Judith Chazin

Judith Chazin-Bennahum, born Judith Helen Chazin on April 8, 1937, in New York City, is a ballet dancer, choreographer, dance historian, writer, and educator who holds the title of Distinguished Professor Emerita of Dance at the University of New Mexico.

Chazin grew up in Jamaica, Queens, where her father, Maurice Chazin, chaired the Department of Romance Languages at Queens College, and her mother, Mary (Berry) Chazin, had worked as a high school English teacher. She began studying tap and ballet at age eight with a local teacher, and at ten persuaded her mother to enroll her in classes at the Fokine Ballet School, housed in the upper-floor studios of Carnegie Hall. There she trained with Frank Lester and came to the attention of Vitale Fokine, son of Michel Fokine and Vera Fokina. Both Lester and Fokine recommended she audition for the High School of Performing Arts, which she entered at age twelve. Her teachers there included Lucas Hoving, Bella Malinka, Doris Rudko, and Benjamin Harkarvy, with Robert Joffrey serving as her principal ballet instructor. Dance historian Selma Jeanne Cohen taught her dance history. In July 1953, at sixteen, she traveled to the Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival in Becket, Massachusetts, to perform with the Robert Joffrey Ballet Company in his works Scaramouche and Umpateedle.

At her father's insistence, Chazin pursued higher education rather than an immediate dance career, receiving a full scholarship to Brandeis University near Boston, where she majored in theater arts with an emphasis on dance. She graduated magna cum laude with a bachelor of arts degree in 1958 and promptly turned her attention to professional performance. Shortly after graduation, she auditioned for choreographer Agnes de Mille and was engaged for the dancing ensemble of Goldilocks, a Broadway musical starring Don Ameche, Elaine Stritch, and Russell Nype. Rehearsals began in July 1958, and the production opened on October 11 of that year. Through February 1959, Chazin performed eight shows per week, dancing in seven numbers choreographed by de Mille to music by Leroy Anderson.

Following her Broadway run, Chazin returned to Jacob's Pillow the next summer as a member of the Pearl Lang Dance Theater, appearing in Lang's Persephone alongside Dirk Sanders as Hermes and Deborah Jowitt as Demeter, with Lang herself in the title role. She had continued taking ballet classes from Robert Joffrey during and after her Broadway engagement, hoping to join his company. Through one of those classes she met Nancy King, a member of the Metropolitan Opera Ballet Company, who informed her of auditions at the opera house. Chazin auditioned in the summer of 1959 and was hired into the corps de ballet.

Over the following years she danced in numerous productions on the Metropolitan stage and studied at the Met's ballet school under Antony Tudor, who headed the school faculty, as well as Alfredo Corvino, the company's ballet master, and Margaret Craske, both of whom specialized in the Cecchetti method. Chazin was eventually appointed principal soloist and given featured roles in many productions. She danced Tudor's choreography for Gluck's Alceste, Monteverdi's Orfeo, and Wagner's Tannhäuser, and appeared in solo roles such as the ballet in Cilea's Adriana Lecouvreur, choreographed by Alexandra Danilova. Her partners at the Met included Thomas Andrew, Donald Mahler, Howard Sayette, Ron Sequoio, and Vincent Warren.

During summers when the Metropolitan Opera was not in season, Chazin danced at the Santa Fe Opera in New Mexico, where she encountered Vera Zorina, who encouraged her to audition for George Balanchine of New York City Ballet. Balanchine invited her to join his company after she danced for him in 1961. That same fall, following the erection of the Berlin Wall, she traveled to Europe with the Santa Fe Opera company and performed in Berlin and Belgrade. In the summer of 1962 she appeared again at Jacob's Pillow, this time with Thomas Andrew and Company, dancing in his works Invitations and Images in Five alongside guest artists Nathalie Krassovska and Igor Youskevitch. Foot problems that had begun during her time with Balanchine's company worsened upon her return that fall, preventing her from joining New York City Ballet's historic tour of Russia in October 1962. She returned to the Met ballet company, where the choreographic demands on pointe work were less severe. In 1963 she relocated briefly to Geneva, Switzerland, to be near her fiancé, David Bennahum, a medical student there, and during that period studied for a time with Valodia Skouratoff, a former Ballets Russes dancer. She returned to the United States as his wife, adopting the hyphenated surname Chazin-Bennahum.

Back in New York, Chazin-Bennahum pursued an interest in French literature at Columbia University before the couple relocated to New Mexico, where her husband completed his medical training. At the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque she earned a master's degree in French literature in 1971 and a doctoral degree in Romance languages in 1981. Her mentor Selma Jeanne Cohen connected her with French dance historian Marie-Françoise Christout, who directed her attention to ballet during the French Revolution as a dissertation subject. Her Ph.D. dissertation, "Livrets of Ballet and Pantomime in Paris during the French Revolution," became the foundation of her first book, Dance in the Shadow of the Guillotine, published in 1988.

Her academic career at the University of New Mexico began when a colleague heading the Department of Theatre and Dance invited her to teach ballet technique, and she gradually expanded her responsibilities to include dance history and a range of seminars. She developed courses in ballet repertoire, dance criticism, dance appreciation, performance theory, and introduction to graduate studies, and created a four-level sequence in dance history covering contemporary dance, feminism, postmodern theory, and African-American dance in performance. She also taught French Baroque dance forms from the period 1650 to 1800. Chazin-Bennahum served as head of the dance program in 1987–1988 and again in 1991–1993, was promoted to full professor of theater and dance in 1993, and was appointed associate dean of the College of Fine Arts in 1997, serving on the Undergraduate Curriculum Committee and the Academic Freedom and Tenure Committee. In 2002 she was appointed chair of the Department of Theatre and Dance. She ultimately attained the title of Distinguished Professor Emerita of Dance.