Person
Biography
Linda Tarnay was perhaps best known from her 35 years of teaching generations of dancers at New York University, where she was the former chair of the dance program at Tisch School of the Arts. Earlier in her career, she was a founding member of Dance Theater Workshop, and a performer who danced the works of Anna Sokolow, Phyllis Lamhut, and James Cunningham. She studied with Martha Graham, José Limón, Merce Cunningham, and other iconic figures, earning a B.A. from Bennington College and a M.A. from NYU. She directed her own company and was a longtime artist-in-residence at The Yard, the dancers’ colony on Martha’s Vineyard where she was also a devoted board member. As Linda Tolbert, she performed with Lotte Goslar & Company at Jacob’s Pillow in 1968, taking several roles in a comic presentation entitled
Clowns and Other Fools. In addition to NYU, she also taught at Bennington College and Princeton University, and for 16 summers at American Dance Festival, where she was honored with the Balasaraswati/Joy Anne Dewey Beinecke Endowed Chair for Distinguished Teaching in 2007. Though she suffered from Parkinson's disease, she continued teaching composition classes until retiring in 2010. She died in November 2018 at the age of 75.
Source of Biography
Written by Norton Owen for Jacob's Pillow Remembers.
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