George Zoritch Passes On

Caption: George Zoritch performs in "L'apres midi d'un Faune," circa 1937. The ballet star was best known for his work with the Ballet Russe companies beginning in the 1930s. (Zeitgeist Films)


And so his work is finally done.

I must not have been paying attention. George Zoritch, ballet great (and by happenstance, my first ballet instructor) passed away on November 1, 2009.

One of a kind! I was very fortunate to meet him!:

George Zoritch, an international ballet star who had a second career as a well-respected teacher, died Nov. 1 at Carondelet St. Mary's Hospital in Tucson. He was 92.

...Zoritch had retired in 1987 from teaching dance at the University of Arizona. He also taught at his studio in West Hollywood and had several stage and film credits.

Zoritch was best known for his work with the Ballet Russe companies starting in the 1930s. His dashing good looks complemented what Dance Magazine in 2000 called "his ability to delve deeply into the heart of a character and to embody the essence of emotion in a restrained, elegant fashion."

"He had a lot of feeling when he danced," said Paul Maure, a fellow Ballet Russe dancer who knew Zoritch for more than 60 years. "Technique is important, but you have to feel what you do. Zoritch had everything."

Born June 6, 1917, in Moscow, Zoritch started his training in Lithuania under Pavel Petroff when he was 11.

"I went to train for the first time and [Petroff] . . . asked if I would be able to follow," Zoritch told the Arizona Daily Star in 2007. "I was so scared I just nodded yes.

"When we finished, people in the class had surrounded me, asked where I studied before and how long I had studied. All I did was look around and went along with what others were doing. I wouldn't say I was God's gift. But I was right for ballet."

Zoritch and several Ballet Russe contemporaries were honored in 2007 at a Los Angeles tribute. Two years earlier, the documentary “Ballets Russes” brought renewed attention to Zoritch and his contemporaries.

"He was a very charming man who still had a lot to tell the ballet world," said Natasha Middleton, artistic director of the Media City Ballet, who produced "The Men of the Ballet Russe" tribute in 2007 that also honored her father, Andrei Tremaine.

"Technique doesn't sell," Zoritch told The Times in 2007. "It's what you offer from the heart, and what made Ballet Russe so successful was that it was composed of half-starved ballet-craving dancers who gave everything from their inner souls."

Milada Mladova, who was with the Ballet Russe from 1939 to 1942 and later worked in movies, danced with Zoritch in "Night and Day" (1946).

"He had a perfect body for dancing, and he had very good technique," she said. "We were all in awe of him, but he was a very nice man."

Zoritch's other film credits include "Escape Me Never" (1947), "Look for the Silver Lining" (1949) and "Helen of Troy" (1956).

Zoritch taught at his studio in West Hollywood in the 1960s and in 1973 joined the faculty at the University of Arizona.

"He gave us careers, he gave us a life," said Leonard Crofoot, who with his brother, Ronnie, and sister, Gayle, took classes at Zoritch's studio from 1960 to 1967. They all have danced professionally. "He had a way of turning the head to the side that shows the muscles of the neck and you could see the line in such a graceful way. It took your breath away."

Middleton recalled Zoritch teaching a master class at her Burbank studio in 2007 from a wheelchair. "He was still able to move his hands . . . and go into depth about the dancers finishing their movements. He had a lot of magic in the way he spoke," she said. "He was very encouraging . . . and very, very opinionated."

And people have a few memories too:

When 19-year-old George Zoritch first leaped out onto a London stage in 1936 with the Ballets Russes, dancing the poet in Massine’s Jardin Public, a breathless critic declared, “At last the company has found its pure classical dancer.”

Zoritch had a barrel chest, perfect lines and a face so dazzling that one of his partners, Maria Tallchief, called him the “most handsome man I’ve seen in my life.” His bravura grands jetés, beautiful port de bras, and engaging personality made him stand out in an age of strong male dancers. Critic Walter Terry declared that Zoritch embodied the “real spirit of the rose” in Fokine’s Spectre de la Rose. He was “poetic” in Fokine’s Les Sylphides, another wrote; in what became his signature role, the Faun in Nijinsky’s L’Après-Midi d’un Faune, he danced “with exquisite grace.”

He danced with nearly all the reincarnations of Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes: Nijinska’s short lived Ballet Russe de Paris, Col. de Basil’s Ballets Russes, and Serge Denham’s Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. (He is featured in the Ballets Russes documentary; see www.balletsrussesmovie.com.) After working in Hollywood during World War II, he returned to Europe to dance again with Denham’s group and with the Grand Ballet du Marquis de Cuevas.

Now 91, the grizzle-haired Zoritch lives in Tucson. “Russian dancers dance from the soul,” he declares in English still tinged by his native Russian. “Dance should live. If it doesn’t come from the heart it is not dancing.” And by dance, he means ballet, “not modern,” he says with a wicked grin. “Anyone who’s not lying in bed can do Agnes de Mille.”

He was born Yuri Zoritch in Moscow in 1917, the year the Russian Revolution erupted. When his parents’ marriage broke up, his mother moved her two small boys to Kovna, Lithuania. After she took Yuri to see Coppélia, “I became intolerable, hopping around, menacing the furniture,” he remembers. So his mother hauled him to the ballet studio of Pavel Petroff, who had danced at the Maryinsky.

“I was lazy. I hated it. I didn’t want to dance. But in Europe mothers had the upper hand.” He pauses. “I owe everything to my mother.”

When Yuri was 13, the Zoritches moved to Paris, where he studied with Olga Preobrajenska, the luminary who taught Anna Pavlova among other greats. After just four years in her studio, at 17, he started dancing professionally, first with the Ida Rubinstein troupe in Paris, and then with the succession of post-Diaghilev troupes.

