LECLERCQ, TANAQUIL

born Oct. 2, 1929, Paris, France versatile American ballet dancer, remembered largely for her work in association with George Balanchine. LeClercq grew up in New York City and began taking ballet lessons at age four. In 1940 she entered the School of American Ballet, where she studied under Balanchine. Her first professional performance was at Ted Shawn's Jacob's Pillow Festival in Lee, Massachusetts, in August 1945, and in 1946 she became an original member of the Ballet Society formed by Balanchine and Lincoln Kirstein. She danced in several premieres, including Balanchine's Four Temperaments (1946), Divertimento (1947), and Orpheus (1948). She remained a principal dancer when the company became the New York City Ballet (NYCB) in 1948. Over the next several years LeClercq emerged as one of the company's most individual stylists and a particularly fine exponent of Balanchine's choreography. (She was married to Balanchine from 1952 to 1969.) Among the Balanchine works in which she appeared were Bourre fantasque (premiered 1949), with Maria Tallchief; La Valse (premiered 1951); and Western Symphony (premiered 1954). She also created roles in premieres of Frederick Ashton's Illuminations (1950), with Melissa Hayden; Jerome Robbins's Age of Anxiety (1950); and several others. During a European tour with NYCB in 1956, she was stricken with polio, which abruptly ended her dancing career. She later wrote Mourka: The Autobiography of a Cat (1964) and The Ballet Cook Book (1967) and taught at the school of the Harlem Dance Theatre.