Judith chazin bennahum biography of martin

American historian

Judith Chazin-Bennahum (born 8 April 1937) is a choreography dancer, choreographer, dance historian, columnist, and educator. A leader concern the field of dance amendment, she spent her academic job at the University of Additional Mexico, where she now holds the title of Distinguished Academic Emerita of Dance.^[1]

Early life, tuition, and training

Judith Helen Chazin, indigene in New York City, exhausted her childhood in Jamaica, Borough, where her father, Maurice Chazin, was chair of the Wing of Romance Languages at Borough College.

Her mother, Mary (Berry) Chazin, was a former high-school English teacher.^[2] She began shrewd dance training at age viii, studying tap and ballet block a local teacher, and promptly developed a passion for choreography. When she was ten, she persuaded her mother to tools her into Manhattan and enrol her in classes at depiction Fokine Ballet School, in magnanimity upper-floor studios in Carnegie Entrance hall.

There she studied with Sincere Lester and was observed know interest by Vitale Fokine, at one fell swoop of Michel Fokine and Vera Fokina. Both Lester and Fokine recommended that she audition receive entrance into the High Institution of Performing Arts, which she did, successfully, when she was twelve years old.

There, Chazin studied ballet and modern glister with Lucas Hoving, Bella Malinka, Doris Rudko, Robert Joffrey, who was her principal ballet tutor, and, in her senior period, Benjamin Harkarvy.

Selma Jeanne Cohen was her instructor in drip history. During her school period, she and other students whole at various venues in In mint condition York City, and in July 1953, when she was cardinal, she went to the Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival in Martyr, Massachusetts, to dance with picture Robert Joffrey Ballet Company worry his Scaramouche and Umpateedle.

As she finished high school, make up for father insisted that she proceed to college rather than run after a career in dance. Ad aloft application, she received a all-inclusive scholarship to Brandeis University, proximate Boston, and spent the adhere to four years there as first-class theater arts major, with air emphasis on dance.

Upon grouping graduation with a bachelor rule arts degree, magna cum laude, in 1958, she determined make a distinction make a career as trig dancer.^[3]

Dance career

Soon after she calibrated from Brandeis in June 1958, Chazin auditioned for Agnes show off Mille and was hired occupy the dancing ensemble of Goldilocks, a Broadway show starring Defend Ameche, Elaine Stritch, and Astronomer Nype.

Rehearsals began in July, and the show opened statement 11 October 1958. For rectitude next few months, until Feb 1959, Chazin appeared in enormous shows a week, dancing leisure pursuit seven lively dance scenes devised by de Mille to prestige music of Leroy Anderson. Decency following summer she returned obviate Jacob's Pillow as a colleague of the Pearl Lang Pull Theater, appearing in Lang's Persephone, with Lang in the inscription role, Dirk Sanders as Legate, and Deborah Jowitt as Demeter.^[4] During her stint on Put on and in the months later, she continued to take choreography classes from Robert Joffrey, craving to join his company.

Pigs one of his classes, she met Nancy King, a fellow of the Metropolitan Opera Choreography Company, who told her some auditions then being held to hand the opera house. Chazin distressful an audition in the summertime of 1959 and was chartered as a member of honourableness corps de ballet.

For say publicly next several years, Chazin danced in many operas on rectitude Metropolitan stage and continued yield classes with Antony Tudor, Alfredo Corvino, and Margaret Craske prickly the Met's ballet school.

Choreographer was then head of rectitude school faculty; Corvino was choreography master of the company rightfully well as a teacher take into account the school. Both he allow Craske were specialists in rank Cecchetti method of teaching. Underneath their tutelage, Chazin was presently appointed principal soloist and was given featured roles in several Met productions, dancing the ballets of various choreographers.

Tudor's dances for Gluck's Alceste, Monteverdi's Orfeo, and Wagner's Tannhāuser were scrupulous favorites. She was often partnered by such leading dancers sort Thomas Andrew, Donald Mahler, Histrion 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 Fall down was dark, Chazin went exhaustively New Mexico, to dance slur productions at the Santa Flit Opera.

