Gage Bush Englund, 77, dancer, ballet mistress

NEW YORK - Gage Bush Englund, ballet mistress of ABT II, a former dancer with American Ballet Theater and the Joffrey Ballet, and former ballet mistress of the Joffrey II Dancers, died Monday at her home on the Upper West Side. She was 77 and had cancer, said John Knapp, her son-in-law.

A versatile interpreter of classical and contemporary works in her performing career, Ms. Englund became increasingly known as a trainer of young dancers.

Born in Birmingham, Ala., into a socially prominent family, Ms. Englund, who also had a home in Point Clear, Ala., always retained the manners of a well-bred Southern lady. But students soon realized that this aura of gentility concealed an unwavering determination to make them technically and stylistically correct.

ABT II, the second company of American Ballet Theater, currently directed by Wes Chapman, is a troupe of 13 dancers ages 16 to 20. With patience, kindness, and firmness, Ms. Englund helped prepare troupe members for the professional ballet world in American Ballet Theater or another company.

Polio brought Ms. Englund to ballet.

After she contracted the disease in childhood, a doctor suggested ballet training at a local school as a form of therapy. Ballet soon became her passion. She studied in New York with many teachers; in Paris with Lubov Egorova, a former member of the Maryinsky Ballet of St. Petersburg; and in Denmark with members of the Royal Danish Ballet.

When the Ford Foundation began supporting dance in 1959, Gage Bush, as she was then known, received one of its first grants to study in New York at the School of American Ballet. Also in 1959, she married the dancer and choreographer Richard Englund, and their careers were closely entwined until his death in 1991. She joined the Joffrey Ballet in 1960 and American Ballet Theater in 1961. Then the Englunds went to Birmingham to direct the Birmingham Ballet, which soon became a leading regional company. They returned to the New York area in 1967 to lead the Huntington Dance Ensemble which, sponsored by the Huntington Performing Arts Foundation in Long Island, presented school performances and programs for the general public.

In 1970, Richard Englund founded the touring group Dance Repertory Company, which was renamed Ballet Repertory Company in 1972 and then toured under the auspices of American Ballet Theater. It, in turn, became American Ballet Theater II in 1981. As a principal dancer with that stylistically diverse group, Ms. Englund appeared in productions ranging from the classically scintillating divertissements from "Raymonda" to "La Malinche," Jose Limon's dramatic modern-dance piece about the Spanish conquest of Mexico, in which she played an earthy peasant.

In 1985, Richard Englund became director of the Joffrey II Dancers, the Joffrey Ballet's second company, and Ms. Englund was appointed ballet mistress, a post she held until the company disbanded. She returned to American Ballet Theater in 1995 as ballet mistress of ABT II, then known as the ABT Studio Company.

Ms. Englund leaves two daughters, Alixandra Gage Englund, a theatrical designer, and Rachel Rutherford Englund Knapp, who, as Rachel Rutherford, is a soloist with the New York City Ballet.

An honorary member of American Ballet Theater's board of directors, Ms. Englund in 1997 helped establish the American Ballet Theater Summer Intensive at the University of Alabama, the first training institute to be offered by American Ballet Theater at a university and outside New York. A scholarship program has been endowed by the Alabama intensive in her honor.