Rosalie Ann Lincir

Lincir, Rosalie Ann
September 16, 1922 - July 12, 2011
Rosalie Ann Lincir (nee Figge), ballet dancer, died on the morning of July 12. The cause was old age. She was 88.

A long-time resident of Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif., Lincir owned and operated a ballet school in San Pedro with her husband, Tomislav Bradanovic Lincir, who survives her.

Born in Boonville, Missouri, to a large family, Lincir began to study ballet seriously at the age of six when she moved with her family, in the early 1930s, to Hollywood, where she attended the Hollywood Professional School. Afterward, she was a member of several ballet companies including the Okransky Ballet Co., the San Francisco Ballet Co., and Michio Ito's Dance Group. She danced with Maria & Marjorie Tallchief and Bronislava Ninjinska, among others.

In the months before America entered the Second World War, she married and began a family. Though she always maintained a sense of hierarchy -- a belief in the moral and artistic superiority of ballet to other forms of dance -- she reluctantly ended her career in ballet and danced in more popular, commercial forms, appearing on stage at the Greek Theater, Hollywood Bowl, and Shrine Auditorium and in several films of the period, including Step Lively with Frank Sinatra and George Murphy, the latter with whom she shared the final dance scene of the film.

Throughout the 40s and 50s, she and her husband, a dance team, worked in television, dancing on the Spade Cooley show on KTLA with Stan Chambers, and performing in the Radebough Melodiers. The Lincirs danced at the Cocoanut Grove, Tom Brenamen's, the Biltmore Hotel, Florentine Gardens, Paramount, and RKO Studios, among other venues. After the war, the couple performed extensively abroad, in Europe and throughout Mexico.

In later life, Lincir taught ballet, collected a library of books on ballet, wrote her memoirs and several children's books, and presided, with pleasure and pride, over a growing family.

In addition to her husband of seventy years, she is survived by her three sons, Thomas, Matt (Wanda), and Mark (Clarisse); several nieces and nephews; 6 grandchildren and 2 great-grand children.