Christensen, Wililam F. (William Farr)

Willam Farr Christensen was born on August 27, 1902, to Christian Bjorregard and Elizabeth Farr Christensen. In his hometown of Brigham City, Utah, he studied music with his father and dancing with his uncles Moses and L. Peter Christensen. Willam graduated from Box Elder High School and continued his ballet training with Stefano Mascagno, Luigi Albertieri, and Michel Fokine, among other teachers, in New York City and Chicago. He taught ballet in his uncle Peter's dancing schools in Brigham City and Ogden. In 1926 two of the Christensen brothers, Willam and Lew (the other brothers were Harold and Frederick) and two Utah ballet students, Mignon Lee of Ogden and Wiora Stoney of Salt Lake City, organized a ballet act and toured small theatres between the West Coast and Chicago. The act, billed as The LeCrist Brothers, was conducted by the boys' father. A year later they broke into vaudeville by joining an act called The Berkoffs, a singing and dancing review. By 1925 the Christensen brothers and their partners were touring the Orpheum Circuit billed as The Mascagno Four, managed by their teacher Stefano Mascagno. Willam married Mignon Lee on December 3, 1928. The Christensen Brothers was the group's title from 1930 to 1932.

In 1932, due to his wife's ill health, Christensen abandoned the vaudeville stage to take over his deceased uncle Moses Christensen's ballet school in Portland, Oregon. While in Portland, 1932 to 1937, he established the Willam F. Christensen Ballet. Among his students were Janet Reed, one of America's first ballerinas, and Mattlyn Gevurtz (Gavers), who joined the Department of Ballet at the University of Utah in 1968 and later became its director.

Willam Christensen was appointed premier danseur of the San Francisco Opera Ballet in 1937 by Ballet Master, Serge Oukrainsky. Christensen moved, along with nine of his Portland students, to San Francisco and established a ballet school which later became an adjunct to the company. Succeeding Oukrainsky, Christensen became director of the San Francisco Opera Ballet in 1938 and, the following year, staged Coppelia . It was the first time a full-length production of this late nineteenth century ballet had been done by an American choreographer and company. The second such "first" was Swan Lake in 1940, and the third Nutcracker in 1944. Willam, Lew, and Harold Christensen directed the San Francisco Ballet and its school throughout the 1940s, creating the first major ballet company in the western United States.

In 1949 President A. Ray Olpin invited Willam Christensen to choreograph the University of Utah's Summer Festival productions (musicals and operas performed outdoors in the university's stadium). Two years of Summer Festival choreography were followed in 1951 with the offer of the position of professor of ballet. The new Ballet Division fell under the aegis of the Department of Theatre and Speech, then headed by Professor C. Lowell Lees.

In December of 1955, Christensen and the University Theatre Ballet presented the first production of the Nutcracker in the University of Utah's Kingsbury Hall, a production which became an annual Christmas treat for Salt Lake City audiences.

The Utah Ballet Society, a community support group for the Theatre Ballet, headed by Mrs. John M. Wallace applied for and received a Ford Foundation grant of $175,000 in 1963. This funding enabled the founding of a professional ballet company from the University Theatre Ballet. The resulting company, Utah Civic Ballet, performed in the Intermountain area from 1964 through 1968. Ballet West was created at the Utah Civic Ballet's invitation to represent the Federation of Rocky Mountain States. Its artistic director was Willam F. Christensen.

The Christensen brothers, Willam, Lew, and Harold, received the Dance Magazine Award in 1973 for their contribution to ballet in the United States. Utah State University awarded Willam Christensen an Honorary Doctorate that same year. Another Honorary Doctorate was awarded Professor Christensen by the University of Utah in 1978, the year of his retirement from Ballet West. His co-artistic director since 1976, Bruce Marks, assumed full directorship of the company.

The Willam F. Christensen Foundation was established in Salt Lake City in 1979, and the Christensen Ballet Academy the following year. A renewed relationship with the University of Utah occurred in the spring of 1981 when it was announced Professor Emeritus Willam F. Christensen would rejoin the faculty of the Ballet Department that he founded in 1951.