Tatiana Riabouchinska; Former Ballerina Was Veteran Dance Teacher

Tatiana Riabouchinska, an internationally celebrated ballet star in the 1930s and ‘40s, and for the past half-century one of the most loved and respected ballet teachers in Southern California, has died.

Riabouchinska died Thursday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center of heart failure. She was 84.

Best known locally as Tania Lichine (her married name), she won renown for her performances of the classical repertory--including the title role of “Giselle”--but had become most identified in recent decades with a part she didn’t actually dance: the hippopotamus ballerina in Walt Disney’s 1940 animated feature “Fantasia.”

Disney animators sketched her at rehearsals, she told The Times years later, and changed her proportions as drastically as her species, also turning her husband, David Lichine, into an alligator.

Far from being offended, the couple happily danced for Disney animators again, turning up in more recognizable form as the virtuosic silhouettes in the cartoon compilation “Make Mine Music,” released in 1946.

By then, at age 30, Riabouchinska was a seasoned veteran of the dance world--and a survivor as well. Born in Moscow in 1916 on the eve of the Russian Revolution, she moved to the south of France and then Paris, where she studied ballet with famed Moscow danseur Alexander Volinine (a former partner of Anna Pavlova) and St. Petersburg prima ballerina Mathilde Kschessinskaya (former mistress of the czar).

As early as 1928, Riabouchinska’s talent attracted the attention of choreographer George Balanchine, and four years later he recruited her for what would become the greatest company of its time: the newly formed Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo, then based in France.

At age 15, Riabouchinska was the oldest of the trio publicized as the company’s “baby ballerinas,” sharing that designation with Tamara Toumanova and Irina Baronova, then both 13. Soon, however, Riabouchinska earned distinction for qualities more durable than mere youth.

Writing in the New York Herald Tribune about her 1944 performances in New York, the eminent American dance critic Edwin Denby called her “a very rare dancer indeed.”

“Miss Riabouchinska, though no great technician in movement, has so warm and true a presence, so clear a sense of the musical enchantment that surrounds her and so keen an instinct for natural characterization that one watches everything she does--even her faults--with pleasure,” Denby wrote. “She creates a magic world around her.”

These qualities made Riabouchinska popular not only with critics and audiences but with the greatest choreographers of the day, who eagerly created roles for her--most notably Balanchine in “La Concurrence” and “Cotillon” (both 1932); Leonide Massine in “Jeux d’Enfants” (1932), her first personal triumph), “Les Presages” (1934); and Mikhail Fokine in “Cendrillon” (1938) and “Paganini” (1939).

Her frequent partner and future husband choreographed roles for her in “Francesca da Rimini” (1937) and “Graduation Ball” (1940). They married in 1943.

After success as guest artists for such companies as the Australian Ballet, the Ballets des Champs-Elysees and London Festival Ballet (now English National Ballet), the Lichines opened a ballet school in Beverly Hills in 1950, as well as establishing several short-lived local ballet companies.

Their presence attracted not only generations of ballet hopefuls but touring classical luminaries and members of the Hollywood community, including Joanne Woodward, Paula Prentiss, Toni Basil and Anne Archer.

Prentiss remembers discovering in the 9 a.m. class for non-dancers that “this woman had a way of addressing life that was absolutely wonderful. She always pushed you far, and you wanted to go there. She contributed a great deal to my life.”

David Lichine died in 1972, and Riabouchinska maintained their school until 1998, after which she taught at Academy 331 in West Hollywood. Indeed, she taught a morning class there the day before her death.

“She was an incredible inspiration,” recalled Larry Rosenberg, co-artistic director with his wife, Sarma, of Anaheim Ballet. “She would encourage people to do more of everything, whether to jump higher, do more turns or develop their artistic expression.”

Richardson said Riabouchinska expected fine technique from her students, and it is clear that she wanted much more from them: the same expressive release that had distinguished her own dancing.

“The dancers today think that everything is about the perfection of fifth position or how many pirouettes they can do,” she told The Times in 1989. “We had fun, but they just have hard work.”

Speaking on the phone from Australia, her lifelong friend and fellow “baby ballerina” Baronova spoke of Riabouchinska as “a gentle human being with a strong character in a quiet way. She was one of those rare people in the theater who did not gossip, never made scenes or behaved like a prima donna.

“As a dancer, she was unique: irreplaceable in certain parts,” Baronova said. “Her body could move with such ease, speed, grace and lightness, it was incredible. What she had you cannot learn. She was superb.”

Riabouchinska is survived by her daughter, Tania Lichine Crawford, and three grandchildren: Christopher, Matthew and Kaela.