Glen Tetley

Glen Tetley (1926-2007)

Dancer and choreographer. Born in Cleveland, OH, he began pre-med studies at the Franklin & Marshall College in Pennsylvania, and in 1946 moved to New York, where he studied dance with Hanya Holm and Martha Graham. Later on he studied ballet with Helene Platova, Antony Tudor and Margaret Craske as well as at George Balanchine’s School of American Ballet .He received a B.S. degree at New York University in 1948, and began teaching in Holm’s School of Dance. In the early 1950s, he danced in Broadway, the Metropolitan Opera Ballet and John Butler’s American Dance Company. Tetley was one of the original members of Joffrey Ballet (1956-57), and performed with the Martha Graham Dance Company between 1957 and 1959. He then danced with the American Ballet Theater (ABT; 1959-61), and in Jerome Robbins’s Ballet (1961-62).
In 1962, Tetley founded a chamber dance company, for which he choreographed his first dances. The company included Linda Hodes and Robert Powell, among others. At the same time, he also worked as a dancer and guest choreographer of the Rambert Ballet, with which he worked for many years, as well as many other companies worldwide. Batsheva danced four of his works: The Mythical Hunters – an original piece inspired by desert images choreographed especially for the company – and Sargasso (1965); Psalms (1966), and Strophe Anti-Strophe (1972).
In 1969, when his New York company was disbanded he began directing the Nederlands Dans Theater (NDT), and throughout the 1970s worked as a guest choreographer throughout the world. In 1974, he was the artistic director of Stuttgart Ballet. Between 1987 and 1989, he was artistic associate with the National Ballet of Canada. Until the end of the century, he worked as a choreographer in dance companies around the world, including ABT and the British Royal Ballet, as well as in opera, film and theater productions.
Tetley is the recipient of multiple awards throughout his career, including the Queen Elizabeth II Coronation Award from the Royal Academy of Dancing (1981), the Ohioana Career Medal, and the Alumni Achievement Award from New York University (both in 1986). In 1987, he was awarded the Order of Merit by the King of Norway.

Glen Tetley died in 2007 in Florida.