Sacramento ballet icon Barbara Crockett dies at 101. She nurtured capital’s dancing future

It wasn’t over for Barbara Crockett — not by a longshot — when her husband and Sacramento Ballet co-founder Deane Crockett died in 1972.

Nor was it over for her when plans to take her company professional in the 1980s necessitated her stepping aside from serving as its director.

Crockett, who died Tuesday at 101 following complications from a recent fall, devoted her life to ballet and helping foster a scene for it in the capital region. And so this meant that with every chapter of life, Crockett remained devoted to the company she helped create in 1954.

“I’m 78 years old and I’ve never seen someone more dedicated to the art form of ballet than my mom,” Crockett’s oldest daughter, Leslie Crockett Farrow, said. “That was her life.”

Born Barbara Virginia Wood on Sept. 19, 1920, in Berkeley, Crockett grew up in Fresno and began to dance at the San Francisco Ballet’s dance school at 16. At the school, she met her husband, a teacher and dancer 14 years her senior, with the two marrying in 1942.

They came to Sacramento within a few years, following Deane Crockett’s service in World War II. “After the war, my dad wanted to go somewhere where they could really build their own thing and not just be part of San Francisco Ballet,” their younger daughter, Allyson Deane, said. “So that’s why they came to Sacramento.”

Farrow was born in 1944 and Deane in 1946, with the two eventually dancing as their parents did for San Francisco Ballet. From the time Farrow was young, it was always clear to her that her parents loved dance. “They lived it, breathed, ate it,” Farrow said. “That was it, dance. Ballet in particular.”

The Crocketts initially opened the Crockett Dance Studio in midtown. Subsequent to this, The Sacramento Bee noted in April 1954 that “the Sacramento Ballet Company, dormant for several seasons has been revived by Deane Crockett” and that Barbara Crockett would dance for it.

“Barbara was the heart and soul of the Sacramento Ballet at its start, and we must never forget the pioneers who helped launch Sacramento’s creative economy,” Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg said in a statement.

Barbara Crockett didn’t limit her involvement in the arts to local ballet. She and her husband helped to found Regional Dance America, a group for nonprofessional companies that led to the creation of The Ballet Alliance, which announced Crockett’s death on Facebook.

“The thing about Sacramento that just grabbed me was what Barbara Crockett had established with her training of young dancers,” said Ron Cunningham, who was the Sacramento Ballet’s co-artistic director with his wife, Carinne Binda, from 1988 to 2018. “They were really, really good.”

Crockett continued to dance for her company, which was known as Sacramento Civic Ballet, well into her 40s. Nolan T’Sani, who began dancing with the company in 1964 as a teenager and later danced as a soloist for the New York City Ballet, initially feared Crockett.

“Her attitude was that, ‘No, no, don’t talk to me, don’t touch me, I’m the queen of dance,’” T’Sani said. “And she rightfully could have said that because she was a beautiful dancer.”

T’Sani’s view softened years later when he returned to the company from New York.

“I got to know her better and she was just a lovely, lovely lady,” T’Sani said. “And I went, ‘Wow, why are people so afraid of her?’”

David Hodo began dancing for Sacramento Civic Ballet in the 1960s while attending Sacramento State because the company needed male dancers.

Hodo, who later performed on Broadway and is perhaps best known as the Village People’s construction worker, said Crockett demanded respect. But he also made her laugh in a rehearsal of “The Nutcracker,” which the company first performed in 1968, by disguising himself in scarves meant to conceal a beautiful woman during the Arabian dance.

“I loved Mrs. Crockett,” Hodo said. “She was such an inspiration for me.”

Over the years, Crockett’s students included American Ballet Theatre soloist Parrish Maynard and Joffrey Ballet principal dancer Jodie Gates, according to a Sacramento Bee profile in 1995.

Then there was Nina Baratova Amato, who began training with Crockett in 1984 at age 12 and was a Sacramento Ballet company member from 1990 to 1996. Amato remembered a conference as a child with Crockett.

“She told me as a dancer and as a human being, you’ll come up against obstacles in your life,” Amato said. “And the most important thing is to, like a horse wears blinders so that it can’t see side to side, so that it doesn’t get distracted from its course, she said that’s how you have to be. You have to pretend you have blinders on and you just look straight ahead (toward) your goal.”

Amato added, “I can’t tell you how many times that has helped me.”

Deane Crockett died in May 1972 at 66, with The Bee noting he “had dreamed giving Sacramento a professional dance company” and that a foundation would be created toward this purpose.

“We hope through the generosity of dance supporters contributing to the foundation we’ll be able to bring about Deane’s dream of a professional Sacramento ballet company,” Barbara Crockett told the paper at the time.

The Sacramento Ballet’s executive director and current artistic director, Anthony Krutzkamp, whose company now has 20 dancers and will perform five repertories in the 2022-23 season, said that none of them would be there if it wasn’t for Crockett.

“She laid the framework for the company, the school, built it from everything,” Krutzkamp said. “We hold her in the highest regard.”

Crockett stayed involved with the company long after her retirement with a lifetime seat on its board of directors. She was a fixture at performances and opening night parties. Dennis Mangers, a longtime Sacramento Ballet board member said Crockett could be seen at these performances in elegant ensembles and that she carried herself with erect posture.

“She was a gifted teacher,” Mangers said. “I thought she was also a woman of amazing dignity.”

Aside from her continued involvement with the Sacramento Ballet, Crockett also taught for years at Crockett-Deane Apprentice Company, launched in 1996 under the Deane Dance Center, an East Sacramento dance school created by Deane and her husband, Don Schwennesen.

Judy Kent said her 18-year-old granddaughter was among Crockett’s students.

“She was such a formidable person,” Kent said of Crockett. “She believed that ballet was a discipline and she set an example for the girls to be professional and put together and listen and pay attention to what she had to say.”

Crockett retired at 96, after having taught for more than 70 years, with the Deane Dance Center holding a socially-distanced party to celebrate Crockett’s 100th birthday in September 2020.

“She lived for ballet,” Deane said. “There’s nothing she loved as much as ballet and having it, promoting it to give it to young people to help them in their lives.”

Deane had been planning to celebrate her mother’s 102nd birthday next month and said Crockett stayed active until recent months, often going for walks. She fractured her hip in a fall in recent weeks, with doctors unable to operate.

“It was very, very sad ... but she lived a wonderful life,” Deane said.

For former students like Amato, the legacy Crockett leaves is personal.

“We’re gonna miss her,” Amato said. “The ballet world has really lost a legend.”

A celebration of life is being planned for a future date, the family said.

This story was originally published August 21, 2022 at 5:00 AM.