Judith Chazin-Bennahum

Judith Chazin-Bennahum (born 8 April 1937) is a ballet dancer, choreographer, dance historian, writer, and educator.

A leader in the field of dance scholarship, she spent her academic career at the University of New Mexico, where she now holds the title of Distinguished Professor Emerita of Dance.

Judith Helen Chazin, born in New York City, spent her childhood in Jamaica, Queens, where her father, Maurice Chazin, was chair of the Department of Romance Languages at Queens College.

Her mother, Mary (Berry) Chazin, was a former high-school English teacher.

She began her dance training at age eight, studying tap and ballet with a local teacher, and quickly developed a passion for ballet.

When she was ten, she persuaded her mother to take her into Manhattan and enroll her in classes at the Fokine Ballet School, in the upper-floor studios in Carnegie Hall.

There she studied with Frank Lester and was observed with interest by Vitale Fokine, son of Michel Fokine and Vera Fokina.

Both Lester and Fokine recommended that she audition for entrance into the High School of Performing Arts, which she did, successfully, when she was twelve years old.

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

Selma Jeanne Cohen was her instructor in dance 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 The Robert Joffrey Ballet Company in his Scaramouche and Umpateedle.

When she finished high school, her father insisted that she go to college rather than pursue a career in dance.

Upon application, she received a full scholarship to Brandeis University, near Boston, and spent the next four years there as a theater arts major, with an emphasis on dance.

Upon her graduation with a bachelor of arts degree, magna cum laude, in 1958, she determined to make a career as a dancer.

Soon after she graduated from Brandeis in June 1958, Chazin auditioned for Agnes de Mille and was hired for the dancing ensemble of Goldilocks, a Broadway show starring Don Ameche, Elaine Stritch, and Russell Nype.

Rehearsals began in July, and the show opened on 11 October 1958.

For the next few months, until February 1959, Chazin appeared in eight shows a week, dancing in seven lively dance scenes devised by de Mille to the music of Leroy Anderson.

The following summer she returned to Jacob's Pillow as a member 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.

During her stint on Broadway and in the months thereafter, she continued to take ballet classes from Robert Joffrey, hoping to join his company.

In one of his classes, she met Nancy King, a member of the Metropolitan Opera Ballet Company, who told her of auditions then being held at the opera house.

Chazin attended an audition in the summer of 1959 and was hired as a member of the corps de ballet.

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

Tudor was then head of the school faculty; Corvino was ballet master of the company as well as a teacher at the school.

Both he and Craske were specialists in the Cecchetti method of teaching.

Under their tutelage, Chazin was soon appointed principal soloist and was given featured roles in many Met productions, dancing the ballets of various choreographers.

Tudor's dances for Gluck's Alceste, Monteverdi's Orfeo, and Wagner's Tannhāuser were particular favorites.

She was often partnered by such leading dancers as 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.

During the summers, when the Met was dark, Chazin went to New Mexico, to dance in productions at the Santa Fe Opera.

There she met Vera Zorina, who encouraged her to audition for George Balanchine, artistic director of New York City Ballet.

Upon returning to New York, Chazin danced for Balanchine and was invited to join his company.

After she started working with him, in 1961, she began to experience foot problems, but she worked through the pain and continued dancing.

In the fall of 1961, right after the Berlin Wall was erected, she went to Europe with the Santa Fe Opera company and danced on stages in Berlin and Belgrade.

The following summer, in 1962, she returned once more to Jacob's Pillow with Thomas Andrew and Company and danced in his Invitations and Images in Five, with guest artists Nathalie Krassovska and Igor Youskevitch.

Upon rejoining New York City Ballet that fall, however, she found that her foot problems had worsened, and she was unable to go on the company's historic tour of Russia in October 1962.

She then returned to the Met ballet company, where choreographic requirements for pointe work were less demanding than at New York City Ballet.

Her next move was to Geneva, Switzerland, to be near her fiancé, David Bennahum, who was a medical student there.

During her Swiss sojourn, in 1963, she took classes for a short time with Valodia Skouratoff, a former Ballets Russes dancer, before returning to America with her new husband and a new surname, hyphenated as Chazin-Bennahum.

In New York City, Chazin-Bennahum pursued her interest in French literature at Columbia University but did not take a degree.

When her husband, a physician, was ready to complete his training, they decided to move to New Mexico, where, as she has noted, "the sun shines and the sky is blue."

There, at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, she earned a master's degree in French literature in 1971 and a doctoral degree in Romance languages in 1981.