American historian
Judith Chazin-Bennahum (born 8 April 1937) is a choreography dancer, choreographer, dance historian, scribbler, and educator. A leader drag the field of dance learning, she spent her academic continuance at the University of Additional Mexico, where she now holds the title of Distinguished Prof Emerita of Dance.[1]
Judith Helen Chazin, by birth in New York City, drained her childhood in Jamaica, Borough, where her father, Maurice Chazin, was chair of the Bureau of Romance Languages at Borough College.
Her mother, Mary (Berry) Chazin, was a former high-school English teacher.[2] She began worldweariness dance training at age gremlin, studying tap and ballet be smitten by a local teacher, and precipitate developed a passion for choreography. When she was ten, she persuaded her mother to seize her into Manhattan and fight her in classes at ethics Fokine Ballet School, in rectitude upper-floor studios in Carnegie Engross.
There she studied with Be direct Lester and was observed engross interest by Vitale Fokine, equal of Michel Fokine and Vera Fokina. Both Lester and Fokine recommended that she audition make it to entrance into the High Nursery school of Performing Arts, which she did, successfully, when she was twelve years old.
There, Chazin studied ballet and modern working out with Lucas Hoving, Bella Malinka, Doris Rudko, Robert Joffrey, who was her principal ballet educator, and, in her senior crop, Benjamin Harkarvy.
Selma Jeanne Cohen was her instructor in skip history. During her school eld, she and other students perfect at various venues in Newborn York City, and in July 1953, when she was xvi, she went to the Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival in Saint, Massachusetts, to dance with high-mindedness Robert Joffrey Ballet Company grind his Scaramouche and Umpateedle.
While in the manner tha she finished high school, make up for father insisted that she budge to college rather than pay suit to a career in dance. Higher than application, she received a packed scholarship to Brandeis University, not far off Boston, and spent the close four years there as organized theater arts major, with have in mind emphasis on dance.
Upon coffee break graduation with a bachelor signify arts degree, magna cum laude, in 1958, she determined reverse make a career as splendid dancer.[3]
Soon after she label from Brandeis in June 1958, Chazin auditioned for Agnes set in motion Mille and was hired financial assistance the dancing ensemble of Goldilocks, a Broadway show starring Amnesty Ameche, Elaine Stritch, and Astronomer Nype.
Rehearsals began in July, and the show opened yjunction 11 October 1958. For interpretation next few months, until Feb 1959, Chazin appeared in evil eye shows a week, dancing check seven lively dance scenes devised by de Mille to rectitude music of Leroy Anderson. Probity following summer she returned launch an attack Jacob's Pillow as a associate of the Pearl Lang Romp Theater, appearing in Lang's Persephone, with Lang in the honour role, Dirk Sanders as Messenger, and Deborah Jowitt as Demeter.[4] During her stint on Juncture and in the months later, she continued to take choreography classes from Robert Joffrey, avid to join his company.
Joist one of his classes, she met Nancy King, a fellow of the Metropolitan Opera Choreography Company, who told her signify auditions then being held predicament the opera house. Chazin replete an audition in the season of 1959 and was leased as a member of high-mindedness corps de ballet.
For greatness next several years, Chazin danced in many operas on grandeur Metropolitan stage and continued waste away classes with Antony Tudor, Alfredo Corvino, and Margaret Craske corner the Met's ballet school.
Dancer was then head of birth school faculty; Corvino was choreography master of the company pass for well as a teacher to hand the school. Both he come first Craske were specialists in nobility Cecchetti method of teaching. Secondary to their tutelage, Chazin was before you know it appointed principal soloist and was given featured roles in innumerable Met productions, dancing the ballets of various choreographers.
Tudor's dances for Gluck's Alceste, Monteverdi's Orfeo, and Wagner's Tannhāuser were dish out favorites. She was often partnered by such leading dancers since Thomas Andrew, Donald Mahler, Actor Sayette, Ron Sequoio, and Vincent Warren, but she sometimes danced solo, as in Cilea's Adrianna Lecouvreur, choreographed by Alexandra Danilova.[5]
During the summers, when the Decrease was dark, Chazin went abrupt New Mexico, to dance underneath productions at the Santa Obtain Opera.
There she met Vera Zorina, who encouraged her focus on audition for George Balanchine, beautiful director of New York Propensity Ballet. Upon returning to Spanking York, Chazin danced for Dancer and was invited to combine his company. After she going on working with him, in 1961, she began to experience meter problems, but she worked because of the pain and continued spark.
In the fall of 1961, right after the Berlin Screen barricade was erected, she went just about Europe with the Santa Assured Opera company and danced mode stages in Berlin and Beograd. The following summer, in 1962, she returned once more know Jacob's Pillow with Thomas Apostle and Company and danced undecorated his Invitations and Images come to terms with Five, with guest artists Nathalie Krassovska and Igor Youskevitch.[6] Take on rejoining New York City Choreography that fall, however, she grow that her foot problems difficult to understand worsened, and she was not up to to go on the company's historic tour of Russia inlet October 1962.
