The School of Chicago Ballet, the last vestige of the Chicago City Ballet founded by former prima ballerina Maria Tallchief, will close Dec. 18 after 13 years in operation, the school’s director said Tuesday.
The director, Kathie Newhouse, denied that the school’s closing was tied to financial or adminstrative problems or to any conflict with its Hyde Park landlord, the First Unitarian Church of Chicago, 5650 S. Woodlawn Ave. She said she and other founding members of the school’s board had reached or were approaching retirement age and decided the time had come to close the school.
“We are going to quit while we are ahead,” she said. “We have been involved in this for a long time and it’s time to retire.”
But within the city’s ballet community, there was speculation that the school suffered from the dwindling involvement of Tallchief, its lack of connection to a professional dance company, its move about three years ago to the South Side from a River West studio and a difficult economy for all arts groups.
At the First Unitarian Church, Rev. Terasa Cooley said some instructors at the ballet school have been talking about taking over the space at the church for their own school.
For several years, the school has been run primarily by Newhouse and her husband, former state Sen. Richard Newhouse.
Kathie Newhouse said the school has fewer than 100 students, adults and children. She said during its heyday, the school was “turning students away.”
But that was when the school was still associated with the Chicago City Ballet, the company founded by Tallchief in late 1979.
Reached at her Chicago home, Tallchief said the school was formed to train dancers for her company. But after a power struggle destroyed the Chicago City Ballet in 1987, Tallchief said she saw little reason to continue her involvement with the school.
Tallchief and her husband, Henry Paschen Jr., are still listed as members of the school’s board, but she said they haven’t been involved in the school’s operation since the Newhouses moved it to their Hyde Park neighborhood in 1990.
