George Zoritch (born Yuri Zorich; Russian: Юрий Зорич; 6 June 1917 – 1 November 2009), was a Russian-born American ballet dancer who starred in performances by Ballet Russe companies on stages all over the United States from the 1930s to the 1960s. Internationally known, he was one of the most glamorous figures and striking personalities in mid-twentieth-century ballet. Early life and training George Zoritch was born in Moscow during the Russian Revolution in June 1917. He was the youngest of two sons. When he was a year old, the two boys were taken by their mother Elena, an opera singer, to the quieter city of Kovno (Kaunas), the provisional capital of Lithuania to live with her mother after she left her husband due to his infidelities. Known as "Little Paris" because of its rich cultural and academic life, the city offered refuge from the revolutionary strife of Moscow. There, Madam Zoritch joined the opera company at the National Opera and Ballet Theater, while Yuri and his older brother began their first dance lessons. When Yuri was 14 years old, the family relocated to Paris to advance his training. A promising student, he won a scholarship to study with one of the most prominent teachers in the city, Olga Preobrajenskaya, a former star of the Russian Imperial Ballet. In later years, he would polish his classical technique through study with such famous pedagogues as Anatole Vilzak, Anatole Oboukhoff, and Bronislava Nijinska. Professional career After only nine months' study with Preobrajenskaya, young Yuri, was given his first professional job in 1932 by the dancer and actress Ida Rubenstein, who had a short season booked at the Paris Opera featuring ballets created by Michel Fokine. Following this engagement, Zoritch rapidly became a sought-after performer in a number of companies linked with former stars of Sergei Diaghilev's famous Ballets Russes. Ballet Russe companies An engagement with Nijinska's Ballets de Paris in 1935 led to his long-time membership in the two Ballets Russes offshoots formed after Diaghilev's death in 1929: Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, directed by René Blum, and Original Ballet Russe, directed by Colonel Wassily de Basil. In the de Basil company, the 18-year-old Zoritch became a favorite of the choreographer Léonide Massine, who cast him in no fewer than eleven ballets, notably Symphonie Fantastique (1936), set to the hallucinatory music of Hector Berlioz. Massine and Tamara Toumanova took the lead roles of