Board Member

Born in New York City, Chazin-Bennahum was Principal Soloist with the Metropolitan Opera Ballet Company when Antony Tudor was Artistic Director. She danced with Robert Joffrey at Jacob’s Pillow and other theaters, and with Agnes de Mille in a Broadway show, with Alexandra Danilova and Alicia Markova, as well as with John Butler and Thomas Andrew with the Santa Fe Opera. She also performed with Pearl Lang’s Modern Dance Company. She received her Ph.D. in Romance Languages from the University of New Mexico where she taught ballet and dance history for more than thirty years. She is now Distinguished Professor Emerita. Chazin-Bennahum has published numerous articles on ballet, a number of books including Dance in the Shadow of the Guillotine, A Study of Ballet during the French Revolution; The Ballets of Antony Tudor: Studies in Psyche and Satire which won the De La Torre Bueno Prize for the best book on Dance in 1995; The Lure of Perfection: A Study of Fashion and Ballet from 1780 to 1830; she also edited The Living Dance: An Anthology of Essays on Movement and Culture and Teaching Dance Studies. Recently she published the story of René Blum and The Ballets Russes: In Search of a Lost Life and a biography of a close friend, Malka Sutin entitled, Malka’s Journey: From the Holocaust to a Life Beyond. She has served as President of the Society of Dance History Scholars and is now Co-President of the University of New Mexico’s Friends of Dance. She received a Life Time Achievement Award from CORPS DE BALLET INTERNATIONAL in 2011 and in 2016 The Distinction in Dance Award from The Society of Dance History Scholars. She has been on the Board of the NMBC since 2012.

Place of Birth

New York