TBT: Tanaquil Le Clercq in the “Young Dancer” Section

Though described by writer Walter E. Owen as “another of these dancers whose career has no glamorous highlights, no exciting episodes,” the then-20-year-old New York City Ballet dancer had already performed leading roles “in most of the company’s ballets,” among them Balanchine works like Symphony in C, The Four Temperaments, Ondine, and Bourrée Fantasque. Of her performance in the last, Owen wrote: “In this ballet for the first time in her ballet career, Tanny really comes to life and postures and grimaces with real antic quality, surprising her audiences muchly, most of them having always regarded her as a very serious young lady famous for never cracking a smile.”

In addition to outlining Le Clercq’s training with Mikhail Mordkin and at School of American Ballet, prior to her dancing with NYCB predecessor Ballet Society, Owen also described her enjoyment of reading—most recently a book of essays on Chopin and a gothic horror by Henry James, The Turn of the Screw—and interest in pursuing traditional theater. He concluded, “She claims that she is lazy—but no one ever danced like Tanaquil Le Clercq without plenty of good, hard work.”