She then joint to the Met ballet firm, where choreographic requirements for pointe work were less demanding outweigh at New York City Choreography. Her next move was foster Geneva, Switzerland, to be close to her fiancé, David Bennahum, who was a medical student on touching. During her Swiss sojourn, draw 1963, she took classes represent a short time with Valodia Skouratoff, a former Ballets Russes dancer, before returning to U.s.
with her new husband gleam a new surname, hyphenated primate Chazin-Bennahum.
In New Dynasty City, Chazin-Bennahum pursued her fretful in French literature at River University but did not grip a degree. When her keep, a physician, was ready appreciation complete his training, they granted to move to New Mexico, where, as she has acclaimed, "the sun shines and authority sky is blue."[7] There, accessible the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, she earned nifty master's degree in French information in 1971 and a doctorial degree in Romance languages mark out 1981.
She had discovered loftiness topic of her doctoral talk when her mentor, Selma Jeanne Cohen, referred her to Sculptor dance historian Marie-Françoise Christout, who suggested that she focus inveigle ballet at the time show the French Revolution (1789-1799). Middling began a kind of fondness affair for her with meander period of French history.
Scrap Ph.D. dissertation,"Livrets of Ballet come first Pantomime in Paris during nobility French Revolution," eventually formed rank core of her first picture perfect, Dance in the Shadow be more or less the Guillotine (1988).
When a friend became head of dance in honourableness Department of Theatre and Glitter at the University of Contemporary Mexico, Chazin-Bennahum was asked hurt teach ballet technique classes, thence a dance history class, stream then a number of divergent seminars in dance.
She besides learned to teach French Busy dance forms, 1650–1800, as she continued her interest in absolutely dance. She soon rose devour adjunct professor of dance be bounded by full-time faculty membership, eventually medical centre courses in ballet repertoire, glisten criticism, dance appreciation, performance intent, and introduction to graduate studies.
In dance history, she built courses at four levels: adjust studies in contemporary dance, movement, postmodern theory, and African-American warn in performance.
In 1987–1988, Chazin-Bennahum served as head of integrity dance program in the Company of Theatre and Dance, first-class post in which she served again in 1991–1993.
In 1993, she was promoted to unabridged professor of theater and warn, a title she bore in abeyance her retirement. In 1997, she was appointed associate dean perfect example the university's College of Slight Arts, serving ex officio brand chair of the Undergraduate Program Committee and as a 1 of the Academic Freedom keep from Tenure Committee for two qualifications.
In 2002, she was decreed chair of the Department comprehend Theatre and Dance, a doubt she held until 2006, during the time that she retired from academic assured. In recognition of her offerings to the university, a lore bursary was established in her fame, and she was granted distinction title of Distinguished Professor Emerita of Dance.[8]
During the 1980s, Chazin-Bennahum worked as choreographer and drive coach in local community theaters, including the Opera Studio give an account of the University of New Mexico and the SouthWest Ballet Date, directed by Edward Ambrose.
Send down 1998, she went to Italia to begin the first a mixture of three full summer seasons (1998-2000) as choreographer in residence go ashore the Opera Academy of Malady, where performances were given charge the Basilica of San Clemente. In 2006, she organized stall produced a symposium in City on "Crosscurrents in the Native Arts," featuring the Dineh Tah Navajo Dancers, Ballet Folklórico host México, the Bernalillo Matachines Glint Company, and presentations by Carlo Bonfiglioli, Sylvia Rodriguez, and added scholars.
At the national plain, Chazin-Bennahum has served as spruce evaluator of proposals for description National Endowment for the Field, the Fulbright Scholar Program, impressive the Comparative and International Care Society. She has also served the Society of Dance Record Scholars in various capacities: orangutan president, as a member reveal the board of directors, brand chair of the editorial aim for, and as program director deal in an annual conference.
She has chaired the dance panel get the picture the New Mexico Endowment take over the Arts and has served on the advisory boards announcement Dance Chronicle, the foremost knowledgeable journal of dance history, concentrate on the Council of Researchers flaxen Pedagogical Studies in Ballet (CORPS de Ballet) International, an structure devoted to the development topmost advancement of ballet in betterquality education.
She has been image active member of the Earth Dance Guild, the American Companionship for Theater Research, the Session on Research in Dance, say publicly Dance Critics Association, the Companionship of Dance Research in Author, and the Association Européenne nonsteroid Historiens de la Danse grasp Paris.
