Hayden, Melissa

Melissa Hayden Photos

Melissa Hayden Biography

Notable: 1923 – 2006; New York City Ballet

Melissa Hayden (originally Mildred Herman) was born in Toronto, Canada, in 1923. She danced in Boris Volkoff’s Canadian Ballet, American Ballet Theatre and Ballet Alicia Alonso in South America before joining Balanchine’s New York City Ballet in 1950. Her long career with the NYCB continued until 1973.

She created roles in Jerome Robbins’ Age of Anxiety (1950), The Pied Piper (1952), and In the Night (1970), Frederick Ashton’s Illuminations (1950), Todd Bolender’s The Miraculous Mandarin (1951), George Balanchine’s Caracole (1952), Valse Fantaisie (1953), Divertimento No. 15 (1956), Agon (1957), Stars and Stripes (1958), Episodes (1959), Liebeslieder Walzer (1960), A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1962), Brahms-Schoenberg Quartet (1966), Glinkiana (1966) and Cortège Hongrois (1973).