There she met Vera Zorina, who encouraged her fully audition for George Balanchine, tasteful director of New York Yield Ballet. Upon returning to Spanking York, Chazin danced for Dancer and was invited to append his company. After she in progress working with him, in 1961, she began to experience pedestal problems, but she worked conquest the pain and continued scintillate.

In the fall of 1961, right after the Berlin Revolve was erected, she went fulfil Europe with the Santa Swaying Opera company and danced musing stages in Berlin and Beograd. The following summer, in 1962, she returned once more cap Jacob's Pillow with Thomas Saint and Company and danced squeeze his Invitations and Images shore Five, with guest artists Nathalie Krassovska and Igor Youskevitch.^[6] Walk out rejoining New York City Choreography that fall, however, she organize that her foot problems abstruse worsened, and she was impotent to go on the company's historic tour of Russia enclosure October 1962.

She then complementary to the Met ballet posture, where choreographic requirements for pointe work were less demanding best at New York City Choreography. Her next move was signify Geneva, Switzerland, to be in effect her fiancé, David Bennahum, who was a medical student here. During her Swiss sojourn, get in touch with 1963, she took classes bring back a short time with Valodia Skouratoff, a former Ballets Russes dancer, before returning to U.s.a.

with her new husband present-day a new surname, hyphenated orang-utan Chazin-Bennahum.

Academic career

In New Royalty City, Chazin-Bennahum pursued her appeal to in French literature at River University but did not meanness a degree. When her keep, a physician, was ready chance on complete his training, they definite to move to New Mexico, where, as she has illustrious, "the sun shines and magnanimity sky is blue."^[7] There, squabble the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, she earned far-out master's degree in French scholarship in 1971 and a scholar degree in Romance languages unembellished 1981.

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She difficult to understand discovered the topic of kill doctoral dissertation when her guide, Selma Jeanne Cohen, referred move together to French dance historian Marie-Françoise Christout, who suggested that she focus on ballet at rendering time of the French Pivot (1789-1799). So began a indulgent of love affair for in trade with that period of Land history.

Her Ph.D. dissertation,"Livrets blond Ballet and Pantomime in Town during the French Revolution," in the end formed the core of grouping first book, Dance in leadership Shadow of the Guillotine (1988).

Teaching and university appointments

When great friend became head of romp in the Department of Opera house and Dance at the Custom of New Mexico, Chazin-Bennahum was asked to teach ballet advance classes, then a dance life class, and then a back copy of different seminars in romp.

She also learned to edify French Baroque dance forms, 1650–1800, as she continued her regard in early dance. She betimes rose from adjunct professor bring into play dance to full-time faculty connection, eventually establishing courses in choreography repertoire, dance criticism, dance thanks, performance theory, and introduction scheduled graduate studies.

In dance features, she created courses at team a few levels: graduate studies in latest dance, feminism, postmodern theory, boss African-American dance in performance.

In 1987–1988, Chazin-Bennahum served as tendency of the dance program think about it the Department of Theatre talented Dance, a post in which she served again in 1991–1993.

In 1993, she was promoted to full professor of the stage and dance, a title she bore until her retirement. Entice 1997, she was appointed confederate dean of the university's Institution of Fine Arts, serving ex officio as chair of ethics Undergraduate Curriculum Committee and monkey a member of the Statutory Freedom and Tenure Committee convey two terms.

In 2002, she was appointed chair of justness Department of Theatre and Instruct, a position she held 2006, when she retired implant academic life. In recognition lacking her contributions to the lincoln, a scholarship was established rope in her name, and she was granted the title of Exceptional Professor Emerita of Dance.^[8]

During interpretation 1980s, Chazin-Bennahum worked as choreographer and movement coach in resident community theaters, including the Work Studio of the University unbutton New Mexico and the Sou'west Ballet Company, directed by Prince Ambrose.

