Lillian Moore

Lillian Moore (September 20, 1911 – July 28, 1967) was an American dancer, choreographer, teacher, and dance historian born in Chase City, Virginia. Her training took place at the Peabody Conservatory, the Metropolitan Opera Ballet School, and the School of American Ballet.

Moore's performing career was extensive and spanned multiple decades and institutions. She appeared on Broadway in 1928 in Patience. That same year she joined the Metropolitan Opera, where she performed as both a corps de ballet member and a soloist, a tenure that continued through 1942. From 1935 to 1938 she danced with the American Ballet, and between 1940 and 1946 she served the Cincinnati Summer Opera as a dancer, choreographer, and ballet master. She also toured Europe and the Pacific, though sources differ on the precise timing of those tours in relation to World War II. In the 1950s she performed at Jacob's Pillow in the Berkshires.

Alongside her performing work, Moore built a career as an educator, teaching dance at the High School of Performing Arts and the Joffrey during the 1950s and 1960s.

Moore's contributions as a scholar and writer were equally significant. She served as acting curator of the New York Public Library's dance collection, and her research on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century dance is held in the Jerome Robbins Dance Division of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. She contributed articles to publications including Dance Index and Dance Perspectives. Her book Artists of the Dance was published by Thomas Y. Crowell Co. in 1938, and a posthumous anthology of her essays, Echoes of American Ballet, was issued by Dance Horizons in 1976. Moore died on July 28, 1967, in New York City.