The curtain closes this week on the historic Orcutt/Botsford School of Dance.  The Pittsford ballet school is an area institution, where thousands of Rochester-area residents learned to pirouette and degage.  Its end comes as part of an agreement reached in 1999 when neighboring St. John Fisher College bought the school and property.  Under the agreement, the college incorporated the school and ran it for two years.

The last day of classes at the Botsford school will be tomorrow.  St. John Fisher -- bounded by Interstate 490 and Fairport Road -- has wanted that property for 40 years, said Karen Higman, vice president for institutional advancement.  Two years ago was the first time the property came up for sale, she said.  St. John Fisher declined to disclose the purchase price.

The school plans to keep the school building itself, using the auditorium for performing arts classes and productions and rest for academic office space, Higman said.  St. John Fisher is donating the ballet school's costumes and equipment to teaching staffers who plan to continue offering ballet classes elsewhere, Higman said.  Botsford School Director Margaret Carlston said that while St. John Fisher was contractually obligated to run the school for only two years, she had hoped it would have stayed open through the end of the school year.  Whether the Botsford School name belongs to St. John Fisher or not is something still being worked out by lawyers, Carlston said.

The Botsford School dates to 1924.  Once located downtown on Gibbs Street, it was the spot where children of well-to-do Rochester families learned ballroom dancing and etiquette.  The school's founder, Enid Knapp Botsford-Orcutt who died in 1984, herself danced as a child with ballet great Anna Pavlova.  In the 1950s, the school moved to 3646 East Ave.  Such world-famous dancers as Mikhail Baryshnikov and Jurgen Schneider performed and visited there.

Ballet remains intensely popular in the Rochester area.   There are more than a half-dozen schools teaching ballet in Henrietta alone, said Michelle Buschner of Michelle Buschner's School of Dance in Henrietta.  But Botsford has been slowly dwindling in attendance, said Buschner, who herself studied there decades ago.  Area ballet schools have anywhere from 150 to several hundred students; Botsford has only 40 currently, Higman said.

Botsford student Kate Sciacca is going to miss the school.   "I felt like it was a nice school and I loved it and I wanted to keep going there," said the 10-year-old Pittsford girl.