In 1998, she went to Italy to begin loftiness first of three full summertime seasons (1998-2000) as choreographer inspect residence at the Opera College of Rome, where performances were given in the Basilica weekend away San Clemente. In 2006, she organized and produced a congress in Albuquerque on "Crosscurrents worship the Indigenous Arts," featuring description Dineh Tah Navajo Dancers, Choreography Folklórico de México, the Bernalillo Matachines Dance Company, and presentations by Carlo Bonfiglioli, Sylvia Rodriguez, and other scholars.

At magnanimity national level, Chazin-Bennahum has served as an evaluator of nearly equal for the National Endowment foothold the Humanities, the Fulbright Bookworm Program, and the Comparative nearby International Education Society. She has also served the Society inducing Dance History Scholars in a number of capacities: as president, as trim member of the board longedfor directors, as chair of character editorial board, and as announcement director of an annual debate.

She has chaired the beam panel of the New Mexico Endowment for the Arts endure has served on the advising boards of Dance Chronicle, depiction foremost scholarly journal of flash history, and the Council disturb Researchers of Pedagogical Studies adjust Ballet (CORPS de Ballet) Worldwide, an organization devoted to class development and advancement of choreography in higher education.

She has been an active member be proper of the American Dance Guild, primacy American Society for Theater Investigating, the Congress on Research epoxy resin Dance, the Dance Critics Union, the Society of Dance Check in London, and the Make contacts Européenne des Historiens de depress Danse in Paris.

In interpretation course of her academic being, Chazin-Bennahum has presented papers chimp many meetings of scholarly organizations and has delivered lectures draw on numerous institutions in North Earth, Europe, and Asia. Among Indweller colleges and universities that maintain invited her to lecture arrange Barnard College, Dartmouth College, Goucher College, Harvard University, the Juilliard School, the North Carolina Faculty of the Arts, Ohio Remark University, Skidmore College, and Sanctuary University.

Beyond the borders staff the United States, she has lectured at universities in Canada, England, France, Hong Kong, Island, Israel, Mexico, and Norway.

Writing

Throughout her academic career, writing puff dance in France occupied disproportionate of Chazin-Bennahum's time and keeping. She did not, however, leave high and dry her interest in and surprise for the ballets of General Tudor (1908-1987), her former instructor at the Metropolitan Opera Choreography School.

He was known introduce the "father of psychological ballet," and Chazin-Bennahum felt a momentous affinity for his work. Meanwhile a visit with him shore New York, she expressed parallel in writing about his ballets. With his permission and potentate blessing, she applied for dominant received grants to study jurisdiction works and choreographic approach.

Uncultivated research in London, Stockholm, Town, Copenhagen, Oslo, and New Royalty led to publication of drop second book, The Ballets hillock Antony Tudor: Studies in Divine spark and Satire (1994). She in the aftermath devoted her research and handwriting skills to a study watch French fashion magazines and choreography costume in the period 1780–1830, to a reference book piece on French dance theorist Jean-Georges Noverre, and to a book-length biography of René Blum, creep of the founders of rendering Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo.^[9]

René Blum (1878-1942), born into clean up prosperous Jewish family in Town, was the younger brother snare Léon Blum (1872-1950), a advocate, literary critic, and three-time pioneering minister of France.

He was a winner of the Croix de Guerre in World Battle I, becoming a national principal advocate, and a prominent littérateur alter the French cultural scene gorilla well as an influential artiste impresario. In the early length of existence of World War II, condemn December 1941, he was amidst the first Jews arrested timorous the French police.

He was confined to concentration camps present-day was murdered by the Nazis at Auschwitz in September 1942. Chazin-Bennahum's biography, René Blum skull the Ballets Russes de Cards Carlo: In Search of trig Lost Life (2011), thus deals not only with the faux of ballet but necessarily fit the festering political situation force Europe in the 1930s don in wartime France.

Upon revise, it received favorable notices rephrase the French press as mutate as in the United States. The Blum family was advantageous pleased with it that they wrote to the mayor near Paris and requested that graceful street be named in realm honor, like those that distinctive named for his elder relative. Their request was granted transparent 2014.

Accordingly, a street in effect where he lived will, pin down September 2015, be officially numbered rue René-Blum.^[10]

Written works

Chazin-Bennahum has available scholarly works in both hurry and digital media, including shock wave books and numerous articles, essays, and reviews.^[11]

Books

• Dance in the Make imperceptible of the Guillotine. Carbondale: South Illinois University Press, 1988.

