OBITUARIES - Brief Article - Obituary

Dance Magazine, Sept, 1999

Helen Priest Rogers, 85, cofounder of the Dance Notation Bureau and a pioneer in dance film archiving, died March 2, 1999, in West Brattleboro, Vermont.

In the 1930s Helen Priest danced in the Martha Graham Company. At Graham's suggestion, she went to Germany to study dance notation with Rudolf Laban, and on her return cofounded the Dance Notation Bureau with Ann Hutchinson (Guest), Janey Price (Goeb), and Eve Gentry (Henrietta Greenwood). Rogers remained active in the world of dance notation throughout her life.

Rogers's interest in dance documentation led her in the 1950s and 1960s to film dance at the Connecticut College summer dance festival, now the American Dance Festival. At the time of her death she was working on a National Endowment for the Arts-funded project editing, titling, and copying some of these films, which featured lesser-known works of Merce Cunningham, Doris Humphrey, Jose Limon, Paul Taylor, and Anna Sokolow, among others. She directed the dance program at Mount Holyoke College from 1953 to 1975. Muriel Topaz

Baroness Batsheva de Rothschild, 84, died April 20, 1999, at her home in Tel Aviv following a long illness. At one time, one could scarcely be acquainted with Martha Graham without knowing "her Baroness," known universally as Bethsabee.

She was born in London, September 23, 1914, but came from the French branch of the great banking, family, being the daughter of Baron Edouard de Rothschild. Bethsabee was educated in Paris, studying biology at the Sorbonne. On the outbreak of World War II, she left France with her parents and came to New York, where she did further studies in chemistry and biology at Columbia University. But she soon joined the Free French and then found herself in London as a member of the French army. She landed on Normandy Beach with the French forces and moved with them to Paris, where she served as a liaison between the French and United States forces.

Returning to New York after the war, she became interested in dance and enrolled at the Graham school, becoming a firm friend of Graham and a staunch patron of her company. She assisted Graham in buying her old school building, largely through her newly established foundation, the Batsheva de Rothschild Foundation for Arts and Sciences.

She first went to Israel in 1951, returning in 1956 on a trip on which she brought Graham. Bethsabee settled in Israel permanently in 1962, and soon had a profound effect upon the country's cultural life. In 1964, with Graham's help, she established Israel's Batsheva Dance Company, a company and school firmly based on Graham lines, which soon achieved an international reputation.

In 1967 Bethsabee began a friendship, lasting more than thirty years, with a South African-born classical dancer, Jeannette Ordman, who had gone to Israel from London in 1965. Together they formed a school, and, in 1968, the Bat-Dor Dance Company, which eventually became the Batsheva troupe's main competitor.

This situation only worsened in 1971 when Bethsabee funded the specially built Tel Aviv Bat-Dor Dance Center, and finally broke down when she withdrew all her financial support from the Batsheva company in 1974. Bethsabee then devoted herself full time to being the producer of Bat-Dor, and in July 1997, on the occasion of that company's thirtieth anniversary, she was honored at a special gala performance held at the new Tel Aviv Opera House. Clive Barnes

Flower Hujer, 92, modern dancer and choreographer, died at her home in New York City on May 1, 1999.

She received her early training in ballet with Theodore Kosloff in California and performed on the West Coast in ballet and film. In the early 1940s she relocated to New York, dancing in operettas as well as Broadway musicals, in which she also toured the United States. She formed the Flower Hujer Dance Theater in 1949, designing many of the company's costumes in addition to choreographing. The company performed for more than four decades in small theater spaces and churches around Manhattan. Hujer herself continued to appear onstage until as recently as 1990. Doris Perlman

Kirsten Ralov, 77, a major Danish ballerina and ballet master, died of throat cancer in Copenhagen on May 30, 1999.

Born Kirsten Gnatt in Baden, Austria, she was the sister of the late Poul Gnatt, also an important dancer and choreographer. She was one of the last dancers to be completely formed by the old Bournonville school and was a solo dancer of the Royal Danish Ballet from the 1940s to the early 1960s. She excelled in such roles as Princess Aurora (the company's first) and Myrtha. She began staging Bournonville ballets for the company in the late 1970s and was assistant ballet master under Henning Kronstam. She taught the Bournonville and mime classes at the company school for many years and, together with Niels Bjorn Larsen, staged the two-act version of Konservatoriet in 1995. Her first husband was First Solo Dancer Borge Ralov, and her second was noted dancer and mime Fredbjorn Bjornsson, who died in 1993. Doris Perlman