Maggie Black, Renowned Dance Teacher, Dies in Her East Hampton Home

Maggie Black, a renowned ballet and modern dance teacher, died in her East Hampton home of congestive heart failure on May 11. She was 85.

Black was born in Rhode Island in 1930 and moved to New York City in order to pursue a profession dance career at 16 years old, according to a 2012 report in Dance Teacher Magazine.

She made her debut at the Roxy Theatre, and later moved to Ohio to perform with the Cleveland Civic Ballet, according to the report.

The following year she moved to London to study with Audrey de Vos, a progressive ballet teacher who “taught a barre in which each exercise was repeated twice, and asymmetries of the body, like scoliosis, were addressed,” according to Dance Teacher Magazine.

Black then worked at both the Ballet Rambert and London Theatre Ballet, before returning to the U.S. in 1953 to perform with Ballet Theatre, and a year later with Ballet Alicia Alonso in Cuba, according to the report.

She then worked with Anthony Tudor for seven years, dancing under him at the Metropolitan Opera Ballet before becoming his teaching assistant at The Juilliard School, according to the report.

Black taught star dancers and choreographers from the American Ballet Theater, New York City Ballet, the Joffrey, Dance Company and the Merce Cunningham Dance Company from the 1960’s until her retirement in 1995, according to a report in The New York Times.

She of these students include: Twyla Tharp, Trisha Brown, Eliot Feld, William Forsythe, Gelsey Kirkland, Tina LeBlanc, Lar Lubovitch, Natalia Makarova, Kevin McKenzie, Ohad Naharin, Lawrence Rhodes and Martine Van Hamel, according to the report.

Black was one of the “most sought-after” ballet teachers in the nation alongside David Howard, soloist with the Royal Ballet in Britain who died in 2013, according to the report.

She opened a studio in the Upper West Side of Manhattan, which only attracted about a dozen people in the beginning, but a few years later held close to 65 dancers, according to Dance Teacher Magazine.

“Black was consistent; she was always there,” former American Ballet Theatre principal Martine van Hamel told Dance Teacher Magazine. “There was no real ego that you had to deal with—you just went there to work. But you had to adhere to the integrity of her approach.”

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