Donald Mahler

Repetiteur for the Antony Tudor Ballet Trust

Donald Mahler was trained at the Metropolitan Opera Ballet School by Margaret Craske and Antony Tudor. He joined the National Ballet of Canada in 1956, where he danced principal roles in ballets by Antony Tudor, Walter Gore and Andrée Howard. He joined the Metropolitan Opera Ballet in 1961 and, during the Directorship of Dame Alicia Markova, was made soloist. In 1975, he was engaged as Ballet Master for the Zurich Opera House in Switzerland. In 1979, he returned to the Metropolitan Opera as Ballet Master and, in 1982, was appointed Director of the Ballet. At the Met, he began his career as a choreographer, creating ballets not only for the operas but for the Met Ballet's touring company as well. He has also choreographed works for other companies here in the United States, such as Joffrey II Dancers, Ballet West, Ballet Mississippi and the New York Theatre Ballet. In recent years, he has specialized in staging a number of Antony Tudor's works---Lilac Garden, Dark Elegies, Echoing of Trumpets, Offenbach in the Underworld---for companies in the United States, France, Canada and Japan. Mahler has taught widely for companies and schools in the United States and Europe and works extensively in Japan both as a teacher and choreographer. In 1992, he was awarded a two year Choreographer's Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.