A gifted dancer and devoted supporter of the arts. Funds at The Trust support housing & economic opportunity and animal welfare.
Marjorie S. Isaac (1921-2017)
A talented dancer devoted to the arts, Marjorie Schloss Isaac was involved with a variety of dance organizations, including the Dance Notation Bureau, Dance Library of Israel, and the Paul Taylor Dance Company, which honored her at its 2018 Modern Dance Gala.
In the gala’s program notes, choreographer Paul Taylor wrote that Marjorie was “in a class by herself… a peerless guardian angel.” Robert Aberlin, a friend of Marjorie’s since childhood and a board member of the Paul Taylor Dance Foundation, said she “commissioned more Paul Taylor works than anyone else … 24 dances in all.” Among them, he said, were some of Taylor’s most often-seen works.
Marjorie was inspired to give back by her father, Jerome H. Schloss, secretary of the New York Foundation, a nonprofit that supports community organizing and grassroots advocacy. Jerome was associated with the foundation from 1937 to 1970.
Marjorie’s mother was the former Evelyn Gomprecht. Marjorie had one brother, Walter Schloss, a renowned investor. Warren Buffett, one of the world’s richest men and chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, called Walter “one of the good guys of Wall Street” and “a superinvestor.”
Marjorie attended Horace Mann School for Girls in the Bronx and studied dance as an early member of George Balanchine’s Ballet Caravan. She danced, under Balanchine’s direction, in A Thousand Times Neigh, presented at the 1939 World’s Fair Pavilion of the Ford Motor Company, in the corps de ballet at Radio City Music Hall, and in the Broadway shows Rosalinda, Song of Norway, and Viva O’Brien.
On April 14, 1946, she married Irving H. Isaac, a security analyst. They had three sons: Frederick, Paul, and Daniel. Her husband died in 1984.
She was a longtime supporter of the Adopt-A-Dancer program at SUNY Purchase. In a tribute published by The New York Times, members of the Conservatory of Dance wrote that she was “beloved by her students and faculty for her knowledge of dance and devotion to their development, admired and appreciated for her generosity and commitment” to the college. In addition, she contributed funds for the writing of a book called Labanotation—also known as Kinetography Laban, which is a system for analyzing and recording dance.
She was a devoted member of the Hudson River Museum board, an active traveler with friends and family, and, in later life, a talented watercolorist. Marjorie spent most of her adult life in Eastchester/Bronxville. In later years, she moved to Westchester Meadows in Valhalla, where she died in July 2017.
Marjorie Schloss Isaac has two funds in The Trust, one that supports people in need and the other helps animals, including those that are abused or misused.