Transitions.

Shirley Haynes Burton, 77, a former Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo dancer and teacher, died in a North Carolina hospital on February 1, 2002. Born in Yakima, Washington, she moved to New York at age 18.

In 1958, she married Duke Burton and moved to North Carolina, where she taught for several years while raising her children, B. Scott Burton and Alexandra Burton Stanley.

Memorials may be directed to the American Cancer Society, 4-A Oak Branch Drive, Greensboro, NC 27407.

--Alexandra Stanley

Ballet teacher Ivan Novikoff died March 20, 2002, of pneumonia at his home in Seattle, Washington. He was 102. Born in Russia, Novikoff was a contemporary of Vaslav Nijinsky and Anna Pavlova at the Imperial Ballet School in St. Petersburg. He emigrated to the United States in 1923 from China, where he fled the Russian revolution in 1918.

For seventy-five years Novikoff, who established schools in the Seattle area and Oregon, gave legions of students a foundation in ballet. "He never would retire," Novikoff's daughter, Anna, told The Seattle Times. "Till the day he died he had one or two students." In 1989, Novikoff received the Washington Governor's Heritage Award for cultural contributions to the state.

As Robert Joffrey's first teacher of classical technique, Novikoff had a significant impact on American ballet. He was also Gerald Arpino's first ballet teacher. Arpino described his first meeting with Novikoff in Sasha Anawalt's The Joffrey Ballet: "[He said] `Take off your pea coat, your sailor jumper. Off.' I did it automatically. He started pressing me down with his hands on my shoulders. I did not know what was going on. He was speaking with a Russian accent. `Pleeyay, pleeyay,' he said, pushing his hands on me and forcing me to bend my knees. `You have good heeps. Good, good heeps. You must, must dance.'"

Which he and many others did, thanks to Novikoff.

--Martha Ullman West

Dancer, choreographer, teacher Rod Rodgers died on March 24, 2002, at age 64 from complications of a stroke. Born in Cleveland and raised in Detroit, Rodgers came to New York in 1962 and studied with Hanya Holm, Mary Anthony, and Erick Hawkins.

At first, his dances were abstract pieces that reflected the influence of Hawkins's free-flow style and the strong rhythms of his earlier jazz and tap dance training. In 1965 he became the director of the dance program at Mobilization for Youth, where he grew more concerned with racial issues, both in his artistic expression and his social activism.

In 1966, he formed his own troupe. Many of his dances spoke to the African American struggle for civil rights. In the 1970s and '80s, the company performed often with the Harlem Dancemobile, bringing dance to underserved communities. Like many choreographers of his era, he also developed ancillary skills in order to keep his company running on a shoestring budget. He was a percussionist, photographer, and graphic designer.

His school and company still operate in New York's East Village. He is survived by two brothers, Ernest and Virgil; two sisters, Rhonda and LaJune; four sons, Jason, Kaldar, Kalan, and Jamal; a grandson, born in February; and his longtime partner, Kim Grier.

--Gus Solomons jr

Benjamin Harkarvy, director of the Juilliard dance division and a renowned teacher, director, and choreographer, died of heart failure on March 30, 2002, during preparations for the Juilliard Dance Department's fiftieth-anniversary celebration. He was 71. During the past year, he had been treated for a heart ailment.

Harkarvy was passionately committed to contemporary dance and advocated blending modern dance sensibility with strong ballet technique. He trained with Margaret Craske, Edward Caton, Antony Tudor, and Olga Preobrajenska, among others. Demon-strating an interest in choreography and teaching from an early age, he performed in and choreographed the dances for La Traviata in his debut with the Brooklyn Lyric Opera. He opened his own school in New York in 1955 and became director of the Royal Winnipeg Ballet in 1957. After serving as ballet master of the Netherlands Ballet in 1958, he cofounded Netherlands Dance Theater, which sought out innovative choreographers and provided the foundation for the world-class company that still thrives.

