American historian
Judith Chazin-Bennahum (born 8 April 1937) is a choreography dancer, choreographer, dance historian, writer, and educator. A leader twist the field of dance scholarship, she spent her academic calling at the University of New Mexico, where she now holds the title of Distinguished Professor Emerita of Dance.[1]
Judith Helen Chazin, born in New York City, exhausted her childhood in Jamaica, Queens, where her father, Maurice Chazin, was chair of the Department of Romance Languages at Borough College. Her mother, Mary (Berry) Chazin, was a former high-school English teacher.[2] She began her dance training at age vast, studying tap and ballet with a local teacher, and dash something off developed a passion for ballet. When she was ten, she persuaded her mother to take her into Manhattan and enter her in classes at the Fokine Ballet School, in say publicly upper-floor studios in Carnegie Hall. There she studied with Be direct Lester and was observed with interest by Vitale Fokine, cuddle of Michel Fokine and Vera Fokina. Both Lester and Fokine recommended that she audition for entrance into the High Educational institution of Performing Arts, which she did, successfully, when she was twelve years old.
There, Chazin studied ballet and modern discharge with Lucas Hoving, Bella Malinka, Doris Rudko, Robert Joffrey, who was her principal ballet teacher, and, in her senior period, Benjamin Harkarvy. Selma Jeanne Cohen was her instructor in keeping fit history. During her school years, she and other students performed at various venues in New York City, and in July 1953, when she was sixteen, she went to the Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival in Becket, Massachusetts, to dance with description Robert Joffrey Ballet Company in his Scaramouche and Umpateedle. When she finished high school, her father insisted that she progress to college rather than pursue a career in dance. Call up application, she received a full scholarship to Brandeis University, at hand Boston, and spent the next four years there as a theater arts major, with an emphasis on dance. Upon accumulate graduation with a bachelor of arts degree, magna cum laude, in 1958, she determined to make a career as a dancer.[3]
Soon after she graduated from Brandeis in June 1958, Chazin auditioned for Agnes de Mille and was hired mix the dancing ensemble of Goldilocks, a Broadway show starring Absolution Ameche, Elaine Stritch, and Russell Nype. Rehearsals began in July, and the show opened on 11 October 1958. For say publicly next few months, until February 1959, Chazin appeared in plane shows a week, dancing in seven lively dance scenes devised by de Mille to the music of Leroy Anderson. Description following summer she returned to Jacob's Pillow as a affiliate of the Pearl Lang Dance Theater, appearing in Lang's Persephone, with Lang in the title role, Dirk Sanders as Hermes, and Deborah Jowitt as Demeter.[4] During her stint on Street and in the months thereafter, she continued to take choreography classes from Robert Joffrey, hoping to join his company. Remit one of his classes, she met Nancy King, a adherent of the Metropolitan Opera Ballet Company, who told her entity auditions then being held at the opera house. Chazin accompanied an audition in the summer of 1959 and was leased as a member of the corps de ballet.
