Annette Rosenthal, a Port Washington resident for more than 45 years, and the founder and first director of the Dance Arts Centre in town, passed away in Manhattan Monday, June 10, after a more than decade-long battle with Parkinson’s disease.
Ms. Rosenthal founded the Dance Arts Centre in 1972, where hundreds of Port Washington area residents studied ballet, tap dancing, gymnastics and other dance disciplines or participated in aerobics or other exercise classes. Originally on Main Street, the Dance Arts Centre is now on Port Washington Boulevard.
A graduate of New York’s famed High School of the Performing Arts, on which the movie Fame was based, Ms. Rosenthal studied under Robert Joffrey, later the founder and artistic director of the Joffrey Ballet. In high school, she was the dance partner of Arthur Mitchell, later the founder and artistic director of the Dance Theater of Harlem.
Born Annette Feldman in Manhattan in 1935, Ms. Rosenthal moved to Brooklyn with her family as a young girl, but continued to travel into Manhattan daily to study ballet. She married her childhood sweetheart, Gil Rosenthal, in 1956. The couple lived in Forest Hills, Queens, before building a home in Sands Point in 1967. They moved to Baxter Estates in 1973.
Mr. Rosenthal, a designer of Japanese Gardens in the area, died in 2017, after which Ms. Rosenthal moved into a long-term care facility in New York. She is survived by a brother, Seymour Feldman and his wife, Joyce; a daughter, Deborah Mastrocinque, of Port Washington; a son, Rob Rosenthal and his wife, Kristen, of Manhattan; and three grandchildren, Jaclyn Mastrocinque of Lindenhurst, Andrew Mastrocinque of East Northport, and Jared Rosenthal of New York.
Funeral services were held Friday, June 14, at the Community Synagogue, Middle Neck Road, Sands Point at 9:30 a.m. Interment will be immediately afterward at Beth Moses Cemetery in West Babylon. Funeral services are being handled by Plaza Community Chapel of New York.
