Ruth Page; Had Long Dance Career

CHICAGO - Ruth Page, 92, a world-renowned choreographer who reigned as the grand dame of dance in Chicago, died yesterday.

She is the third major dance figure to have died in the past month, after English ballerina Margot Fonteyn and modern-dance pioneer Martha Graham.

Ms. Page, who choreographed more than 100 ballets, began her professional dance career at age 15.

The daughter of an Indianapolis doctor whose mother played piano as she danced to entertain family visitors, Ms. Page had a career that spanned several decades.

She had seen Anna Pavlova's company perform when she was 5. "After my mother took me to see Pavlova in Indianapolis, I never wanted to be anything but a dancer and a choreographer," Ms. Page recalled in 1977.

Ms. Page was a soloist for the Metropolitan Opera ballet corps in New York, where she had moved in 1914 with the encouragement of her mother to study dance.

During a tour in Chicago, Ms. Page met a young lawyer, Thomas Fisher, who later became her husband. He died in 1969. She wrote two books, "Page by Page" and "Class."

In 1970, Ms. Page founded the Ruth Page School of Dance, which has about 300 students.

She is survived by her second husband, French-born costume and scenery designer Andre Delfau, whom she married in 1983.