Bojan Ivanko Spassoff, who for 37 years was director and president of the prestigious rock school for dance education in Philadelphia, died on October 23 at the age of 79 after a long illness.

Mr. Spassoff, who went by the name Bo, was the artistic director of the Savannah Ballet and Ballet Oklahoma. In 1984, he became the director of The Rock, then known as the School of Pennsylvania Ballet. He worked with Milton and Constance Rock to establish it as the Shirley Rock School of Pennsylvania Ballet.

By 1992, however, the Pennsylvania Ballet (now the Philadelphia Ballet) was on shaky financial ground, and both school and company were in danger of collapsing. Under Mr. Spassoff’s guidance, the school separated from the company and became an independent organization renamed Rock School for Dance Education.

“Bo was one of the biggest-hearted people I’ve ever met in the classical ballet field,” said Peter Stark, who took over the Rock after Mr. Spassoff retires in 2021. “I met him in the early 1980s when I was 13 years old. He directed the New York Summer School of the Arts in Saratoga Springs and was the most energetic and positive teacher.”

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Mr. Spassoff was also an early supporter of the Youth America Grand Prix, a ballet competition for students which has become a large international organization and one of the main channels for ballet students to obtain jobs in the company.

“He’s really part of the legacy of that organization,” Stark said. “He’s one of the few who stepped forward and saw that this is the future, that this is going to be an opportunity to allow students to network.”

It was also there that Stark met Mr. Spassoff again, when they were judging together.

The Rock now has graduates in most major ballet companies around the world. It became known as a top school that allowed students to compete and be seen, which most academies affiliated with ballet companies did not.

ABT Principal Dancer Christine Shevchenko was a longtime student of Rock and was successful at YAGP.

Also at YAGP, the Spassoffs met Isaac Hernandez, then a 12-year-old kid from Mexico, who would become their student. He is also an ABT Principal Dancer. His younger brother Esteban soon followed him into Rock and is now a principal dancer with the San Francisco Ballet.

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Michaella Mabinty DePrince, a ballet superstar born in Sierra Leone, he was also their student, as was New York City Ballet principal dancer Taylor Stanley and BalletX artistic director Christine Cox.

The school gained even more notoriety when Rock, Spassoff and their students were featured in a ballet documentary called First position. For years, dancers from all over the world came to Philadelphia after seeing the film. Even today, the Rock School has students from 23 countries.

Bojan Ivanko Spassoff was born in Norway in 1945 and lived in Europe until he was 12 years old. She then moved to Philadelphia for a year and graduated from Coral Gables High School in Florida and started ballet classes her senior year to get better. on the way, said his son, Sasha Spassoff.

She moved to New York to study on scholarship at the School of American Ballet. Mr. Spassoff went on to dance professionally with the Dutch National Ballet, the Royal Danish Ballet, the American Ballet Theater and the San Francisco Ballet.

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He met his wife, Stephanie Wolf Spassoff, with whom he ran Rock School, while they were both performing with ABT. After his dancing career, Mr. Spassoff turned to ballet management.

“The thing about the Rock School is that we own our building and have no debt,” Stark said. “(Mr. Spassoff) ran a business in the black all these years. And were there tough times? Yes, but he never let it get away from him. It’s a solid business model. He was an incredible businessman.

“I owe my whole career to him,” Stark said. “And I have a feeling there are a lot of people who feel that way.”

Graduates return as visiting professors to the school years after studying there.

“The most important advice that (Mr. Spassoff) and Stephanie gave me was to treat students as children and as people first and to teach with an open heart and they really did that.”

Mr. Spassoff is survived by his wife of 53 years, Stephanie Wolf Spassoff; sons Sasha Spassoff (wife Jenn Hassinger) and Sebastian Spassoff (fiancée Myra “Em” Eckenhoff) and granddaughter Henrietta Spassoff.