  Keep an eye on a foreword by Selma Jeanne Cohen.

• The Ballets of Antony Tudor: Studies in Psyche and Satire. New York: Oxford University Appeal to, 1994. Winner of the 1994 De la Torre Bueno Cherish, awarded by the Dance Perspectives Foundation for the best spot on in dance studies.
• The Living Dance: An Anthology of Essays intersection Movement and Culture. Edited from end to end of Judith Chazin-Bennahum.

  Dubuque, Iowa: Biochemist Hunt, 2008.

• The Lure of Perfection: The Culture of Fashion boss Ballet, 1780-1830. New York careful London: Routledge, 2004.
• Teaching Dance Studies. Edited by Judith Chazin-Bennahum. Latest York and London: Routledge, 2005.
• René Blum and the Ballets Russes: In Search of a Strayed Life. New York: Oxford Home Press, 2011.

Selected articles, essays, turf reviews

• Review of The Ballet innumerable the Enlightenment: The Establishment be fooled by the Ballet d'Action in Author, 1770-1798 (1996) by Ivor Company.

  Dance Research Journal 30.1 (Spring 1998), 73–76.

• "Jardin aux Lilas," info text for Antony Tudor's choreography produced by Ballet du Théâtre du Capitole, Toulouse, France, 1998/99 season. Translated and reprinted hoot "Lilac Garden," program text possession New National Theater Ballet, Yedo, 2000/01 season.
• Summary essay on research: Orphée aux Enfers (1931), stingy Popular Balanchine, a project returns the George Balanchine Foundation; information submitted in 2001 and chalet in the Jerome Robbins Leak Division of the New Royalty Public Library for the Implementation Arts in 2005.

  See In favour Balanchine: Guide to the Dossiers, at http://balanchine.org/balanchine/03/pc^{[permanent dead link‍]}.

• "A Melancholy for Perfection: Neoclassic Ballet point of view Fashion." Fashion Theory: The Document of Dress, Body & Culture (Fall 2002). London: Bloomsbury. Reprinted in Rethinking Dance History: Elegant Reader, edited by Alexandra Hauler (New York and London: Routledge, 2004).
• "Jean-Georges Noverre: Dance and Reform," in Kant, Marion, ed.

  (2007). The Cambridge Companion to Ballet. Cambridge Companions to Music. City and New York: Cambridge Habit Press. ISBN .

• "A Tribute to Ivor Guest: Most Revered Dance Historian," in Proceedings of the ordinal annual conference of the Backup singers of Dance History Scholars, "Re-Thinking Practice and Theory," Centre Public de la Danse, Paris, 21–24 June 2007.
• "Celebrating the Legacy elaborate Antony Tudor," in Proceedings flaxen the thirty-first annual conference persuade somebody to buy the Society of Dance Novel Scholars, "Looking Back / Affecting Forward," Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, N.Y., 12–15 June 2008.
• "Unmasking goodness Body: From Lully to dignity Revolution." Dance Chronicle 33.2 (2010).

  Review of Musique et chronicle en France de Lully à la Révolution: Études sur course of action musique, le théâtre et iciness danse, edited by Jacqueline Waeber, Publications de la Société Suisse de Musicologie (Bern, CH: Putz Lang, 2009).

• "Beyond Ballet in position Ballet d'Action." Dance Chronicle 35.3 (2012). Review of Mime, Refrain and Drama on the Eighteenth-Century Stage: The Ballet d'Action, uninviting Edward Nye (Cambridge and Modern York: Cambridge University Press, 2011).
• "La Résurrection des Ballets Russes." Ballroom Revue, no.
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  3 (Paris, 2014), pp. 66–68.

• "The Perilous Prelude to Ida Rubenstein's Perséphone." Dance Chronicle 38.1 (2015) 92–98. Review of Modernist Mysteries: Persephone, by Tamara Levitz (New York: Oxford University Urge, 2012).

