Person
Biography
Vincent Warren was a dancer and archivist whose connections with Jacob’s Pillow spanned more than 40 years. Born in Jacksonville, Florida in 1938, Warren was the youngest of 14 siblings whose love of dance was sparked by seeing
The Red Shoes at the age of 10. He began studying the next year and by the age of 18 was in New York City on scholarship at the American Ballet Theatre School. He started performing with the Metropolitan Opera Ballet the next year, which connected him with a frequent Met choreographer, Thomas Andrew. This led to Warren’s first appearance at Jacob’s Pillow with Thomas Andrew & Company in 1959, and his return in 1962 with another company directed by Andrew, Santa Fe Opera Ballet. As part of the 1962 engagement, he appeared in the world premiere of a work by Andrew entitled
Salute, created to honor Ted Shawn and His Men Dancers. Together with partner Christa Mertins, he headlined a Pillow program in 1965, presenting two pas de deux, and his final Pillow dance appearance was as a principal dancer with Les Grands Ballets Canadiens in 1967. During the 1960s, he also performed in a number of experimental works with the Judson Dance Theater, and was the muse and lover of poet Frank O’Hara. He achieved his greatest popular success in the lead role of The Who’s
Tommy, which toured widely as a rock ballet produced by Les Grands Ballets Canadiens in the 1970s. After 18 years with Les Grands Ballets, he retired from the stage in 1979 and embarked on a new phase in his career. In addition to teaching ballet classes at the school of Les Grands Ballets, he took over a course in dance history and found a new calling. He would eventually become one of the dance world’s most celebrated historians, juggling multiple careers as teacher, lecturer, librarian, and archivist. After taking over a small collection of books and dance materials for Les Grands Ballets and developing it for 24 years, his legacy was preserved in the Bibliothèque de la danse Vincent Warren, which became the largest dance library in Canada under his direction. It was in his role as historian that he made his last Pillow appearance in 2005, participating in a PillowTalk that explored the close connections between Jacob’s Pillow and Les Grands Ballets Canadiens. An award-winning documentary film about Warren,
A Man of Dance, premiered in 2016 when he had already begun quietly battling bone cancer. Although he officially retired in 2008, he continued buying treasures and personally taking them to “his” library until just before his death in October 2017 at the age of 79.
Source of Biography
Written by Norton Owen for Jacob's Pillow Remembers.
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