Jacqueline Foley, 68, dancer with Radio City Rockettes

While growing up in Brighton, Jacqueline F. Foley dreamed of becoming a Radio City Rockette, the epitome of high-kicking glitz and glamour. Her parents pinched pennies so she and her sister could take dancing lessons and buy costumes for recitals.

Their sacrifice paid off. From 1957 to 1960, Ms. Foley performed with the Rockettes before going on to dance in some of the country's poshest clubs. Ms. Foley, who lived in Brighton, died Aug. 31 of cancer at the Lahey Clinic in Burlington. She was 68.

"Jackie had a sparkling personality, a wonderful smile. and danced beautifully," said Sandra Simpson Philpott, whose mother founded the Hazel Boone Studios of Dance Education in Boston, where Ms. Foley studied when she was a girl.

Philpott said that although Ms. Foley was slightly under the 5-foot-5-inch height then required by the Rockettes, "Jackie's personality and talent were too large to let her go." Philpott, herself a Rockette in 1951, later ran the Boone dance school.

Ms. Foley was the daughter of John Foley, a bartender at the old Essex Hotel in Boston, and Madeline (Crane) Foley.

She graduated from St. Aidan's School in Brookline, juggling schoolwork with dancing lessons. Just before joining the Rockettes, in 1955, 1956, and 1957, Ms. Foley was among a group of dancers who entertained with big bands at US military bases in Iceland, the Azores, and Germany.

Jeannette Vaillancourt of Wrentham grew up with Ms. Foley in Brighton and also danced at the Boone school, both of them starting in 1945. Vaillancourt said she and Ms. Foley were among several dancers that Philpott took to New York to audition with the Rockettes in summer 1956.

"For the audition, you had to do a routine like a number of high kicks and fan kicks and you had to do a routine," she said. She and Ms. Foley were still teenagers and parental permission was required, she said.

They both were chosen, as was Ms. Foley's younger sister, Joanie, in a later audition.

"It was very exciting to be a Rockette in those days," Vaillancourt said, recalling her three years with the group. "Years back, they performed 52 weeks a year and did four shows a day seven days a week. At Christmas time, we did five shows a day."

Ms. Foley's son, John F. Sparaco, of Brighton, said that his mother looked the part of a Rockette, with brown eyes and "red hair like Lucille Ball's."

Ms. Foley and Vaillancourt returned to Boston after three years and went their separate ways.

Ms. Foley kept performing in chorus lines for Moro-Landis Productions. Ginny Lee of North Bergen, N.J., who was captain of the line for Moro-Landis, recalled that when the show opened at Blinstrub's in South Boston, she auditioned and hired Ms. Foley. "She was an excellent dancer," Lee said.

In the various clubs where they performed, Lee said, the chorus line worked with "every big star imaginable," among them Jimmy Durante, Nat King Cole, Milton Berle, and the Mills Brothers. "We would open the show and close the show," she said.

The Moro-Landis chorus dancers also appeared at the Sahara in Las Vegas and the Copacabana in New York City, she said.

Later, when Lee started her own company, Ms. Foley danced with that group.

In 1967, her son said, Ms. Foley married Frank Sparaco, an antiques dealer, but they divorced after seven years. His mother did not remarry, he said.

For the last 27 years, Ms. Foley taught swing and tap dancing for the Brookline Adult & Community Education Program.

"Jackie thought it was never too late to learn tap and encouraged everyone to take a class, because they can go at their own pace, make new friends, learn something new, get fit and toned, and, above all, can cut loose and have some fun," Claudia Dell'Anno, the program director, wrote in an e-mail. Ms. Foley had already planned her fall classes, she said.

Ms. Foley's son said that when she was not dancing, she was choreographing routines for local theater groups.

She also continued to dance with the local chapter of the Rockettes Alumnae Association in performances around the state for about 20 years, concluding with a show for the Reagle Players in Waltham in 2005.

With all her dancing, Ms. Foley still had time for a regular job. For the past 20 years, she worked as a legal secretary for Hamilton, Brook, Smith & Reynolds in Concord. Even after cancer was diagnosed in April and while undergoing chemotherapy, she went into the office four days a week and worked until the end of July, her son said.

As the years passed, friends said, Ms. Foley retained the elegant stature and grace that still mark the Rockettes today.

"The aura of being a Rockette never leaves you," Vaillancourt said.

In addition to her son, Ms. Foley leaves her sister, Joanie of Los Angeles, the wife of comedian Norm Crosby.

Services have been held.