Ralph Robinson, a ballet dancer who in 1977 founded the first professional ballet company in Maine north of the Portland area, died on Sept. 9 in Northport at age 94, according to an obituary published in the Bangor Daily News.
Robinson Ballet, now in its 47th year, was founded by Robinson and his wife, the Swiss dancer Jeanne-Marie Robinson, in 1977 in Bangor, more than two decades after Ralph Robinson began his somewhat-improbable career as a dancer and choreographer.
Robinson was born in Belfast in 1930, and was raised there and in Chicago, later attending high school at Milton Academy in Massachusetts, and then Harvard University, from which he graduated in 1952 with a degree in English. Robinson was an avid athlete, playing basketball in high school and playing baseball for Harvard, and also playing for a summer on the Belfast Merchants semi-professional baseball team.
After serving in the U.S. Navy from 1952 to 1954 during the Korean War, Robinson tried his hand at ballet and quickly excelled. His ballet career began in Europe, where he eventually served as principal dancer for the Ballet of Nice in Nice, France, where he met his future wife, Jeanne-Marie. He also danced with the Chicago Opera, and according to his obituary, danced alongside some of the most acclaimed dancers of the 20th century, including Rudolf Nureyev, Maria Tallchief, Igor Youskevitch and Melissa Hayden.
After many years traveling throughout Europe and several years living in New York City, Robinson and his wife returned to his home state of Maine in 1969. Robinson began teaching with the Thomas School of Dance, which was founded in 1928 by longtime Bangor dancer and choreographer Polly Thomas. He also taught and danced with the Falmouth-based Maine State Ballet.
In 1977, Robinson founded his own company with his wife, first called the Ralph Robinson Concert Dance Company but known today as the Robinson Ballet. It was Bangor’s first-ever ballet company, and for many years was the only ballet company north of the Portland area. Robinson and his wife led the company for nearly 10 years before he retired in 1986, at which point his nephew, longtime dancer Keith Robinson, took over as director.
Robinson Ballet is today best known for its yearly production of “The Nutcracker,” performed in theaters around the state as well as for one special weekend with the Bangor Symphony Orchestra at the Collins Center for the Arts in Orono. It also maintains a busy year-round dance school at its longtime studio on Union Street in downtown Bangor, and performs spring dance showcases as well.
Robinson nurtured many budding dance talents in Maine, not least his nephew Keith, alongside fellow dancer Maureen Lynch. Lynch went on to marry Keith Robinson and lead the company with him for nearly 30 years before both stepped down in 2016. Stevie Dunham McGary, a longtime company member, took over as artistic director that year, a role she still holds.
“He was such a great teacher and had so much to offer,” Maureen Robinson told the Bangor Daily News of Ralph Robinson in 2016. “He wanted all of us to dance and do things we might not have had the chance to do otherwise. He was really professional and had a lot of insight into the professional world.”
In his long retirement, Ralph Robinson was an avid tennis player, playing right up until his 92nd birthday. He wrote a memoir, “Play Ball(et),” about his experiences as both a dancer and a ball player, and spent many years living in the seaside enclave of Bayside in the town of Northport, just down the road from where he grew up in Belfast.
Maureen Robinson said one of Ralph Robinson’s favorite things to tell young choreographers and dancers was to keep the artistic aspirations of their work high — but to also remember that audience members also want to be entertained.
“Make ’em laugh, make ’em think, make ’em cry, but whatever you do, don’t bore them,” she recalled Robinson saying.
