Malinka, Bella

Educator, choreographer, and dancer Bella Malinka was born in the United States ca.1923. Little is known of her early life. She graduated from high school in 1940.

Malinka studied ballet with Anton Dolin, Leon Danelian, Bronislava Nijinska, and Edward Caton, among others. She also studied modern dance, theater dance, and ethnic dance with such dance notables as Hanya Holm, Agnes De Mille, Bhupesh Guha, Katherine Dunham, Pearl Primus, and Frederico Rey.

As a dancer, Bella Malinka performed with a number of dance companies, including the Metropolitan Opera Touring Company under Lillian Moore, in Connecticut Opera Company’s Carmen by Bizet (1944), and Toledo Civic Opera in The New Moon by Sigmund Romberg, and Katinka by Rudolf Friml, both in 1945. She toured with Stage Door Follies in the 1940s, as well as dancing in such operettas as The Merry Widow by Franz Lehar, The Student Prince by Sigmund Romberg, Rose Marie by Rudolf Friml and Herbert Stothart, and The Firefly by Rudolf Friml. She also danced with modern dancer Marie Marchowsky’s company (1956), with Indian dancer Bhupesh Guha and Company, as well as in vaudeville, nightclubs, and for the USO.

Malinka taught at the June Taylor School in the late 1960s and was directress and teacher at Utah State University at Logan (1968-1969) and for the South Bronx Community Project at P.S. 5 (1967). She was a guest teacher for Katherine Dunham School of Dance in Haiti (1962), for Ballet Puertorriqueño (1966, 1978-1979), Ralou Manou in Athens, Greece (1978), and for Eliot Feld School of Ballet (1980). In summer, from 1973 to 1979, Bella Malinka taught master classes for Alfonso Figueroa’s Birmingham, Alabama Civic Ballet (1973-1979).

Her ballets were also performed by Ballet Puertorriqueño ( Allegresse, 1978-1979), and by R.M.T. (Regine Mont-Rosier Trouillot) School of Dance ( Mon Fils, date unknown).

A faculty member at New York City’s School of Performing Arts (later Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music and the Arts) from its inception, Bella Malinka taught there from 1949 to 1981, eventually becoming Senior Ballet Teacher. She developed and taught a ballet survey course to all freshman dance students. Malinka choreographed annual student performances, numerous assemblies, and appearances ballet students made under the School of Performing Arts’auspices, such as the 1964 New York World’s Fair, and the ballet Union Maid, performed to Woody Guthrie’s music, for the United Federation of Teachers (1979).

She also presented lecture-demonstrations on various topics. One of these, Young Dancers, was broadcast on CBS TV in February 1961. Malinka wrote the script for and narrated the television program, as well as for the assembly version for the school.

At School of Performing Arts, with choreographer George Balanchine’s permission, Bella Malinka staged his ballets Serenade (1960), Pas de Neuf (1957), and Symphony in C (1958). She also choreographed Dance Poem (1950), Ballade (1953), and Musical Chairs (1955), all with music by Martin Dall. Malinka’s Allegresse was premiered in 1957 and danced by Ramón Segarra, as one of his graduation roles at School of Performing Arts.

Other ballets include Three Dances (1956), Archduke Variation (1962), Lyric Suite (1963), Les Arabesques (1964), and Bagatelles (1966). Some of Bella Malinka’s outstanding students include George De la Peña, Eliot Feld, Miguel Godreau, Christian Holder, Loida Iglesias, and Daniel Levins.

In the 1970s, she was also asked by the New York City Board of Education to review standards for licensing dance teachers. She left the High School of Performing Arts in 1981 having filed and won (on appeal) a grievance against Lydia Joel, Chairman of the Dance Department. Malinka wrote an article in 1983 on High School of Performing Arts for Dance Magazine, but it was never published.

Bella Malinka married and divorced composer Martin Dall, and has a son, Ivan Barry Dall II.

From the guide to the Bella Malinka papers, 1950-1993, (The New York Public Library. Jerome Robbins Dance Division.)