APPLAUSE

Steven D. Schwartz, associate professor of ophthalmology at the Jules Stein Eye Institute, was named chief of the Retina Division. He will continue as director of the UCLA Diabetic Eye Disease and Retinal Vascular Center, director of the Ophthalmic Photography Clinical Laboratory and co-director of the Clinical Research Center.... Edward R.B. McCabe, professor and executive chair of the Department of Pediatrics, was elected to serve a five-year term on the American Pediatric Society Council, which brings together distinguished leaders in pediatrics for the advancement of the study of children and their diseases.... Ben Zuckerman, professor of physics and astronomy, was elected to a three-year term on the Sierra Club’s national board of directors. As a board member, he will help advance solutions to such issues as wildlife conservation, deforestation and urban sprawl.

IN MEMORIAM

Mia Slavenska, one of the leading ballerinas of the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, co-founder of the Slavenska-Franklin Ballet and a respected former teacher at UCLA and at the California Institute of the Arts, died of natural causes in Westwood on Oct. 5. She was 86.

Born in Croatia in 1916, Slavenska began her studies at the Zagreb Opera Ballet School, where she became prima ballerina at age 17. She was one of three dancer-choreographer winners at the Berlin Dance Olympics in 1936, went on to dance in London and Paris and frequently danced “Carnaval” with the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo during the late 1930s and early ’40s. She also had a role in the 1938 prize-winning French film “La Mort du Cygne” (released in the United States as “Ballerina”).

More than a ballerina, Slavenska co-founded the Slavenska-Franklin Ballet with Frederic Franklin in 1948. One of her most celebrated roles was as Blanche in Valerie Bettis’ “A Streetcar Named Desire,” created for the company in 1952.
Slavenska taught at her own studio and at UCLA from 1969 to 1983 and at Cal Arts from 1970 to 1983.