Bojan Spassoff, a longtime teacher and ballet leader, has died at the age of 79

Bojan Ivanko Spassoff of Merchantville, New Jersey, who was principal and president of the prestigious Rock School for Dance Education in Philadelphia for 37 years, died on October 23 at the age of 79 after a long illness.

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

However, in 1992, the Pennsylvania Ballet (now Philadelphia Ballet) was in financial difficulty, and both the school and company were in danger of going out of business. Under Mr. Spassoff’s direction, the school separated from the company and became an independent organization, whose name was changed to Rock School for Dance Education.

“Because he was one of the biggest-hearted people I have ever met in the field of classical ballet,” he said Peter Stark, who took over leadership of The Rock following Mr. Spassoff’s retirement in 2021. “I met him in the early 1980s when I was 13 years old. He directed the New York State Summer School of Fine Arts at Saratoga Springs and was a most energetic and positive teacher.”

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Mr. Spassoff was also an early supporter Youth America Grand Prix, a ballet competition for students which has become a large international organization and one of the main channels through which ballet students can find work in companies.

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

It was also there that Stark met Mr. Spassoff again when they judged together.

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 visible, which most academies associated with ballet companies did not.

ABT principal dancer Christine Shevchenko has been a long-time student of The Rock and has already found success in YAGP.

Also at YAGP, the Spassoffs met Isaac Hernandez, a then 12-year-old from Mexico who would become their student. He is also the main dancer of ABT. His younger brother Esteban soon followed him to the Rock and is now a principal dancer with the San Francisco Ballet.

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

The school gained even more notoriety when Rock, the Spassoffs and their students arrived appeared in the ballet documentary entitled First position. For years, dancers from all over the world came to Philadelphia after seeing the film. Even today, Rock School has students from 23 countries.

Bojan Ivanko Spassoff was born in Norway in 1945 and lived throughout Europe until he was 12 – Denmark, Germany, Spain and England. Then he moved to Philadelphia for a year. He and his mother settled in Florida when he was a teenager, where he graduated from Coral Gables High School in Florida and took ballet in his senior year to get better at track, said his son, Sasha Spassoff.

After graduating from high school, he moved to New York to study on a scholarship at the School of American Ballet. Mr. Spassoff began dancing professionally with the Dutch National Ballet, the Royal Danish Ballet, the American Ballet Theater and the San Francisco Ballet.

He met his wife Stephanie Wolf Spassoff, with whom he hosted Rock School, while they were both performing at ABT. After his dancing career, Mr. Spassoff moved into ballet direction.

“The problem with Rock School is that we own our building and we don’t have any debt,” Stark said. “(Mr. Spassoff) has been running the company illegally all these years. Were there any difficult moments? Yes, but he never let it get away from him. It’s a solid business model. He was an amazing businessman.

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

Graduates return as guest teachers to the school after years of teaching there.

“The most important advice that (Mr. Spassoff) and Stephanie gave me was to treat students like children and, above all, people and to teach with an open heart, and they really did that.”

Mr. Spassoff is survived by his wife of 53 years, Stephanie Wolf Spassoff; sons Sasha Spassoff (wife Jenn Hassinger) and Sebastian Spassoff (fiancee Myra “Em” Eckenhoff) and granddaughter Henrietta Spassoff.