Mari Di Lena

Mari Di Lena

Born in New York in 1948, began her professional career while on a scholarship at the Metropolitan Opera Ballet School, where she studied under Margaret Craske and Alfredo Corvino. She had already been a member of the Met’s Children’s Chorus as a child, and had had leading roles in children’s ballets produced by the Little Orchestra Society. In 1965, at the age of seventeen, she became principal ballerina at the Maryland Ballet Company. She also danced with Manhattan Festival, Les Grands Ballets Canadiens, and was a principal with Ballet Guatemala and Ballet Dortmund.

Switch to modern dance

After a long career in classical ballet, specialising in character roles, Di Lena joined Pina Bausch in 1976. She remained a member of Tanztheater Wuppertal until 1980, performing in a total of ten pieces and contributing to the creation of six: Blaubart, Come Dance With Me, Renate wandert aus (Renate emigrates), Kontakthof, Arien and 1980. She also led ballet classes for the ensemble. After she left the company, she set up her own ballet school and was its director for twenty years. During this time, she also taught regularly at the Folkwang Hochschule in Essen, and gave classes for several years to Daniel Goldin’s Tanztheater company at Münster Municipal Theatre. She kept in close contact with Tanztheater Wuppertal and was delighted to take part in classes there again when her former teacher and mentor Alfredo Corvino was appointed ballet master.

Return to New York

In 2008 Di Lena left Germany, along with her husband, and returned to New York. She gave master classes at several universities and schools in the greater New York area, choreographed for the 92Y Harkness Dance Center, taught frequently at the José Limón Dance Company, and gave workshops about Pina Bausch and her work at Sarah Lawrence College, the Juilliard School and at 92Y. In 2013 she took part in a panel discussion at Barnard College about different choreographic interpretations of Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring. Di Lena had, of course, danced in Pina Bausch’s world-famous version during her time in Wuppertal. Also in 2013, she contributed to Kathryn Sullivan’s educational film Understanding Pina. In the same year, Di Lena and two other former members of Tanztheater Wuppertal reconstructed Pina Bausch’s Wind von West (Wind from West), which had not been performed since 1979. At Di Lena’s initiative, this became an international collaboration between the Juilliard School and the Folkwang Dance Studio. It was performed in Germany during Pina40, the festival marking forty years of Tanztheater Wuppertal, and at the New Dances concert in the Juilliard School. For many years, Mari Di Lena served on the faculty of 92Y Harkness Dance Centre and Ridgefield Conservatory of Dance in Connecticut. She died in New York in 2022at the age of seventy-four.

Text: Norbert Servos
Translation: Rachel McNicholl