After ten years in Holland, Harkarvy came back to America to serve as director of the Harkness Ballet. In 1973, he accepted the artistic directorship at Pennsylvania Ballet, which under his leadership became a respected ballet company. In 1982, he left Pennsylvania to freelance internationally as a teacher and coach.

Harkarvy accepted the directorial position at Juilliard in 1992. It was there that he said he found his true calling: to prepare serious dance students for the professional level. He integrated the ballet and modern dance departments so that his students could acquire a versatility and proficiency suitable for a dance career in the twenty-first century. He created several new performance series and workshops, inviting choreographers such as Lar Lubovitch, Hans van Manen, Glen Tetley, Robert Battle, and Margie Gillis to set works on the dancers.

Joseph W. Polisi, the president of Juilliard, praised Harkarvy's "transformative effect" on the dance division. Pat Catterson, an adjunct faculty member in composition, said, "Even when he was being demanding, you knew that he cared. He pushed us to excellence, but he mentored us. The students felt that he saw each one of them as an individual."

--Joseph Carman 

Pauline Tish, a longtime presence in the New York dance scene, died of a heart attack on April 1, 2002, at age 89. She was a member of the Federal Theater Dance Project in the 1930s and performed with Helen Tamiris, whose work she helped to reconstruct at the 2002 American Dance Festival.

With a BA from Hunter College and an MA in dance education from New York University, she started teaching dance in the physical education program of Brooklyn's Pratt Institute in 1956, expanding the offerings until they constituted a full dance department in the 1970s. Tish developed an interdisciplinary approach and hired experimental teachers like Robert Ellis Dunn, Laura Dean, and James Cunningham. Always welcoming new directions, she once wrote that the Judson Dance Theater of the 1960s was "a bombshell thrown into the modern dance field."

After retiring from teaching full-time at Pratt in 1977, she continued to teach dance history part-time there, at Brooklyn College, and at Hunter College. She had been president of the American Dance Guild and active with the Dance Films Association.

"She was a window to the past and present," said dancer/choreographer Kenneth King.

--Wendy Perron 

David Wood, founder of the dance department at the University of California, Berkeley, soloist with the Martha Graham Dance Company, and for more than thirty years a teacher of modern dance in the San Francisco Bay Area, died April 21, 2002, at his home in Berkeley. He was 77. He died of complications from muscular dystrophy and Parkinson's disease.

Wood was born in 1925 in Fresno, California. In 1945 he graduated from UC Berkeley, and the same day he received his commission to the United States Navy.

With the war over, Wood moved to New York City. There he began to study acting at the Neighborhood Playhouse and discovered dance with Martha Graham. By 1949, he had launched his dance career with Hanya Holm and begun teaching at Holm's Eighth Avenue studio. Wood also studied with emerging choreographers Alwin Nikolais, Jose Limon, Jane Dudley, Charles Weidman, and Helen Tamiris. In addition, he made his television debut and appeared in such Broadway musicals as Plain and Fancy.

In 1953, Wood joined the Martha Graham Dance Company, and for the next fifteen years he performed with, taught, and served as rehearsal director for the troupe. Graham's most significant role for Wood was the Messenger of Death in her epic Clytemnestra. During this period, Wood also served on the faculty of the High School of the Performing Arts and taught at the American Dance Festival.

In 1968, Wood accepted an offer from UC Berkeley to establish a new department of dance and inaugurate a pre-professional dance company, Bay Area Repertory Dance, which continues to tour in the U.S. and Europe.

He is survived by his wife, Marnie Thomas, a former Graham dancer; his three daughters, Marina Marlowe-Wood, Raegan Sanders, and Ellis Wood; five grandchildren; and sisters Phyllis Anne Tidyman and Barbara Crockett. Wood received the Distinguished Teaching Award from the University of California, the Bay Area's Isadora Duncan Award for Lifetime Achievement, and two National Endowment for the Arts grants.

--Ann Murphy