Lew Christensen in his work Filling Station (1938). (Photograph by George Platt Lynes; used by permission.)

Born to a family of Mormon dance and music masters in Utah, the three Christensen brothers—Willam (1902-2001), Harold (1904-1989), and Lew (1909-1984)—did more than anyone else to establish ballet in the Western United States. They received their early training from family members in Utah and made their professional debut as a vaudeville act. By 1934 they were in New York where Lew and Harold came under the influence of George Balanchine and Lincoln Kirstein. In 1937 Lew, the most gifted of the brothers, danced the title role in Balanchine's first American production of Apollo; the following year he choreographed Filling Station, an Americana classic, for Kirstein's Ballet Caravan. Willam, meanwhile, began an association with the San Francisco Opera Ballet that would last until 1955 and ultimately involve his two brothers—Harold, as director of the San Francisco Ballet School, a post he held from 1943 to 1975; and Lew, as artistic director of the San Francisco Ballet from 1951 to 1984, when he died. In 1951 Willam left California to establish a ballet program at the University of Utah; by 1968 the original student company had become Ballet West. Through the companies they founded and the innumerable dancers they trained, the Christensens gave a powerful impetus to the growth of Americanization of ballet. www.sfballet.org