused on ballroom dancing and teaching. During her career, she performed for the Chicago Opera Ballet in the Chicago Opera Association, later known as Chicago Civic Opera Company, on Broadway in New York City, and in film. As a teacher she moved with her husband to Panama where she headed the ballet division of a new National School of Dance.
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