Bessie Schonberg: 1906-1997.

The American modern dance community has yet to learn about life without Bessie Schonberg. She has always been a part of it, since the movement's earliest days at Bennington College, and she remained at its center until her death on May 14 at the age of ninety. In a career spanning some sixty-five years, she served as teacher, mentor, and friend to generations of such artists as Lucinda Childs, Elizabeth Keen, Meredith Monk, and Carolyn Adams.

Legions of dancers have called her by her first name, long ago popularized as the nickname for the New York Dance and Performance Awards. Bessie herself received a special Bessie Award for lifetime achievement in 1988, and two theaters bear her name -- dance Theater Workshop's home base in Manhattan and the facility she helped plan at Sarah Lawrence College, where she founded and directed the dance program for four decades.

A lesser -- known name was the one she adopted when she married a Russian -- born economist, Dimitry Varley, in 1934. He took great pride in her career while pursuing his own profession at the United Nations, and they enjoyed several years of semiretirement together before his death in 1984. Just as she delighted in being known professionally as "Bessie" she proudly referred to herself as "Mrs. Varley" when tending to her comfortable home and garden in Bronxvine, New York, close to Sarah Lawrence College.

Although she had longed to study dance while growing up in Dresden, Germany, her father prevented her from engaging in any dance activity until she emigrated to America in 1925 and landed in Eugene, Oregon. Her mother, an American-born opera singer, had divorced Bessie's father and was then on the faculty of the University of Oregon. It was there that Bessie fell under the spell of Martha Hill, the influential dance educator who was only a few years older than her college, students. Hill opened up a whole new world to Bessie, who followed her to New York and began training with Martha Graham at the Neighborhood Playhouse. Bessie performed with Graham for two years in such classics as Primitive Mysteries and Heretic until a knee injury forced an early retirement from the stage and a new focus on teaching. She earned her B.A. in 1934 from Bennington College and that same year served as Martha Hill's teaching assistant at the Bennington School of the Dance, the forerunner of the American Dance Festival. She was slated to return to ADF this summer, some sixty-three years later, as one of two recipients of the Balasaraswati/Joy Ann Dewey Beinecke Endowed Chair for Distinguished Teaching.

Bessie was in the midst of many other projects at the time of her death. This summer's schedule included her annual choreography workshop at Jacob's Pillow, where she had taught regularly since 1980, and several trips to The Yard, the Martha's Vineyard artists' colony where she had served as artistic advisor for the past decade. The summer was also to have included mentoring at Wave Hill, the Bronx estate overlooking the Hudson River, where she worked under the auspices of Dancing in the Streets. This busy summer schedule was a break from her usual commitments of teaching at the Juilliard School while simultaneously conducting other workshops at Dance Theater Workshop and New York University's Tisch School of the Arts.

If these activities seem unusual for a woman of ninety, the infirmities of old age were nevertheless well known to her. Complications from hip replacement surgery combined with her old knee injury to inhibit her free movement. Macular degeneration had also robbed her of clear vision in recent years, although her artistic insight remained undimmed. In spite of her busy schedule, she also believed in leavening her workload with adequate rest and relaxation. One favorite way for her to gain some uninterrupted time in her garden was to announce that she was going away on a cruise. As the phone calls subsided, she would "cruise" outside in her hammock.

Among Bessie's honors were the New York State Governor's Arts Award in 1989 and Dance/USA's Emie Award in 1994. She was selected as the first recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts's special Master Teacher/Mentor Fellowship in 1993, but she usually resisted labeling herself a teacher. She preferred the concept of a gardener, helping people to grow. She would often describe her occupation with a mischievous smile and the simple statement: "I meddle." This humble view of herself was reflected in her advice to young choreographers: "Never call yourself an artist -- let other people do that. You are a worker. You are a craftsman."

There was no set formula to Bessie's teaching. Her approach varied, depending on the venue and the choreographers. While she is most commonly associated with modem dance, she spent a number of years working regularly with ballet-trained students at Dance Theatre of Harlem, and there were often choreographers from other disciplines included in her workshops. One of those ballet choreographers, Jerome Robbins, showed up at a tribute in Bessie's honor organized in 1995 by the Dance Collection of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. Robbins spoke of studying composition with Bessie in the late 1930s and making his first dances under her tutelage. Her encouragement, Robbins said, "Was like an angel putting her hand on my shoulder, giving me a nudge, and saying, `Go on with it.' I went on with it, and I have to thank Bessie for that." This testimonial was captured on film by D.A. Pennebaker, who is now completing a documentary exploring Bessie's life and work.

Some of the greatest lessons Bessie taught were the examples she set forth in her life and, now, her death. She believed wholeheartedly in the sanctity of work, and the advice she dispensed at public gatherings was often a no-nonsense "Do good work." On the day she died, of an apparent heart attack, she was preparing to go in to Juilliard to meet her class for the 1997-98 school year. She was looking ahead, as always.

Bessie had no direct descendants, but she leaves a devoted niece and nephew, Pat and Jim Martine, and their family, as well as an older sister and niece in Oregon. Most important, her lessons for us remain. One favorite student from Sarah Lawrence, the novelist Allan Gurganus, knows how embedded Bessie's teachings are in the many lives she touched. "She is immortal," he asserts. "The fact that she's not walking around among us now is a mere technicality."