Lucia Hosmer Chase (24 March 1897 – 9 January 1986) was an American dancer, actress, ballet director and also the co-founder of the American Ballet Theatre.

Life and career

Chase was born in

Waterbury Waterbury is a city in the U.S. state of Connecticut on the Naugatuck River, southwest of Hartford and northeast of New York City. Waterbury is the second-largest city in New Haven County, Connecticut. According to the 2020 US Census, in 202 ...

Connecticut Connecticut () is the southernmost state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, New York to the west, and Long Island Sound to the south. Its capita ...

, the daughter of Elizabeth Hosmer (Kellogg) and Irving Hall Chase. She attended St. Margaret's School and later Bryn Mawr College. After deciding to focus on theater, she studied

drama Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance: a play, opera, mime, ballet, etc., performed in a theatre, or on radio or television.Elam (1980, 98). Considered as a genre of poetry in general, the dramatic mode has b ...

at New York's Theater Guild School where she also took

ballet Ballet () is a type of performance dance that originated during the Italian Renaissance in the fifteenth century and later developed into a concert dance form in France and Russia. It has since become a widespread and highly technical form of ...

lessons. Though her first love was the

theatre Theatre or theater is a collaborative form of performing art that uses live performers, usually actors or actresses, to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place, often a stage. The perform ...

, after she decided that dance was to be her life, she studied seriously with Mikhail Mordkin,

Michel Fokine Michael Fokine, ''Mikhail Mikhaylovich Fokin'', group=lower-alpha ( – 22 August 1942) was a groundbreaking Imperial Russian choreographer and dancer. Career Early years Fokine was born in Saint Petersburg to a prosperous merchant an ...

Antony Tudor Antony Tudor (born William Cook; 4 April 1908 – 19 April 1987) was an English ballet choreographer, teacher and dancer. He founded the London Ballet, and later the Philadelphia Ballet Guild in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S., in the mid-195 ...

, Anatole Vilzak, and

Bronislava Nijinska Bronislava Nijinska (; pl, Bronisława Niżyńska ; russian: Бронисла́ва Фоми́нична Нижи́нская, Bronisláva Fomínična Nižínskaja; be, Браніслава Ніжынская, Branislava Nižynskaja; – Febr ...

. She performed with the Mordkin Ballet from 1937 to 1939, where she danced the title roles in '' The Sleeping Beauty'' and '' Giselle''. In 1940 she and Richard Pleasant founded Ballet Theatre (later American Ballet Theatre), with Lucia Chase as principal dancer (and prime financial backer), although she concentrated on the more dramatic and comedic roles. She created the Eldest Sister in Tudor's '' Pillar of Fire'' (1942) and the Greedy One in Agnes de Mille's ''Three Virgins and a Devil'' (1941). In 1945 she and Oliver Smith jointly took over direction of American Ballet Theatre. She retired from the stage in 1960, and retired as company director in 1980, when she was succeeded by Mikhail Baryshnikov. During the course of forty years she devoted her energy and a large part of her personal fortune to ensure the company's survival. She brought Tudor and Baryshnikov to American Ballet Theatre and encouraged US choreographers such as

Jerome Robbins Jerome Robbins (born Jerome Wilson Rabinowitz; October 11, 1918 – July 29, 1998) was an American dancer, choreographer, film director, theatre director and producer who worked in classical ballet, on stage, film, and television. Among his nu ...

Glen Tetley Glen Tetley (February 3, 1926 – January 26, 2007) was an American ballet and modern dancer as well as a choreographer who mixed ballet and modern dance to create a new way of looking at dance, and is best known for his piece ''Pierrot Lunaire ...

and

Twyla Tharp Twyla Tharp (; born July 1, 1941) is an American dancer, choreographer, and author who lives and works in New York City. In 1966 she formed the company Twyla Tharp Dance. Her work often uses classical music, jazz, and contemporary pop music. Fr ...

. She was awarded the US

Presidential Medal of Freedom The Presidential Medal of Freedom is the highest civilian award of the United States, along with the Congressional Gold Medal. It is an award bestowed by the president of the United States to recognize people who have made "an especially merit ...

in 1980. Chase was married to Thomas Ewing, with whom she had two sons. She died in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

. Chase was inducted into the National Museum of Dance's Mr. & Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney Hall of Fame in 1988. In 2009, the book, ''Bravura!: Lucia Chase and the American Ballet Theatre'', written by her son Alex C. Ewing, was released.

Filmography

References

External links

*
News
* ttps://web.archive.org/web/20071011093648/http://jimmycarterlibrary.org/documents/jec/medal.phtml Medal of Freedom Awards by President Carter 1977-1981br>American Ballet TheatreItalian short biographyGoogle Books
{{DEFAULTSORT:Chase, Lucia 1897 births 1986 deaths American ballerinas American Ballet Theatre dancers American theatre directors Women theatre directors American musical theatre directors Actors from Waterbury, Connecticut Actresses from Connecticut American film actresses 20th-century American actresses Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients 20th-century American ballet dancers