Antony Tudor, Whose Ballets Were About ‘Real People,’ Dies

Antony Tudor, British choreographer emeritus of the American Ballet Theater who was known for his ballets about real people rather than storybook characters, has died at age 79.

Tudor died after a heart attack Sunday night at his residence at the First Zen Institute of America, said institute secretary Mary Farkas.

Tudor asked dancers to portray ordinary people in a stylized art form and to show human feelings that were once deemed unsuitable to ballet. “I had to deal with people I knew,” he once told a critic. “I didn’t know princesses and princes.”

His most famous work, “Pillar of Fire,” created in 1942, is the story of a middle-class, sexually repressed small-town resident and three yearning sisters.

Born William Cook, Tudor began dancing professionally with the Ballet Rambert in London in the early 1930s and came to the United States in 1939.

Tudor considered his best work to be “Dark Elegies” (1937), an interpretation of composer Gustav Mahler’s “Songs on the Death of Children.” His other ballets included “Lilac Garden” (1936), “Dim Lustre” (1943), “Undertow” (1945) and “Sunflowers” (1971).

Tudor was devoted to Zen Buddhism, Farkas said, and was president of the Zen institution for more than 30 years.