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Peter Frame, Ballet Dancer and Instructor, Dies at 61

Peter Frame, a former New York City Ballet principal dancer who became a mentor to young dancers, died Thursday outside his apartment building on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, police said. He was 61.

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Julia Jacobs
, New York Times

Peter Frame, a former New York City Ballet principal dancer who became a mentor to young dancers, died Thursday outside his apartment building on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, police said. He was 61.

He died by suicide, the medical examiner’s office said.

Frame was a dancer with the New York City Ballet for 14 years and taught at the School of American Ballet in Manhattan, where he created a dynamic strength training class for male dancers.

A highlight of his career came in 1986 when Frame — then a soloist with the New York City Ballet — was selected to restage a rare piece of George Balanchine choreography.

It was originally performed by modern dancer Paul Taylor in “Episodes,” a 1959 collaboration between Balanchine and Martha Graham set to the music of Anton Webern.

After Taylor stopped performing the solo, Balanchine dropped it from the ballet in 1961. But 25 years later, Taylor revived the solo, set to Webern’s Variations (Op. 30), and taught it to Frame. It was an opportunity Frame called one of the most exciting in his career.

Wearing a white leotard and dancing barefoot, Frame performed the intricate, tangled stream of choreography to music so challenging it was unable to be counted.

“I’m so happy with this,” he said of the role in an interview with The New York Times in 1986. “I love it. I finally feel as if I’ve got all my vitamins. There comes a time when you have to grow.”

Taylor, a renowned modern dance choreographer, died Wednesday, a day before Frame. He was 88.

In 2014, Frame passed on the eight-minute solo to dancers at the Miami City Ballet, calling it a “thrilling, exhausting experience” that was “worth every moment.” The solo has not been performed at the New York City Ballet since Frame was in the role, a spokeswoman for the School of American Ballet said Saturday.

Frame had relished his chance to work with Taylor, whom he described as relaxed and attentive to him. “It was like planting a seed and nurturing it,” he said in the 1986 interview. “He made me feel comfortable with myself, which is so important here.”

After studying at the School of American Ballet, Frame joined the City Ballet and was elevated to a principal in 1987, after his first performance in “Episodes.”

In 1993, Frame joined the faculty at the School of American Ballet, where he had studied when he was 18, and taught at Ballet Academy East starting in 1999.

His conditioning class at the School of American Ballet, which included male dancers ages 14 through 18, focused on building the strength to lift a female partner and deploy that power gracefully, his students said.

At the end of each class, Frame would talk with students to check how they were doing inside and outside the studio.

“He wanted so much for his dancers to be healthy, physically and mentally,” said Harrison Coll, a member of New York City Ballet’s corps de ballet, who was in Frame’s class as a teenager. “He taught me how to breathe through anything that was troubling me.”

Jonathan Stafford, a faculty member at the School of American Ballet, said a back injury had hindered Frame’s career in the early ‘90s and led him to concentrate on strength training and injury prevention.

“He just wanted to make sure that never happened to any of his students,” said Stafford, who was once a principal dancer at the City Ballet.

Peter Frame was born on April 16, 1957, in Charleston, West Virginia, the son of Marvan and Mary Elizabeth Frame. Paul Frame, his twin brother who also performed with the City Ballet, said they were inspired by a childhood ballet teacher.

Frame also taught his students to deal with emotional struggles that could diminish their love for the art form, his brother said.

“He taught technique, but he also taught dancers to become the emotions behind their dancing,” he said. “He empowered the dancers to look at what was holding them back and name it.”

Frame is survived by four siblings: James, Paul, Jon and Miriam.

Frame offered encouragement and empathy to students in a way that powered them forward in the rigorous world of ballet, said Elizabeth Walker, a faculty member at Ballet Academy East.

“As a teacher,” Walker said, “he saw the soul of the young dancer and really called it forth.”

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