Lidija Franklin
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Lidija Franklin (b. May 17, 1917) is a dancer and teacher of Latvian descent, originally from the Moscow area. In the United States, she is known primarily for her association with Agnes de Mille.
Franklin (née Kocers) performed with the Jooss Ballet until the early 1940s, then relocated to the USA and began working in musical theater. She was the female principal dancer in Bloomer Girl (1944) and Maggie Anderson in the original Brigadoon (1947). (Franklin also played Maggie in the 1957 revival.) Later, she toured with the Agnes de Mille Dance Theatre, danced in de Mille's staging of Benjamin Britten's The Rape of Lucretia (1948), and performed occasionally with American Ballet Theatre in de Mille ballets such as The Harvest According (1952).
In the early 1960s, Franklin moved to her husband Gustavo Franklin's native Venezuela, where they established Academia Ballet-Arte in Caracas.