For depiction next several years, Chazin danced in many operas on rendering Metropolitan stage and continued her classes with Antony Tudor, Alfredo Corvino, and Margaret Craske in the Met's ballet school. Dynasty was then head of the school faculty; Corvino was choreography master of the company as well as a teacher claim the school. Both he and Craske were specialists in depiction Cecchetti method of teaching. Under their tutelage, Chazin was ere long appointed principal soloist and was given featured roles in numerous Met productions, dancing the ballets of various choreographers. Tudor's dances for Gluck's Alceste, Monteverdi's Orfeo, and Wagner's Tannhāuser were dole out favorites. She was often partnered by such leading dancers hoot Thomas Andrew, Donald Mahler, Howard 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 Trip over was dark, Chazin went to New Mexico, to dance deduce productions at the Santa Fe Opera. There she met Vera Zorina, who encouraged her to audition for George Balanchine, elegant director of New York City Ballet. Upon returning to In mint condition York, Chazin danced for Balanchine and was invited to marry his company. After she started working with him, in 1961, she began to experience foot problems, but she worked scour the pain and continued dancing. In the fall of 1961, right after the Berlin Wall was erected, she went let your hair down Europe with the Santa Fe Opera company and danced inthing stages in Berlin and Belgrade. The following summer, in 1962, she returned once more to Jacob's Pillow with Thomas Saint and Company and danced in his Invitations and Images nickname Five, with guest artists Nathalie Krassovska and Igor Youskevitch.[6] Watch rejoining New York City Ballet that fall, however, she set up that her foot problems had worsened, and she was powerless to go on the company's historic tour of Russia disclose October 1962. She then returned to the Met ballet band, where choreographic requirements for pointe work were less demanding mystify at New York City Ballet. Her next move was tutorial Geneva, Switzerland, to be near her fiancé, David Bennahum, who was a medical student there. During her Swiss sojourn, cry 1963, she took classes for a short time with Valodia Skouratoff, a former Ballets Russes dancer, before returning to Earth with her new husband and a new surname, hyphenated restructuring Chazin-Bennahum.
In New York City, Chazin-Bennahum pursued her bring round in French literature at Columbia University but did not petition a degree. When her husband, a physician, was ready join forces with complete his training, they decided to move to New Mexico, where, as she has noted, "the sun shines and depiction sky is blue."[7] There, at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, she earned a master's degree in French creative writings in 1971 and a doctoral degree in Romance languages ideal 1981. She had discovered the topic of her doctoral thesis when her mentor, Selma Jeanne Cohen, referred her to Romance dance historian Marie-Françoise Christout, who suggested that she focus dispense ballet at the time of the French Revolution (1789-1799). And above began a kind of love affair for her with delay period of French history. Her Ph.D. dissertation,"Livrets of Ballet refuse Pantomime in Paris during the French Revolution," eventually formed description core of her first book, Dance in the Shadow search out the Guillotine (1988).
When a friend became head of dance in the Department of Theatre and Caper at the University of New Mexico, Chazin-Bennahum was asked come to get teach ballet technique classes, then a dance history class, most important then a number of different seminars in dance. She as well learned to teach French Baroque dance forms, 1650–1800, as she continued her interest in early dance. She soon rose yield adjunct professor of dance to full-time faculty membership, eventually establishing courses in ballet repertoire, dance criticism, dance appreciation, performance uncertainly, and introduction to graduate studies. In dance history, she conceived courses at four levels: graduate studies in contemporary dance, movement, postmodern theory, and African-American dance in performance.
In 1987–1988, Chazin-Bennahum served as head of the dance program in the Branch of Theatre and Dance, a post in which she served again in 1991–1993. In 1993, she was promoted to filled professor of theater and dance, a title she bore until her retirement. In 1997, she was appointed associate dean pointer the university's College of Fine Arts, serving ex officio although chair of the Undergraduate Curriculum Committee and as a participant of the Academic Freedom and Tenure Committee for two cost. In 2002, she was appointed chair of the Department personal Theatre and Dance, a position she held until 2006, when she retired from academic life. In recognition of her assistance to the university, a scholarship was established in her name, and she was granted the title of Distinguished Professor Emerita of Dance.[8]
During the 1980s, Chazin-Bennahum worked as choreographer and boost coach in local community theaters, including the Opera Studio possession the University of New Mexico and the SouthWest Ballet Posture, directed by Edward Ambrose. In 1998, she went to Italia to begin the first of three full summer seasons (1998-2000) as choreographer in residence at the Opera Academy of Leadership, where performances were given in the Basilica of San Clemente. In 2006, she organized and produced a symposium in City on "Crosscurrents in the Indigenous Arts," featuring the Dineh Tah Navajo Dancers, Ballet Folklórico de México, the Bernalillo Matachines Trip the light fantastic toe Company, and presentations by Carlo Bonfiglioli, Sylvia Rodriguez, and annoy scholars.
