The July 1946 issue of Dance Magazine included this cartoon, titled “One Ballerina’s Day,” credited to none other than Mary Ellen Moylan, who at 21 was already well into her professional career. An early student at School of American Ballet, as a teenager she had begun performing principal roles with the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, where George Balanchine was resident choreographer. 1946 would prove an auspicious year for her: She stepped away from the Ballet Russe to work with Antony Tudor on the Broadway musical The Day Before Spring, then joined New York City Ballet predecessor Ballet Society, with which she would debut the role Sanguinic in Balanchine’s The Four Temperaments that November. Maria Tallchief would later refer to her as “the first great Balanchine ballerina.”
This cartoon, penned by ballerina Mary Ellen Moylan, appeared in the July 1946 issue of Dance Magazine. From the DM Archives.
Moylan’s cartoon appeared between an article with foot care advice from Dr. Horace Worrell, a podiatrist who specialized in working with dancers, and a short essay by famed ballet dancer and choreographer Anton Dolin, offering answers to common questions he heard from the parents of young dance students. Elsewhere in the issue was a behind-the-scenes look at a company of a dozen dancers, assembled by Jack Cole, who were under permanent contract with Columbia Pictures to appear in dance numbers in its films as needed; a collection of reviews covering programs by the likes of Alicia Markova and Dolin, La Meri, Pearl Primus, Anna Sokolow, and Merce Cunningham; and a brief profile of the artists who had taken the nightclub circuit by storm under the moniker Mata and Hari.
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