The teacher Héctor Zaraspe died in New York

Teaching was the reason for his life. Teaching ballet with the body, of course, but above all with the spirit. Teaching responsibly, with culture –he frequently said-, because you cannot doubt when a boy asks. Héctor Zaraspe, the great Argentine dance teacher, who spent more than half of his life in New York; the one chosen by Rudolf Nureyev and Margot Fonteyn to accompany them on their tours, when they were already big stars; the man who gave unforgettable lessons to Julio Bocca, who promoted the international career of Paloma Herrera and helped dozens of dancers to reach Manhattan, where she never tired of opening doors. Zaraspe, a man from Tucumán of short stature and high principles, a man convinced that the best thing that life had given him had been poverty because even so he had the support to dedicate himself to what he loved, died this Monday shortly before midnight in Manhattan. He had spent several days hospitalized last month due to his delicate state of health. He was 92 years old.

He was born in June 1930 in Aguilares. He gave credit to his first grade teacher, who discovered his talent, for having marked his path in art, but above all he felt that he owed his career to another woman, his mother, with whom he traveled to Buenos Aires after her untimely death. of the father. The passion that until then had been glimpsed in his province between folk dances was gaining strength in the big city. When, as a teenager, she began her training with Otto Weber –who, in addition to dance, gave her lessons in humanity, she always liked to stand out- he had no money and paid for his classes with chickens and eggs or cleaning the classrooms. Later, he was selling candies and cigarettes at the Morón airport when he met Elisa Duarte, sister of Eva Peron. She liked to say that it was she who gave him a job at branch 54 of the post office and allowed him access to an accelerated course for men at the Teatro Colón, where he also learned from Gemma Castillo and Esmée Bulnes.

Along with his training as a dancer, Zaraspe began teaching at the Morón School of Arts and Crafts. In 1954, with a one-way boat ticket to Spain, he deceived his mother and crossed the pond. “I told him that I was going with a scholarship for three months, but the truth is that I did not know where I was going or when I would return,” he recounted in a note in LA NACION, in 2004. He had only five dollars in his pocket and he managed to survive until to arrive in Madrid, where he began to teach. It was precisely in a studio that the Spanish dancer Mariemma saw him and hired him as a teacher for her company. Something similar would happen later with the great Antonio Ruiz Soler, who added him to his ballet, with whom he went on tour.

He had met Rudolf Nureyev in Switzerland one night when he saw him dance with Rosella Hightower: he approached the young star and asked if he would sign a shoe for him. Another time, in London, while touring with Antonio’s company, he met him again at a dinner: “Nureyev was dazzled because he had seen a student of mine dance [Luis Fuente] and he told me that he wanted to take some classes, but that would only happen in the United States”.

After eleven years of working in Spain, the Argentine was hired by the American Ballet Center in New York as a teacher. Also at Lincoln Center, in the great Juilliard School, an institution that is a beacon of the arts, he would teach for more than three decades his own method for classical and modern dancers at the same time, which was nourished by all the others known up to now. When Nureyev and Fonteyn tried his classes in the mid-1960s, they hired him as a private teacher on their tours. “These stars are not taught, they are cleaned,” said Zaraspe in the middle of the pandemic, during an interview by Zoom in 2021 with the Uruguayan professor Lucía Chilibroste, which is available on YouTube–. My work with them was like maintaining a jewel, making the gold shine. Take care of your perfection. Something very serious.” Also during that open talk he assured: “Teaching is a great responsibility and the reason for my life. One surrenders to God and he helps me. I always entrusted myself and he never abandoned me ”. And at another time he said: “To be a teacher is to tell the truth.”

Throughout his career, Zaraspe gave classes in companies and schools in America and Europe; in Argentina, at the Teatro Colón; in Brazil, Uruguay, Holland, England. “Helping is the most beautiful thing one can do. At Julliard School, students are not taken by the instep, they are taken by their talent. A dancer is not a horse whose teeth are looked at”. Worked for golden Hollywood in film choreography as John Paul Jones (with Bette Davis, 1959), Spartacus (con Kirk Douglas, 1960) y 55 days in Beijing (with Ava Gardner, 1963). In 1972 she participated in the Nureyev documentary I’m a dancer. He was also the director of the show. tango passion; for the production of Maria from Buenos Aires he won a Grammy in 2003. He received scholarships as a teacher, medals of merit, keys to the city and in his country, where he is a prominent cultural personality, he won a Konex award.

