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The School is deeply saddened to announce the death on September 30, 2007, of former Executive Director, Nathalie Gleboff. Mrs. Gleboff retired in 2003 and had been living in California with her daughter. She was 88 years old.
Late in 1959, Mrs. Gleboff joined the School to help administer the pilot program of Ford Foundation national scholarships. A decade later she was named Associate Director, and she became the School's Executive Director in 1985. Over the years she became not just an integral part of the School's administration, but the embodiment of its spirit—chief spokesman with parents and students, a mentor to staff, a perceptive planner (especially when it came to planning the School's new home in the Rose Building) an astute administrator, and a vital liaison to the faculty and artistic administration.
Perhaps Lincoln Kirstein said it best some fifteen years ago. "Natasha Gleboff runs our school now. Born to White Russians and reared in Paris, she brings a perfect blend of dynastic order and new world energy to carry out basic principles set by Balanchine decades ago. The school, like the company, was always run like a benevolent dictatorship, a practical philosophy that maintained necessary discipline while allowing sufficient flexibility for work to proceed in orderly progression. Mme. Gleboff, by turns quartermaster, first lieutenant, and supreme commander, quietly oversees this operation with imperturbable logic and great good grace."
A Celebration of Natasha's life will be held at SAB on April 1, 2008 at 7:00 p.m. For more information, or to RSVP, please call 212-769-6600.
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Photo by Steven Caras
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