Bojan Spassoff, longtime ballet teacher and director, has died at the age of 79

Bojan Spassoff, longtime ballet teacher and director, has died at the age of 79

Bojan Ivanko Spassoff of Merchantville, NJ, who for 37 years was the director and president of the prestigious Philadelphia School of Rock, died on October 23 at the age of 79 after a long illness.

Mr. Spassoff, who Bo attended, was the artistic director of the Savannah Ballet and Ballet in Oklahoma. In 1984, he became director of Rock, then known as the Pennsylvania School of Ballet. She worked with Milton and Constance Rock to establish it as the Shirley Rock School of Pennsylvania Ballet.

In 1992, the Pennsylvania Ballet (now the Philadelphia Ballet) was in dire financial straits, and both the school and the company were in danger of going under. Under Mr. Spassoff’s leadership, the school separated from the company and became an independent entity and was named the School of Rock Dance Training.

“Bo was one of the biggest-hearted people I’ve ever met in the classical ballet industry,” he said. Peter Stark, who took over the leadership of the Rock After Spassoff retires in 2021. “I met him in the early 1980s when I was 13 years old. He directed the New York State Summer Art School in Saratoga Springs, and he was the most energetic and positive teacher.”

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Mr. Spassoff was also an early supporter Youth America Grand Prix, a ballet competition for students it has grown into a large international organization and one of the main channels for ballet students to gain employment with the company.

“He’s really part of the legacy of this organization,” Stark said. “He’s one of those who really stepped forward and saw that this was the future, that this was going to be an opportunity for students to make connections.”

It was here that Stark met again when he judged with Mr. Spassoff.

The Rock now has graduates in most of the major ballet companies around the world. It has a reputation as a top school that allows students to compete and be seen, but most academies associated with ballet companies do not.

ABT principal dancer Christine Shevchenko was a longtime student at Rock and had early success at YAGP.

Also at YAGP, the Spassoffs met Isaac Hernandez, a 12-year-old from Mexico who would become their student. He is also an ABT Principal Dancer. His younger brother Esteban soon followed him on the rock and is now a principal dancer with the San Francisco Ballet.

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Michaela Mabinti DePrince, ballet superstar Sierra Leonean-born New York City Ballet principal dancer Taylor Stanley and BalletX artistic director Christine Cox have been their students.

With Rock, the Spassoffs and their students, the school became more popular than ever shown in the ballet documentary film First position. For years, dancers from all over the world have come to Philadelphia after seeing the film. Even today, Rock School has students from 23 countries.

Boyan Ivanko Spassoff was born in Norway in 1945 and lived all over Europe – Denmark, Germany, Spain and England – until the age of 12. He then moved to Philadelphia for a year. When she was a teenager, she and her mother moved to Florida, where she graduated from Coral Gables High School in Florida and took ballet classes her senior year to get better, her son Sasha Spassoff said.

After high school, she moved to New York to study on a scholarship at the School of American Ballet. Mr. Spassoff has danced professionally with the Dutch National Ballet, the Royal Danish Ballet, American Ballet Theater and the San Francisco Ballet.

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He met his wife, Stephanie Wolf Spassoff, who ran the School of Rock, and both performed at ABT. After his dancing career, Mr. Spassoff turned to ballet directing.

“The thing about School of Rock is that we own a building and we have no debt,” Stark said. “(Mr. Spassoff) has been involved in black business all these years. And were there difficult times? Yes, but he never took her away from him. This is a solid business model. He was a great businessman.

“I owe my whole career to him,” Stark said. “And I think there are a lot of people who feel the same way.”

After studying there, graduates return as guest teachers during their school years.

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“The most important advice that (Mr. Spassoff) and Stephanie gave me was to treat students as children and as people first and to teach with an open heart, and they really did that.”

Mr. Spassoff is survived by his wife of 53 years, Stephanie Wolf Spassoff; sons Sasha Spassoff (wife Jenn Hassinger) and Sebastian Spassoff (daughter-in-law Myra “Em” Eckenhoff) and granddaughter Henrietta Spassoff.

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