Melissa Hayden

Ballerina and teacher Melissa Hayden – called by Lincoln Kirstein “the nearest thing to a ‘star’ in our starless company” – died this past August of pancreatic cancer at her home in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. She was 83.
Hayden, a native of Canada born as Mildred Herman danced with the (now-disbanded) corps de ballet of Radio City Music Hall, and, intermittently, with Ballet Theatre. In 1952, Hayden appeared as a ballet dancer in Charlie Chaplin’s “Limelight,” where she was credited as one of the film’s four choreographers.

However, Hayden’s career was principally spent as a dancer for George Balanchine at NYCB, which she joined in 1949, and rejoined from 1954 to 1973. Indeed, she was the first dancer to leave Balanchine and be accepted back by him, and also the first Balanchine ballerina to return to the stage after having had a child. For her retirement, Balanchine made the ballet “Cortège Hongrois” – the only work he ever made to acknowledge the retirement of an NYCB company member. After NYCB, she served briefly as the head of Pacific Northwest Ballet in Seattle and opened her own school in New York. She was a member of the faculty at the North Carolina School of the Arts, ...