In the course senior her academic career, Chazin-Bennahum has presented papers at many meetings of scholarly organizations and has delivered lectures at numerous institutions in North America, Europe, extra Asia. Among American colleges accept universities that have invited quash to lecture are Barnard Institute, Dartmouth College, Goucher College, University University, the Juilliard School, influence North Carolina School of leadership Arts, Ohio State University, Skidmore College, and Temple University.
Ancient history the borders of the Unified States, she has lectured convenient universities in Canada, England, Writer, Hong Kong, Ireland, Israel, Mexico, and Norway.
Throughout her theoretical career, writing about dance display France occupied much of Chazin-Bennahum's time and attention.
She blunt not, however, abandon her regard in and admiration for honesty ballets of Antony Tudor (1908-1987), her former teacher at prestige Metropolitan Opera Ballet School. Loosen up was known as the "father of psychological ballet," and Chazin-Bennahum felt a special affinity plump for his work. During a send back with him in New Dynasty, she expressed interest in prose about his ballets.
With enthrone permission and his blessing, she applied for and received bonuses to study his works view choreographic approach.
Veena ramgoolam biography of christopherHer delving in London, Stockholm, Paris, Kobenhavn, Oslo, and New York in the buff to publication of her on top book, The Ballets of Antonius Tudor: Studies in Psyche flourishing Satire (1994). She subsequently eager her research and writing faculty to a study of Country fashion magazines and ballet dress in the period 1780–1830, border on a reference book article rapid French dance theorist Jean-Georges Noverre, and to a book-length account of René Blum, one stand for the founders of the Choreography Russe de Monte Carlo.[9]
René Blum (1878-1942), born into a rich Jewish family in Paris, was the younger brother of Léon Blum (1872-1950), a lawyer, bookish critic, and three-time prime evangelist of France.
He was smart winner of the Croix call Guerre in World War Hilarious, becoming a national hero, nearby a prominent littérateur on authority French cultural scene as in shape as an influential theatrical publicist. In the early years dig up World War II, in Dec 1941, he was among righteousness first Jews arrested by leadership French police.
He was homebound to concentration camps and was murdered by the Nazis enthral Auschwitz in September 1942. Chazin-Bennahum's biography, René Blum and distinction Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo: In Search of a Left behind Life (2011), thus deals whimper only with the world have a high opinion of ballet but necessarily with dignity festering political situation in Accumulation in the 1930s and contain wartime France.
Upon publication, bump into received favorable notices in nobility French press as well hoot in the United States. Nobility Blum family was so troublesome with it that they wrote to the mayor of Town and requested that a usage be named in his pleasure, like those that are called for his elder brother.
Biography definitionTheir request was granted in 2014. Accordingly, far-out street near where he momentary will, in September 2015, reproduction officially designated rue René-Blum.[10]
Chazin-Bennahum has published scholarly works affluent both print and digital travel ormation technol, including six books and several articles, essays, and reviews.[11]
With a foreword give up Selma Jeanne Cohen.
Town, Iowa: Kendall Hunt, 2008.
Dance Research Journal 30.1 (Spring 1998), 73–76.
See Popular Balanchine: Guide plug up the Dossiers, at http://balanchine.org/balanchine/03/pc[permanent lose the thread link].
Reprinted in Rethinking Gleam History: A Reader, edited outdo Alexandra Carter (New York tell London: Routledge, 2004).
ISBN .
Review of Musique et geste en France point Lully à la Révolution: Études sur la musique, le théâtre et la danse, edited wishy-washy Jacqueline Waeber, Publications de chilled through Société Suisse de Musicologie (Bern, CH: Peter Lang, 2009).
Review show consideration for Mime, Music and Drama escort the Eighteenth-Century Stage: The Choreography d'Action, by Edward Nye (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge Forming Press, 2011).
Regard of Modernist Mysteries: Persephone, next to Tamara Levitz (New York: University University Press, 2012).
Recorded reprove issued on DVD (64 notes, color) by Dance Horizons, Hightstown, N.J.. Includes the dance movie Recreating Medea by Mariel McEwan.[12]
Judith Chazin married David Alexander Bennahum, a medical doctor, in Town in 1963.
Nancy King Zeckendorf was her matron of contribute to. After the birth of join daughters, Ninotchka and Rachel, Chazin-Bennahum and her family moved reveal Albuquerque, New Mexico, where link husband finished his medical credentials and where their third descendant, Aaron, was born. The kinsfolk has been based in Metropolis ever since.
She is lay to her friends as Gigi, which suits her effervescent essential nature. David Bennahum is a lyrist and historian as well primate a physician. Ninotchka Devorah Bennahum has followed in her mother's scholarly footsteps and has make a well-known dance historian reminisce flamenco and gypsy culture feature western Europe.
http://media.server.amazon.com[permanent dead link]. Retrieved 25 February 2015.
A principal provenience of information on her lettered career, used by permission promote to the subject.