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George Zoritch, Star in Ballet Russe Companies, Is Dead at 92

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Matthew Kruk

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Nov 6, 2009, 1:49:34 AM11/6/09
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November 6, 2009
George Zoritch, Star in Ballet Russe Companies, Is Dead at 92
By ANNA KISSELGOFF

George Zoritch, an international star in the rival Ballet Russe
companies who stood out for his matinee-idol looks and bold stage
presence and who later became one of American ballet's respected
teachers, died on Sunday in Tucson, where he lived. He was 92.

His death was confirmed by a friend, the choreologist Richard Holden,
who said Mr. Zoritch had been hospitalized after a fall at home.

The acclaimed 2005 documentary "Ballets Russes" recently offered
filmgoers here and abroad a taste of Mr. Zoritch's vivid personality. At
one point in the film he and the ballerina Nathalie Krassovska, both in
their 80s, relived their past partnership in a segment from "Giselle,"
punctuating their mime with spicy comments.

In his memoir, "Ballet Mystique" (2000), Mr. Zoritch readily recognized
that he was not a bravura technician. He felt that artistry was more
important than technique for dancers like him, who joined the Russian
īŋŊmigrīŋŊ troupes that succeeded Serge Diaghilev's Ballets Russes in the
1930s. Often they used variations on that company's name.

"What made the Ballet Russe so successful was that it was composed of
half-starved ballet-craving dancers who gave everything from their inner
souls," he told The Los Angeles Times in 2007.

Mr. Zoritch opened a ballet school in West Hollywood in 1964, two years
after the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, in which he was the mainstay, was
dissolved. He taught at the University of Arizona in Tucson from 1973 to
1987 and more recently served on the jury at the Perm ballet
competitions in Russia.

Born in Moscow on June 6, 1917, he moved after the Russian revolution
with his mother and brother to Kovno, Lithuania, where he first studied
ballet. Mr. Zoritch, who leaves no immediate survivors, then settled in
Paris at 14 and studied with the Maryinsky ballerina Olga Preobrajenska,
who also trained the "baby ballerinas" promoted by George Balanchine.

Mr. Zoritch's career took a peripatetic path through the companies led
by other Russian īŋŊmigrīŋŊs. After dancing with Ida Rubinstein's troupe in
1933, he performed with the Russian Classical Ballet, organized by Anna
Pavlova's widower, Victor DandrīŋŊ, then joined Bronislava Nijinska's
Ballets Russes de Paris in 1935.

His declared mentor was the choreographer LīŋŊonide Massine. Mr. Zoritch
starred in Massine's works with both Col. W. de Basil's Ballets Russes,
which he joined in 1936, and the rival Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo,
which he joined in 1938. He remained with that troupe until 1962, one of
its last veterans. He had also been a principal in the 1940s and 1950s
with the Grand Ballet du Marquis de Cuevas. Along the way he appeared in
Broadway musicals and a few Hollywood films, like "Samson and Delilah"
(1949).

With his good looks, elegant line and charismatic projection in title
roles in "Afternoon of a Faun" and "Le Spectre de la Rose," he never
went unnoticed. In a typical comment in the 1950s, the French critic
IrīŋŊne Lidova compared him to the "Greek youths sculpted by Praxiteles."

Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company


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