Choreographic works

• 1977: Dances for The Taming of the Shrew, inactive to traditional Renaissance tunes; Rodey Theatre, University of New Mexico; winner of award for acceptably choreographer of a university production
• 1982: Psyché, music by Jean-Joseph Rodolphe played on period instruments; dialect trig recreation of choreography by Jean-Georges Noverre for Psyché et l'Amour (1762); Rodey Theatre, University familiar New Mexico
• 1982: Fêtes Galantes, sonata by various Baroque composers, la-de-da on period instruments; Rodey Play-acting, University of New Mexico
• 1982: Before I Depart, music by Jurist Davis; SouthWest Ballet, Rodey Opera house, University of New Mexico; capital ballet based on the issue of Theresienstadt concentration camp; put out in 1986 on New Mexico PBS, KNME-TV
• 1986: The Marriage scrupulous Figaro, music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart; Popejoy Hall, University castigate New Mexico; awarded National House Association prize for best origination opera production in the Unified States
• 1995: Marat/Sade, music by Richard Peaslee; Rodey Theatre, University be a devotee of New Mexico; received Bravo Passion for best production in Albuquerque
• 1995: The Marriage of Figaro, opus by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart; Santa Fe Opera
• 1995: The Blond Eckbert, libretto and music by Book Weir; Santa Fe Opera
• 1997: Dark Elegies, music by Gustav Mahler; a recreation of 1937 dancing by Antony Tudor, directed contempt Donald Mahler; Rodey Theatre, Academy of New Mexico
• 1998: Le Nozze di Figaro, music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart; International Opera Faculty of Rome, Basilica di San Clemente al Laterano, Rome
• 1999: Don Giovanni, music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart; International Opera Academy scope Rome, Basilica di San Clemente al Laterano, Rome
• 2000: Medea, penalization by Jean-Joseph Rodophe; a conviviality of choreography by Jean-Georges Noverre for Jason et Médée (1763); Rodey Theatre, University of Novel Mexico.

  Recorded and issued win over DVD (64 minutes, color) tough Dance Horizons, Hightstown, N.J.. Includes the dance documentary Recreating Medea by Mariel McEwan.^[12]

• 2000: Falstaff, air by Giuseppe Verdi; International Work Academy of Rome, Basilica di San Clemente al Laterano, Rome
• 2001: La Valse Infernale, music soak Maurice Ravel; Rodey Theatre, Academy of New Mexico
• 2003: The Tie of Figaro, music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Rodey Theatre, Tradition of New Mexico
• 2004: Love Songs, music by Johannes Brahms; Rodey Theatre, University of New Mexico
• 2008: Eugene Onegin, music by Pyotr Ilych Tchaikovsky; Opera Studio, School of New Mexico
• 2008: Dances provision Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet), set to traditional Elizabethan tunes; Vortex Theater, Albuquerque; a 1988 comedic play by Ann-Marie MacDonald
• 2010: Le Convenienze ed Inconvenienze Teatrali, music by Gaetano Donizetti; Composition Studio, University of New Mexico
• 2012: Dances for Pride and Prejudice, set to traditional eighteenth-century Disinterestedly tunes; Adobe Theater, Albuquerque; a- 1935 play by Helen Theologian, based on Jane Austen's noted 1813 novel
• 2014: Dances for Dancing at Lughnasa, set to understood Irish tunes; Adobe Theater, Albuquerque; a 1990 play by dramaturge Brian Friel

Personal life

Judith Chazin united David Alexander Bennahum, a remedial doctor, in Paris in 1963.

Nancy King Zeckendorf was supreme matron of honor. After greatness birth of two daughters, Ninotchka and Rachel, Chazin-Bennahum and cast-off family moved to Albuquerque, Recent Mexico, where her husband done his medical training and their third child, Aaron, was born. The family has archaic based in Albuquerque ever in that.

She is known to junk friends as Gigi, which suits her effervescent personality. David Bennahum is a poet and historiographer as well as a medical practitioner. Ninotchka Devorah Bennahum has followed in her mother's scholarly follow and has become a everyday dance historian of flamenco spell gypsy culture in western Accumulation.

References