Dancers Soared Under Prival’s Tutelage

Bert Prival taught thousands of students the fine art of the plie and jete at the ballet school he started 58 years ago in the East Valley.

A former vaudeville performer and dancer with the Metropolitan Opera in New York, Prival came to California in the mid-1930s to perform with the Hollywood Ballet Company.

In 1939, he opened the Bert Prival School of Ballet & Theater Arts in Studio City, which moved to Sherman Oaks in 1954. The best of his students performed in a semiprofessional dance troupe led by Prival that performed throughout Los Angeles.

Prival also appeared in several films, including “Puttin’ on the Ritz” (1930) and “The Emperor Waltz” (1948) and was involved in television, choreographing for shows on KTLA and NBC.

He retired from the dance studio at 75, but remained its co-owner along with his son, Leland. After a two-year leave, his son recently reestablished the ballet school at the Arthur Murray Dance Studio in Sherman Oaks.

Dancing certainly runs in the family: Bert Prival’s granddaughter, Elizabeth, played Clara in the San Francisco Ballet Company’s rendition of “The Nutcracker” last December at age 9.

Bert Prival died in 1991 at the age of 85.