Bojan Spassoff, long-time ballet teacher and leader, has died at 79

Bojan Ivanko Spassoff, of Merchantville, who for 37 years was the director and president of Philadelphia’s prestigious Rock School for Dance Education, died on Oct. 23 at 79.

Mr. Spassoff, who went by Bo, was the artistic director of the Savannah Ballet and Ballet Oklahoma. In 1984, he became the director of the Rock, then known as the School of Pennsylvania Ballet. He worked with Milton and Constance Rock to establish it as the Shirley Rock School of Pennsylvania Ballet.

In 1992, though, Pennsylvania Ballet (now Philadelphia Ballet) was on shaky financial ground, and both school and company were at risk of going under. Under Mr. Spassoff’s guidance, the school separated from the company and became an independent organization renamed the Rock School for Dance Education.

“Bo was one of the largest-hearted persons I have ever encountered in the field of classical ballet,” said Peter Stark, who took over leadership of the Rock after Mr. Spassoff retired in 2021. “I met him in the early 1980s when I was 13 years old. He directed the New York State Summer School for the Arts in Saratoga Springs, and he was the most energetic and positive teacher.”

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Mr. Spassoff was also an early supporter of Youth America Grand Prix, a ballet competition for students that has become a large international organization and one of the primary conduits for ballet students to land company jobs.

“He is really part of the legacy of that organization,” Stark said. “He’s one of the few that really stepped forward and saw that this was the future, that this was going to be an opportunity to allow students to network.”

That’s also where Stark met Mr. Spassoff again, when they were judging together in 2005.

The Rock now has alumni in most of the major ballet companies around the world. It became known as a top school that allowed students to compete and be seen, which most of the academies affiliated with ballet companies did not.

American Ballet Theatre principal dancer Christine Shevchenko was a longtime student at the Rock and found early success at Youth America Grand Prix.

It was at Youth America Grand Prix that Mr. Spassoff and his wife, Stephanie Wolf Spassoff, with whom he ran the Rock, met Isaac Hernandez, then a 12-year-old from Mexico, who would become their student. He is also an American Ballet Theatre principal dancer. His younger brother Esteban soon followed him to the Rock and is now a principal dancer with San Francisco Ballet.

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Michaella Mabinty DePrince, a ballet superstar born in Sierra Leone, was also their Rock student, as were New York City Ballet principal dancer Taylor Stanley and BalletX artistic director Christine Cox.

The school got even more attention when the Rock, the Spassoffs, and their students were featured in a ballet documentary called First Position. For years, dancers from around the world came to Philadelphia to study at the Rock after having seen the film. Even today, the Rock School has students from 23 countries.

Bojan Ivanko Spassoff was born in Norway in 1945, and lived across Europe — Denmark, Germany, Spain, and England. When he was 12, he moved to Philadelphia for a year. He and his mother settled in Florida during his adolescence, where he graduated from Coral Gables High School and began ballet classes his senior year to be better at track, said his son, Sasha Spassoff.

After high school, he moved to New York to study on scholarship at the School of American Ballet. Mr. Spassoff went on to dance professionally with the Dutch National Ballet, Royal Danish Ballet, American Ballet Theatre, and San Francisco Ballet.

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He met his wife, Stephanie Wolf Spassoff, while both were performing with American Ballet Theatre. They met through Mr. Spassoff’s best friend — Robert Weiss, who would later become the artistic director of Pennsylvania Ballet.

That was also where Mr. Spassoff got his unofficial start as a teacher.

“Behind the curtains at Ballet Theatre, he would be doing little classes,” she said. “People started to take Bo’s classes rather than the one that was offered,” said Stephanie Wolf Spassoff.

After his dance career, Mr. Spassoff turned to ballet leadership.

”The thing with the Rock School is that we own our building and we have no debt,” Stark said. “[Mr. Spassoff] ran a business in the black for all of those years. And were there tight times? Yes, but he never let it get away from him. It’s a solid business model. He was an incredible businessman.

“I owe my whole career to him,” Stark said. “And I have a feeling there’s a lot of people that feel that way.”

Alumni return as guest teachers at the school years after they studied there.

“The most significant advice that [Mr. Spassoff] and Stephanie gave me were to treat students as kids and as people first, and to teach with an open heart,” Stark said, “and that they really did that.”

For a couple who lived and worked together, “we never really had a bad day, as far as being angry at each other or disappointed in each other,” Wolf Spassoff said. “It was really good working with him, and he because there was a mutual respect.”

Her son agreed. “The only arguments were usually mom being angry for half an hour to an hour because he ate her chocolate.”

Apart from his wife of 53 years and son Sasha Spassoff (wife Jenna Hassinger), Mr. Spassoff is survived by another son, Sebastian Spassoff (fiancée Myra “Em” Eckenhoff), and granddaughter Henrietta Hassinger-Spassoff.