Nancy Lassalle (1927-2021), philanthropist of the dance, and much more

Essays on DanceFrederick AshtonGeorge Balanchine Merce CunninghamWomen’s History in Dance

Apr 27

1, 2, 3, 4. The cultural enterprises of George Balanchine and Lincoln Kirstein have just lost one of their most devoted, intelligent, and generous patrons: Nancy Lassalle (1). Herself a student at the School of American Ballet in the early 1940s, she became a member of its original board; after decades of service and donations, she became a Board Member Emerita. When New York City Ballet first had a board, she was likewise one of its original board members. The dance world has quite a number of generous donors, but in Nancy it had one who combined acute intelligence with a singular devotion to the two visionaries whose work she had discovered in her own adolescence: Balanchine and Kirstein. Her generosity to the School, honoured more than once over the years, was most recently acknowledged in the name given in 2019 to its Lassalle Cultural Program (2).

This devotion led her to become president of Ballet Society (a longterm Kirstein enterprise) and board member of the Eakins Press (one of the most distinguished cultural presses devoted to matters artistic), both for many years. Herself the daughter of the photographer and philanthropist Dorothy Norman, she, too, took photographs: her views of Balanchine teaching class and demonstrating steps (3) made a sensation when published in 2016. She cared passionately about many aspects of the visual arts; Henri Cartier-Bresson was a close friend of hers.

She was also a happy and renowned hostess, not only to New York City Ballet but to the Royal Ballet. I have often reproduced before the photo combining five of the greatest legends of twentieth-century dance - Frederick Ashton, Suzanne Farrell, George Balanchine, Margot Fonteyn, Rudolf Nureyev, in spring 1965 - but not all remember that this picture (4) was taken at Nancy’s apartment. People mattered to her: critics among them. I was introduced to her in 1988 by the critic Clement Crisp, with whom she conversed ardently after a Brighton event honouring Les Ballets 1933. When I took the “New York Times” job in 2007 and we met again after many years, she immediately asked after the music critic Andrew Porter, who had been a New Yorker (at “The New Yorker”) in the years 1972-1992. She was always warm and engaged, turning up to watch Balanchine Foundation coaching sessions even in her wheelchair days. After I had left the “New York Times”, she expressed a wish to know me better; I last saw her in late 2019 on a visit to her apartment.

There was much about her I did not know in her lifetime. Peter Kayafas, director of the Eakins Press, advises me that “She was also a major donor to the Center for Khmer Studies (CKS) and helped fund its library in Cambodia (which she was able to visit upon its completion). Nancy was one of the editors of Lincoln Kirstein: A First Bibliography, and was nearly single-handedly responsible for the Kirstein centenary celebration (2007) that took place at numerous institutions over the course of a year.... She spent the summers of most of her life in Woods Hole, MA, where she was a beloved part of the community, supporter of the local local library, and sponsor of numerous cultural programs.”

I feel I had only begun to know her. Many New Yorkers knew her longer and better than I. But I pass on one revealing anecdote of her generosity. When the critic Robert Greskovic and I were engaged in research into Balanchine‘s “Serenade” for the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts in 2015-2016, it emerged (I forget how) that Nancy possessed one of the artist Jean Lurçat’s 1935 designs for its costume. (Various companies danced “Serenade” in Lurçat costumes up to at least 1946, though other productions were also given in that period.) Robert went to see Nancy, so that he might photograph the Lurcat design on behalf of our forthcoming Library presentation. Quite casually, she gave him the design; he understood that she was giving it to the Library, which has it now. There will be dozens who now have comparable memories to tell of Nancy Lassalle.

Tuesday 27 April

Postscript. As a further memento of the late Nancy Lassalle, here are the two 1935 designs (5; 6) by Jean Lurçat for George Balanchine’s “Serenade”. (My thanks for these photographs to Robert Greskovic.) Nancy gave one of them to the School of American Ballet; in 2016, she gave the other - via Robert - to the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

The world premiere of “Serenade” had been given in June 1934 by the School, wearing makeshift costumes that showed a lot of leg. In 1935, after various other unsuccessful ideas, Balanchine and Kirstein commissioned designs from the French artist Jean Lurçat (1882-1966), who worked extensively in the United States in 1933-1939. (The Lurçat literature says Lurçat also designed Balanchine’s ballet “Jardin Publique” at that time, but that was a ballet by Leonide Massine.)

“Serenade” in the 1930s had three movements, not four. (The Russian Dance, Tema Russo, was added in 1940.) The three movements were danced as separate scenes without continuity (think “Tschaikovsky Suite no 3”). The second movement, the Waltz, began quite differently from the way it does now. These different Lurçat designs, russet and blue, suggest that either the women may have changed costumes for each movement or that (as in the Paris Opéra 1947 production) a variety of costumes may have been used in each scene. (In those days, for example, the “Dark Angel” dancer did not appear onstage before the final movement.)

Various versions of the Lurçat costumes were used in various “Serenade” revivals until at least 1947, even when the Russian Dance was added and the four movements were run together with continuity. Black-and-white silent film of the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo from 1940 and 1944 shows that the 1944 costumes differed from the 1940 ones (the 1944 ones included mini-cloaks). Balanchine was always tinkering: the 1944 film clips, from successive Chicago performances, show that he asked the lead two women of the Elegy, Ruthanna Boris and Mary Ellen Moylan, to loosen their hair for the Elegy (not the “Russian” dancer, however) at the first performance - he can be seen in the wings - but their hair was somewhat frizzy, with the result that, at the next performance, their hair stayed up. The dancer Joy Williams Brown, who had been in the School with Nancy Lassalle and who then danced in the Monte Carlo “Serenade” corps in 1946 and 1947, recalls that only blue was worn.

It was characteristic of Nancy Lassalle, having collected these historic rarities, then to give them away to worthy homes: the School and the Library, both dear to her heart. Robert Greskovic, preparing in 2016 for our “Serenade” presentation at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts Bruno Walter Auditorium, had a wonderful time visiting her and photographing one of these, when she simply said “Take it!” On behalf of the Library, he took it (and gave it to the Dance Division). We were so happy to have her blessing and thus to add to the wealth of knowledge we assembled on “Serenade”.

Saturday 1 May