By LAURA GLENN

My first year as a Juilliard student and the height of the Cold War were synonymous. The world was shaky, and Muriel Topaz—in addition to being my dance notation teacher—was a comfort zone. In many ways, she was my saving grace in those tough years of emerging out of the cocoon of childhood and reckoning with the fact that maybe I actually did have enough talent to be a student at Juilliard. Mickey (as she was called) was the director of the Dance Division when I made the transition (at her suggestion) from being a part-time substitute teacher to a full faculty member. I helped with the events celebrating her tenure at Juilliard as she left in 1992 to embark on her third (or was it fourth?) career, serving the history of dance through the Dance Notation Bureau. I spoke at that retirement partyâ€| and then had the sad honor of speaking at her memorial last May, when she died before many of her dreams had the chance to become reality.

Mickey had come to Juilliard herself as a student and married a fellow classmate, so she felt at home in the building, as well as at the chalkboard trying to get us to understand Labanotation. She often wore her blouses with a buttonhole-to-button mismatch that drew my fascination. It was like hanging a sign saying "I am human," and it was an odd salve for me that I remember to this day. But she made space for all us nervous young things to have a forum to speak our fears in the unstable world of political jockeying. In these last years, recalling her impact on me in the same situation, I made space for student concerns here and supported spontaneous talk of 9/11 or the invasion of Iraq, as well as talk around the death of the Dance Division's previous director, Benjamin Harkarvy. I quietly bowed to my memory of Mickey's style. Her essence and sensibilities (along with those of Jacob Druckman, her husband and renowned composer) are carried on in this school in the talent of their son Daniel, who "lives" near the dance department (from my myopic point of view) on the third floor, as a member of the percussion faculty.

I recall a trip in 1989 with a group of Juilliard students to a very beautiful part of France, to partake in a dance festival. Accompanying the students were Mickey and Jake, ballet teacher Maria Grandy and her husband, and me. Quietly, without fanfare, Mickey made sure that there were times that my schedule would not match hers and Maria's, and I was sent out to lunch with their husbands. It might seem like a strange mission, but I was just coming out of a painful divorce from my first husband. Mickey knew the cure was to have a series of jovial wine-and-dine luncheons with two of the most charming men I have had the pleasure to share French meals with. It worked. I put on the weight I had lost during my sad and angry divorce days, remembered how charming men could be, and made space in my heart that allowed me to meet my second husband.

So when I did the mental math this morning and noted all her quiet achievements, I realized that, just like a great mother, she took care of not only her beautiful dance family and her personal family, but the legacy of Juilliard, the dance community—and me.

Back to Muriel Topaz's obituary.

Laura Glenn has been a member of the dance faculty since 1987.