Louis Harvy Chalif

Louis Harvy Chalif (Лазарь Гершович Халиф; December 29, 1876 – November 25, 1948) was a Ukrainian dance instructor and an author. His name is also recorded as Louis Harvey Chalif. Born in Odessa, he was one of the first Ukrainian dance instructors to teach in the United States, moving to New York City in the early 1900s.

Initially teaching at various New York City institutions, Chalif founded his own school, the Louis H. Chalif Normal School of Dancing, in 1905. Chalif wrote many textbooks on dance techniques and books describing folk dances, including five that were translated to multiple languages. He is credited with the creation of several compositions, arrangements, and ballet performances. From the 1900s until his death, Chalif lived in New York City with his wife Sara and six children.

Early life Louis Harvy Chalif was born on December 29, 1876, into a Jewish family in Odessa, His name is also recorded as Louis Harvey Chalif; his parents' names have not been recorded. When he was nine years old, he attended the Odessa Government Theater where he was mentored by Thomas Laurentiyevich Nijinsky, father of dancers Vaslav Nijinsky and Bronislava Nijinska. In 1887, he performed in the ballet Excelsior alongside Virginia Zucchi. He was then invited to the Warsaw Imperial Ballet, where he received a post-graduate diploma in 1895. or 1905–1906. Chalif was also hired by New York University (NYU) as a folk dancing teacher. The NYU staff who attended Chalif's class preferred that he teach the same "baby dances" that he had taught at the Henry Street Settlement, as they felt his syllabus was overly complex.

Chalif served as a director at the Congress of the Playground Association of America in 1908 and a choreographer at the Hudson–Fulton Celebration in 1909. and between 1910 and 1918 he was also a teacher for the American Society of Professors for Dancing. Chalif stopped performing after 1910, devoting himself solely to teaching. Chalif choreographed in classical ballet, but his main goal was to teach organized dancing, which in the first decade of the 20th century was still in its development.

Louis H. Chalif Normal School of Dancing In 1905, Chalif opened his own dance and pedagogical school, known as the Louis H. Chalif Normal School of Dancing. The school was initially situated on the Upper West Side and then at 360 Fifth Avenue inside the Aeolian Company's showroom. The building included space for dressing rooms, ballrooms, and the Chalif family's own apartment. (Another source states that, between 1913 and 1914, Chalif's school moved to 57th Street, close to Carnegie Hall.) Dance Magazine characterized the building as "the greatest highlight and dream of Chalif's lifetime", noting that Chalif would walk past the building even after other parties had purchased it.

By the 1930s, the school's syllabus required 500 hours of study in various styles of dance. Chalif would work for up to sixteen hours a day on his work and career, according to his son Amos. Louis Chalif also taught classes at other places across the New York metropolitan area, including in Bernardsville, New Jersey (where his son Edward taught), and Chatham, New Jersey (where Amos taught). Subsequently, the school was situated at the Steinway Hall building at 113 West 57th Street. In 1937, he moved from Steinway Hall to the International Building at the nearby Rockefeller Center.

Other activities Chalif also led several organizations that sought to codify the instruction of dance education. He endorsed a law in 1922 that would have banned the teaching of certain "immodest dances" in New York state, though the law was not passed. The couple had eight children. They had five sons (the first two sons Abraham and Samuel The Chalifs' two oldest children were born in Russia, but they moved to the United States with their mother in the early 1900s.

His granddaughter Sonia Chalif Simon was an art historian on the faculty of Colby College.

Publications Chalif has been attributed as the author of around 1,200 ballets and dance compositions, which were categorized into several dance genres based on their difficulty.

Legacy In 1945, Dance Magazine wrote that Louis Chalif had been "at the forefront of the movement that introduced ballet instruction to 'the average American child'". Upon his death, his New York Times obituary described him as "the dean of New York dance teachers". After Chalif's death, the Library of Congress compiled a collection of his mail-order catalogs as well as photographs of him.