William Dollar

Who was William Dollar?

William Dollar was an American ballet dancer born in St. Louis and reared in East St. Louis, Illinois. His parents, Mr. and Mrs. Edward Dollar, operated a grocery store and meat market in East St. Louis.

William studied with George Balanchine, Michel Fokine, and Pierre Vladimirov. He also trained under Mikhail Mordkin of the Ballets Russes and performed in Chopin Concerto with the Metropolitan Opera Company. He was a leading dancer with the American Ballet, Ballet Caravan and the American Ballet Caravan companies that preceded and led to the establishment of the New York City Ballet in 1948. His creations with those companies included roles in Balanchine's versions of Le Baiser de la Fee, The Card Party and Transcendence, which Balanchine choreographed especially for him.

His first ballet, Classic Ballet, was choreographed with Balanchine. Dollar restaged this work in 1944 as Constantia for Ballet International. He choreographed many other ballets, of which his best known is The Duel, originally staged in 1949 as Le Combat for Roland Petit's Ballets de Paris. Dollar also created the ballet for the Ford Motor Company pavilion at the New York World's Fair of 1939 at Flushing Meadows.