“I was lucky enough to meet the teacher in New York, to take very difficult classes with him at Juilliard, which made you improve from one day to the next,” he says. Julio Mouth to LA NACION, which shared the news of Zaraspe’s death in the early hours of yesterday. She was a huge influence on dance, a person who helped dancers of all kinds. Knowing that he had a very special relationship with my mother [Nancy Bocca], for me it was incredible; the love and complicity that existed between them, always laughing. I will never forget him; positive, he was a person who gave push, support and said ‘yes, yes we can, yes we’re going’, when the custom we have in these areas is to say, ‘no, no, no’. He left at an age where he knew how to live very well and enjoy life. I simply say thank you for what he gave to dance, to Argentina and to Tucumán. I already lit a white candle for him to light his path wherever he wants to go ”.

Also dove herrera he recalled the key place that Héctor Zaraspe occupied as a selfless promoter of his international career, even without ever having been his teacher. “It was a super important person, who gave me the opportunity to go to New York,” he recounts. He organized everything. We didn’t have a relationship at all: he was a judge in a contest in Buenos Aires and I was dancing at the closing gala, so he saw me at that function and asked to speak to my parents to tell them if I wanted to go to study at the School of American Ballet he could take care of. That is how, thanks to that impulse, I had the chance that he made me take my things and, at the age of 15, go to New York ”, he says. Right away, she went from being a senior in school to joining the American Ballet, where she shone for 25 years. “My bond with him afterwards was a beautiful thing; we would have lunch, we would have coffee to chat, he would see me at some performances. He always had nice stories to tell. When I retired and returned to Argentina, I lost contact a lot and on my last trip, last month, I found out that he was sick. I will be eternally grateful.”

The producer and cultural manager Juan Lavanga, president of the Art and Culture Association, was the organizer of that contest that Paloma evokes at the beginning of the 90s, and he completes the anecdote with data that reflects the spirit of Zaraspe: “The gala was held closing of the contest where Zaraspe was the president of the jury and Olga Ferri calls me [mítica maestra de Herrera] for Paloma to dance, who had just arrived from Varna, where she had been a finalist”, and tells how she and another young promise at the time, Cinthia Labaronne, came to participate in the performance at the Teatro del Globo. “dove does ayelen, with choreography by Olga and music by Ariel Ramírez. When Zaraspe sees her, he says: ‘She’s very good. You should see her in New York. If the parents prepare a portfolio for me, I promise to present it to the School of American Ballet’. And she did it that way ”, sums up Lavanga. And she closes by referring to the human quality and respect that characterized the teacher. “Entering the room he said it was a ceremony; Like a priest when he enters mass and grabs the stole, he would put on a long scarf and chain it with the cross. He was very mystical and believer. Luckily I told it among my friends.

The relationship between the dancer and Zaraspe was also reflected in the documentary Paloma Herrera Here and now, by the ballet director and photographer Jorge Fama. “It is impossible to talk about Hector without saying that he is a teacher’s teacher or not remembering him giving classes to Nureyev, to Margot, always with his long scarf and the big cane that he beat on the floor. A good friend, counselor, he was a man who has had New York at his feet and a lover of the good life ”.

When I was still a dancer and attending Juilliard, Mauricio Wainrot remembers being in the same classroom as Zaraspe with Cynthia Gregory y Fernando Bujones. Later, as a choreographer, invited by the teacher, he staged works for the ensemble of students from the prestigious school, such as Looking through glass. Sergio Neglia, son of the great José Neglia, had him as a teacher when he was 6 or 7 years old. “Then, when I was at the Juilliard School, I would sneak out of some Balanchine classes to take classes with Zaraspe. We had a nice relationship. He loved my father very much, who taught him when he came from Tucumán ”.

“He was a very loved man, very warm regardless of his high professionalism and his artistic merits. He was a person who received all the Argentines who went to New York, ”he says Beatrice During, former president of the Argentine Dance Council, which distinguished Zaraspe with an honorary diploma for her contribution to dance in general. “I personally regret her departure, but it fills me with pride to have met him, to have treated him, to have had the opportunity to chat and to drink from her knowledge. Above all, for the spiritual contribution that it offered to all of us who love dance”.