Magda Saleh

The first Egyptian ballet dancer grew up in Cairo with three siblings, an Egyptian father and a Scottish mother. She began learning ballet at an early age. She joined the Conservatory School in Alexandria, which included a ballet department supervised by teachers from the British Royal Academy. She returned to Cairo to work as a professor and then dean of the Higher Institute of Ballet. Seventeen years after the fire that changed her life, she was appointed director of the new opera house. She returned to the United States in 1992 to devote herself to teaching at New York University. She officially retired from dancing in 1993 due to a health problem in her back, and married Jack Josephson, an Egyptologist at the New York Institute of Fine Arts. She participated in the documentary film “Fringe in the History of Ballet” by director Hisham Abdel Khaleq.