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By Matthew Westphal
06 Sep 2006
Roy Tobias, a founding member of the New York City Ballet and a teacher who made important contributions to the development of Western classical ballet in Japan and Korea, died on August 16 in Seoul, reports The New York Times. He was 78 and had suffered for years from a condition that made it difficult for him to eat.
The Philadelphia native joined what is now American Ballet Theater in 1944; after two seasons, according to the Times, he became a Broadway dancer (he appeared in the original Carousel) and later spent one year in Paris. He danced with City Ballet from 1950 to 1960, creating roles in, among other works, George Balanchine's Agon and Nutcracker and Jerome Robbins's Fanfare.
Tobias taught in Japan from 1961-63, according to the Times, and returned numerous times over the next two decades. From 1963-65, he performed with Paris's Théâtre des Arts du Ballet, after which he devoted himself entirely to choreography and education. In the 1980s he settled in South Korea, where he worked with Universal Ballet, Seoul Ballet Theater and the Korean National Ballet Company.
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