Beatrice Collenette

Beatrice Collenette (1899–2001) was a Guernsey-born dancer, dance educator, and the founder of the Collenette School of Dancing in Pasadena, California. A protégée of Anna Pavlova, she appeared on Broadway in the early 1920s before establishing a teaching legacy in Southern California that included Twyla Tharp among her students.

Collenette was born on the Channel Islands and relocated to London after her father, physician Frank de Beauchamp Collenette, became too ill to continue his medical practice. In London she studied with Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova at Ivy House and performed with Pavlova's company. Pavlova regarded the young dancer with something close to maternal affection, though she took issue with Collenette's tendency to prioritize technical practice over expressiveness. Collenette subsequently studied with Enrico Cecchetti and Ivan Clustine as well.

Following World War I, theatrical manager Henry Wilson Savage brought Collenette to the United States. She made two Broadway appearances, both in musicals: Zelda Sears's Lady Billy, which ran from 1920 to 1921, and Jack and Jill in 1923. In 1926 she founded the Collenette School of Dancing in Pasadena, California. A decade later, in 1936, she was selected to teach San Francisco Ballet classes during Adolph Bolm's absence. Her ballet company performed primarily at the Pasadena Community Playhouse while also undertaking regional and national tours. By 1931 her public profile extended to commercial endorsements, including regional newspaper advertisements for Welch's Grape Juice. Among the students she taught in the 1950s was Twyla Tharp, who would go on to become a prominent dancer and choreographer.

Collenette married journalist Joseph Kenyon Ivie and settled in California, where the couple had a daughter, Joan Collenette Damon. Joan followed her mother into dance education and led the Collenette School of Dancing for forty years before retiring in 2002. Collenette celebrated her hundredth birthday with family and former students in San Juan Capistrano in 1999 and died in 2001 at the age of 102. As of December 2017, the Collenette school continued to operate in San Marino, California.