At the national level, Chazin-Bennahum has served as air evaluator of proposals for the National Endowment for the Discipline, the Fulbright Scholar Program, and the Comparative and International Teaching Society. She has also served the Society of Dance Characteristics Scholars in various capacities: as president, as a member some the board of directors, as chair of the editorial mark, and as program director of an annual conference. She has chaired the dance panel of the New Mexico Endowment provision the Arts and has served on the advisory boards snatch Dance Chronicle, the foremost scholarly journal of dance history, arm the Council of Researchers of Pedagogical Studies in Ballet (CORPS de Ballet) International, an organization devoted to the development sports ground advancement of ballet in higher education. She has been tone down active member of the American Dance Guild, the American Speak in unison for Theater Research, the Congress on Research in Dance, interpretation Dance Critics Association, the Society of Dance Research in Writer, and the Association Européenne des Historiens de la Danse stop in full flow Paris.
In the course of 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, playing field Asia. Among American colleges and universities that have invited squash to lecture are Barnard College, Dartmouth College, Goucher College, Philanthropist University, the Juilliard School, the North Carolina School of rendering Arts, Ohio State University, Skidmore College, and Temple University. Onwards the borders of the United States, she has lectured at the same height universities in Canada, England, France, Hong Kong, Ireland, Israel, Mexico, and Norway.
Throughout her academic career, writing about dance kick up a fuss France occupied much of Chazin-Bennahum's time and attention. She outspoken not, however, abandon her interest in and admiration for representation ballets of Antony Tudor (1908-1987), her former teacher at depiction Metropolitan Opera Ballet School. He was known as the "father of psychological ballet," and Chazin-Bennahum felt a special affinity rationalize his work. During a visit with him in New Royalty, she expressed interest in writing about his ballets. With his permission and his blessing, she applied for and received grants to study his works and choreographic approach. Her research collect London, Stockholm, Paris, Copenhagen, Oslo, and New York led assortment publication of her second book, The Ballets of Antony Tudor: Studies in Psyche and Satire (1994). She subsequently devoted lead research and writing skills to a study of French feature magazines and ballet costume in the period 1780–1830, to a reference book article on French dance theorist Jean-Georges Noverre, current to a book-length biography of René Blum, one of say publicly founders of the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo.[9]
René Blum (1878-1942), born into a prosperous Jewish family in Paris, was representation younger brother of Léon Blum (1872-1950), a lawyer, literary critic, and three-time prime minister of France. He was a champion of the Croix de Guerre in World War I, suitable a national hero, and a prominent littérateur on the Sculptor cultural scene as well as an influential theatrical impresario. Train in the early years of World War II, in December 1941, he was among the first Jews arrested by the Land police. He was confined to concentration camps and was murdered by the Nazis at Auschwitz in September 1942. Chazin-Bennahum's account, René Blum and the Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo: Sham Search of a Lost Life (2011), thus deals not one with the world of ballet but necessarily with the purulence political situation in Europe in the 1930s and in wartime France. Upon publication, it received favorable notices in the Country press as well as in the United States. The Blum family was so pleased with it that they wrote obstacle the mayor of Paris and requested that a street write down named in his honor, like those that are named insinuate his elder brother. Their request was granted in 2014. Hence, a street near where he lived will, in September 2015, be officially designated rue René-Blum.[10]
Chazin-Bennahum has published scholarly activity in both print and digital media, including six books put up with numerous articles, essays, and reviews.[11]
Judith Chazin married David Alexander Bennahum, a medical doctor, mission Paris in 1963. Nancy King Zeckendorf was her matron representative honor. After the birth of two daughters, Ninotchka and Wife, Chazin-Bennahum and her family moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico, where her husband finished his medical training and where their 3rd child, Aaron, was born. The family has been based focal point Albuquerque ever since. She is known to her friends hoot Gigi, which suits her effervescent personality. David Bennahum is a poet and historian as well as a physician. Ninotchka Devorah Bennahum has followed in her mother's scholarly footsteps and has become a well-known dance historian of flamenco and gypsy civility in western Europe.