Louis Harvy Chalif

Louis Harvy Chalif (Лазарь Гершович Халиф;[1][2] December 29, 1876 – November 25, 1948) was a Ukrainian dance instructor and an author.

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.

Louis Harvy Chalif was born on December 29, 1876, into a Jewish family in Odessa,[3] which at the time was part of Russian Empire.

[4][7] According to The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, his graduation thesis inspired an "exercise composed from the five standard positions" of ballet.

[4][5] The following year, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky noticed Chalif during a performance and invited him to dance in one of his own ballets.

[14] 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.

[11] 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.

[10] The school was initially situated on the Upper West Side and then at 360 Fifth Avenue inside the Aeolian Company's showroom.

[4] At the school, one of the first in United States to train dance instructors, Chalif also taught children and amateur dancers.

[10] According to an early catalog, the school offered "Professional Courses in Esthetic Greek, National, Interpretive, Character, Folk, Contra and Fine Ballroom Dancing".

[11] Chalif commissioned a new five-story building at 165 West 57th Street close to Carnegie Hall, from George A. and Henry Boehm in 1916.

[7][20] The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography called the school "a surprisingly beautiful building",[7] and The Sun referred to 165 West 57th Street as the "Temple of Terpsichore".

[5] Amos Chalif, who grew up at 165 West 57th Street, said the building had been "a wonderful place to grow up", as he learned to ride a bicycle there.

[11][25] The works covered the "Aesthetic, Ballet, Ballroom, Character, Folk, Historical, National, and Pantomime" genres, according to writer Dick Oakes.

[25] To promote his school and dance societies, Chalif distributed twenty thousand mail-order catalogs worldwide.

[22] 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'".