“I never saw Nijinksy or Pavlova,” he laments, but he danced for the great Russian choreographers who carried on their tradition: Michel Fokine, Bronislava Nijinksa, and Léonide Massine, who created 18 ballets on him. He calls Massine the “greatest choreographer I have ever known.”

He danced with all three of Balanchine’s “baby ballerinas” of the Ballets Russes, also trained by Preobrajenska: Tatiana Riabouchinska, Irina Baronova, and Tamara Toumanova. But his favorite partner was a Frenchwoman, Yvette Chauviré. “She was wonderful to dance with. She was such a great artist. She allowed you to have a ‘conversation’ with her.”

He put in years of grueling travel, to Asia, Australia, North and South America. On one Monte Carlo tour the troupe performed in 120 North American cities in six months, many of them one-night stands. “We traveled in sleeper cars—one for the dancers, one for the musicians, one for the stagehands.” But the tours introduced classical Russian dance to new audiences, he says with pride, and revitalized ballet around the world. “From Podunk to L.A. to New York and Winnipeg, the crowds would come. They’d be cheering.”

And people have yet more memories too:

Jory Hancock, the director of the UA School of Dance and interim dean of the College of Fine Arts, said life in the Ballet Russe was difficult and that Zoritch wanted more freedom to dance in different roles and to experience Broadway and film.

"The dance scene was more fluid in the U.S., and he was enticed by that," Hancock said about Zoritch.

He eventually moved to the United States and began work in in film and on Broadway.
Zoritch took up teaching after becoming well-known in America for his performance with Sergei Denham's Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo.

After running his own dance school in Los Angeles, he joined the faculty of UA in 1973, where he established a highly respected ballet program.

He taught varying levels of dance at the UA for 14 years.

Hancock said Zoritch was one of the most extraordinary dancers of his time.
"There was a period of three decades where he was on top of the world," Hancock said.

Jim Clouser, a visiting associate professor of dance at UA, said Zoritch was comparable to Mikhail Baryshnikov.

Zoritch retired from the UA in 1987. Hancock said that even after retiring, Zoritch still came to classes at the university.

"He was dressed how we wanted students to dress, in tights," Hancock said. "He had the most beautiful port de bras (movement of the arms)."

Thom Lewis, a student of Zoritch's at the UA, said he was the epitome of a classical ballet dancer.

According to Dance magazine, Zoritch worked with nearly every leading lady coming up in the ballet world from 1936 to 1962 and performed works by legendary choreographers, including George Balanchine and Marius Petipa.

Zoritch appeared in several films, including "Night and Day" (1946) and "Samson and Delilah" (1949).

Zoritch was known by some as harsh, but Lewis said people did not understand his sense of humor and his "old-school approach."

He said that Zoritch was honest and direct.

Kandis Meinel, another student of Zoritch's, knew Zoritch for 40 years and considered him to be a grandfather figure in her life.

She said he could be sarcastic in his criticism, but he really meant it as a way for students to improve.

Lewis remembered that if a dancer's feet were not turned out in a position called rear attitude arabesque, Zoritch would tell the dancer she looked like "a doggy at the fire hydrant."

Lewis said compliments from Zoritch "meant an awful lot because of his history."
"It's a shame he is gone, he was a lovely man," Lewis said.

I remember hearing the "doggy at the fire hydrant" a lot in Zoritch's class. I remember one of the first days in class, when a female student showed up to class in a bright, lemon-yellow leotard. No, no, no, no, no, no, no!!!!

When completely exasperated by the sorry, run-of-the-mill university dance students (sometimes a subject of some bitterness), Zoritch would compare the dance students to livestock. Now, in an old-school environment, that would be a shocking reference, a slap to the face, which should make the students pay attention better. A Russian dancer would straighten up. Regrettably, in an American university environment, such a comparison could backfire. I've learned over the years that American women are really not fond of being compared to livestock. No, not at all.

But that was George Zoritch for you. He said what he thought.

I remember the day he suddenly fell into uncharacteristic self-pity. He abruptly blamed Michel Fokine for ruining his knees with Cossack-style kazachok (Russian kick) dancing. Long-ago hurts still lived! Still, his usual disposition was sunny and humorous - as long as one continued to work hard!

Zoritch was also eager to employ the latest technological aids too. In 1982, the use of VHS tapes was still pretty new, but Zoritch was doing his best to use them to aid his choreographic efforts and incorporate them into his instruction whenever appropriate. Because he was older did not mean he was ready to stop learning.

We had a live piano player too (an elderly fellow who finally retired, surprisingly enough, in order to explore music generated by computer). When the students initially couldn't follow his tempo, Zoritch would halt the exercise, and, tongue-in-cheek, blame the piano player for choosing the wrong tempo. The piano player graciously accepted the blame, then start again (of course, at the same blistering tempo).

I remember the day Zoritch showed up to class limping, with black eyes and his arm in a sling. Apparently in an over-confident moment, he slipped and fell from the roof of his house. Still, he could teach class, and he did. So, a few months later, when I tripped over a difficult-to-see wire while jogging, I showed up to class anyway, despite the pain, in order to observe class. Because attendance is important, especially in dance.

And that was another lesson I learned the hard way too. My first semester, I got frustrated and boycotted his class for the rest of the semester. Nevertheless, Zoritch did not fail me, but rather gave me a "D" (which was the only "D" I ever got in my academic classwork). Because I HAD been there for awhile, Zoritch gave me credit. Because attendance is important, especially in dance.

A great dancer, and a great inspiration to everyone!