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Herbert Ross dead


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I just read on AOL news that Herbert Ross died today. He was 74. I did not know him well, but worked with him during one rehearsal period during my ABT years. I was in his ballet "Capriccios", in a role which I really liked called the "burning girl". It was an episodic ballet, based on the paintings of Goya, and one of the main sections was danced by Johnny Kriza and Ruth Ann Koeson. It was a pas de deux with the female as a dead body. Very interesting work. For those of you too young to remember Mr. Ross, he was a well known Broadway and film director. You might know him as the director of "The Turning Point". He was married for many years to Nora Kaye, a famous dancer with ABT back in the 40's and 50's. She died in the late 80's and he later married Lee Radziwell, sister of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. They were later divorced.

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I just read on AOL news that Herbert Ross died today. He was 74. I did not know him well, but worked with him during one rehearsal period during my ABT years. I was in his ballet "Capriccios", in a role which I really liked called the "burning girl". It was an episodic ballet, based on the paintings of Goya, and one of the main sections was danced by Johnny Kriza and Ruth Ann Koeson. It was a pas de deux with the female as a dead body. Very interesting work. For those of you too young to remember Mr. Ross, he was a well known Broadway and film director. You might know him as the director of "The Turning Point". He was married for many years to Nora Kaye, a famous dancer with ABT back in the 40's and 50's. She died in the late 80's and he later married Lee Radziwell, sister of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. They were later divorced.

Oddly enough, I remember "Capriccios". It was shortly after I arrived in New York as a 16 yr. old ballet hopeful. Somehow I scraped together, I think $3.00 for a ticket. It was at the Center Theater in Rockefeller Center, 1950? now long, long gone. It was my first seeing of Ballet Theater. I must have seen you dance. I seem to remember girls holding chairs over their heads. Ring a bell? I remember also on program a Tudor ballet but forgot the title. Took place on a roof it seems, a tenement roof on a hot summer night. I asked Tudor about it many years later when I was with ABT but he typically just grunted.

Richka

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Ross's LOS CAPRICIOS was shown later on, in the 1970s? w/ ABT in NYC, at BAM if mem. as was THE MAIDS, w/ E.Feld's American Ballet Co., also at BAM.

i wonder if the Tudor at the Center Theater could have been NIMBUS, a work about which i know nothing.

herewith the NYPL cat. entry:

Nimbus: Chor: Antony Tudor; mus: Louis Gruenberg (Concerto for violin and orch.); scen: Oliver Smith; cos: Saul Bolasni. First perf: New York, Center Theatre, May 3, 1950, Ballet Theatre.

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