Albertina Rasch

Albertina Rasch (January 19, 1891 – October 2, 1967) was a naturalized American dancer and choreographer.

Rasch was born in 1891 (although she would later shave five years off her age), in Vienna (in what was then Austria-Hungary), to a family of Polish Jewish descent. She studied at the Vienna State Opera Ballet school and became leading ballerina at the New York Hippodrome in 1911.

She formed her own dance troupe (The Albertina Rasch Girls) and the Rasch Ballet, starred in a number of Ziegfeld productions, appeared at the Moulin Rouge, performed with Josephine Baker, toured with Sarah Bernhardt, and opened a Manhattan dance studio (where Bill Robinson taught tap) before adapting her classical training and techniques for the Broadway theatre and films.

Rasch's early stage work for such projects as George White's Scandals evoked the Black Crook tradition of inserting fantasy dance sequences that had little to do with the plot between book scenes, but she soon established herself as a creative force with a routine she devised for Tilly Losch in the 1931 revue, The Band Wagon. Wearing gloves covered with blacklight paint, Losch stood in front of a mirror on a darkened stage and performed a "ballet" in which only her hands could be seen to the Arthur Schwartz and Howard Dietz song "Dancing in the Dark".

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