Mallardi named recipient of Vosgerchian Teaching Award

Claire Mallardi, lecturer on dramatic arts and artistic director Emerita, Radcliffe College, has been named the recipient of the 2001-02 Luise Vosgerchian Teaching Award. Administered by the Office for the Arts at Harvard, the award carries an honorarium of $10,000.

Professor and Mrs. Ray A. Goldberg and the Max Goldberg Foundation established the award in honor of the late Professor Vosgerchian, who taught at Harvard for 31 years, serving for four of those years as Music Department chair. At her retirement in 1990, Vosgerchian was the Walter W. Naumburg Professor of Music, Emerita.

A native of the Bronx, N.Y., Mallardi completed her major training under modern dance icons Hanya Holm, Martha Graham, José Limon, and Merce Cunningham, and was a cast member in Cole Porter’s “Kiss Me, Kate” during the show’s first post-Broadway tour. As a choreographer, she has premiered works at Harvard and Radcliffe, Jacob’s Pillow, The Yard on Martha’s Vineyard, and with the Dance Circle Company in Boston and the Dance Theater Company in Washington, D.C., among other venues, and received a Massachusetts Council on the Arts and Humanities grant.

When Mallardi arrived at Radcliffe in 1965 to take charge of the Dance Program, she did so under the auspices of Radcliffe’s Sports, Dance, and Recreation Program. In 1973, the Office for the Arts was created as a joint initiative of Radcliffe and Harvard, and the Dance Program was moved under its administration. Through Mallardi’s efforts the Dance Program has become more comprehensive, with an increased roster of instructors and classes of varying levels in ballet, modern, and jazz. Mallardi introduced classes in flamenco, composition, fundamentals, jazz, tap, West African, and other offerings to the program. She was appointed artistic director and distinguished artist in dance in 1994.