Hugh Laing

Hugh Laing, born Hugh Morris Alleyne Skinner on June 6, 1911, in Barbados in the British West Indies, was a ballet dancer whose Broadway appearances spanned from 1941 to 1946. Of English and Irish descent, he was the son of Donald M. and Beatrice A. Skinner. In 1931 he relocated to London with the intention of studying art, but his interests shifted toward ballet after he began taking classes with Marie Rambert, Margaret Craske, and Olga Preobrajenska.

Laing joined Rambert's Ballet Club in 1933, where he first encountered choreographer Antony Tudor. The two became both collaborators and lovers, a partnership that would define much of Laing's career. For the Ballet Club, Tudor created roles for him in The Planets, The Descent of Hebe, Jardin aux Lilas, and Dark Elegies. Though Laing was not regarded as a technically exceptional dancer, his capacity for characterization and theatrical timing earned widespread admiration, and Tudor's choreography was widely seen as having been shaped around those particular strengths. In 1938, Laing joined Tudor's short-lived London Ballet, performing in Gala Performance and Judgment of Paris.

In 1939, Laing accompanied Tudor to New York to take part in the inaugural season of Ballet Theater, the company later known as American Ballet Theatre. There, Tudor choreographed several of the roles for which Laing became best known: the corrupt Young Man from the House Opposite in Pillar of Fire in 1942, Romeo in Romeo and Juliet in 1943, a sophisticated gentleman in Dim Lustre that same year, and a murderer in Undertow in 1945. He also earned recognition for his portrayals of the gypsy lover in Léonide Massine's Aleko, a neurotic young man in Jerome Robbins' Facsimile, Albrecht in Giselle, and the title role of Petrushka.

Alongside his work with Ballet Theater, Laing appeared on Broadway in the musicals Fancy Free and The Day Before Spring, as well as in Gizelle, with his Broadway activity concentrated between 1941 and 1946. He married American ballerina Diana Adams in 1947; the couple frequently performed together and in 1949 premiered Tudor's work The Dear Departed at the Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival. Their marriage ended in 1953.

From 1950 to 1952, Laing danced with the New York City Ballet, appearing in a revival of Jardin aux Lilas and in Tudor's new works The Lady of the Camellias in 1951, with Adams, and La Gloire in 1952. During this period he also received praise for his performances in the title role of George Balanchine's Prodigal Son and in Robbins's Age of Anxiety. He subsequently made guest appearances with Ballet Theater before transitioning to a career as a commercial photographer in New York, while continuing to assist Tudor with restagings of his ballets. In 1954, Laing appeared on screen as the villain Harry Beaton in the film version of Brigadoon. He also performed on the BBC production The Mercury Ballet.

Laing died of cancer on May 10, 1988, at St. Luke's Hospital in New York City at the age of 76. His papers, spanning 1911 to 1988, are held jointly with those of Antony Tudor in the Jerome Robbins Dance Division of the New York Public Library.