When the Academy of Music curtain came down Feb. 12, 1937 on the first American full-length production of Tchaikovsky's Sleeping Beauty, choreographer Catherine Littlefield took her bows with the Philadelphia Ballet Company, a troupe she founded and the first composed solely of American dancers. Accompaniment was provided by the Philadelphia Orchestra.

Virtually unknown even here in her hometown, Littlefield's career encompassed every dance possibility available to a woman in the first half of the 20th century—dance teacher, opera dancer, Broadway showgirl and even choreographer of Sonja Henie's ice shows. Yet Littlefield is remembered all too often only in footnotes. A small tantalizing exhibit now at the Free Library invites you to learn something about this important dance figure, and to reconsider the history of the arts locally.

Sharon Skeel, exhibit curator and a "self-styled dance historian," has been researching her subject for 15 years. Her curiosity was aroused by a television documentary on Balanchine, which led her deeper into ballet. "The more I read, the more I kept coming across Littlefield's name," says Skeel, "yet no one was writing about her while contemporaries no more important were subjects of books." Skeel presented the exhibit's opening lecture. Littlefield relatives and admirers came from as far as California and Indiana for the occasion.

Catherine Littlefield's ballet company was founded here in 1935, but the idea had been germinating in Catherine's imagination for some time. She'd been a Ziegfeld dancer as a teenager, returning home to serve as premiere danseuse with a Philadelphia opera company, and teaching at the Littlefield School on Ludlow Street. She married well, prominent attorney Philip Leidy, and moved among Philly's artistic beau monde, which included the couple's friend Leopold Stokowski.

Littlefield was one of a handful of talents—including George Balanchine, who'd just started his School of American Ballet in New York City, turning first for advice from Littlefield --seeking to give ballet, considered a European art form, permanent American status. In fact, Balanchine asked Catherine's sister Dorothie to be one of the SAB's first instructors. (Dorothie, like Catherine, and brother Carl, were all taught to dance by their mother, Caroline.)

The Philadelphia Ballet Company wasn't a little vanity troupe—it was the real thing. It toured Europe, performed in New York City, at the Hollywood Bowl, and even at FDR's White House. When the company performed at home in Philadelphia its venue was the Academy of Music. Littlefield also choreographed original dances for her troupe, which was especially known for its talented men.

World War II came along and those talented men went into the armed forces. Subsequently Littlefield disbanded her company. She kept working, creating choreography for musicals, ice shows and early television, but the steady artistic march to create a permanent American ballet company found its destination in other cities. Still, it is only a trick of fate that kept Littlefield's company from having the honor, and from Philadelphia's resident ballet company being the Philadelphia Ballet Company. She died of cancer in 1951 at age 46, a short but very distinguished life.

If you take a few minutes to visit the Littlefield exhibit, just outside the music department at the Free Library, you'll see old theater programs, photos of dancers and faded clippings. There's the program for the Philadelphia Dance Company's Academy of Music performance headlined by Littlefield's Barn Dance, an American-inspired ballet. Seats went for $1 to $2, and for the very wealthy, boxes were available at $3 a seat. Plus there's an assortment of photographs: a very young, very pretty, blond Dorothie the dancer, old Ziegfeld theater memorabilia and lots of yellowing Philadelphia Bulletin clips.

If Littlefield had made movies, or written operas, or stage plays, she'd have a local street named after her or at least a plaque somewhere. But dance, the most ephemeral of the performing arts, lives on in the written word and in old fading photos of passionate, forgotten people like Catherine Littlefield—and, of course, through the work of dedicated local scholars like Sharon Skeel and her Free Library cohort, Paul Savedow. "Three years ago we did a large exhibit about the arts in Philadelphia when the Kimmel opened," says Savedow. "Catherine Littlefield was in that exhibit. So when Sharon approached me, I knew it was an important thing to do."

Maybe the Walk of Fame on the Avenue of the Arts ought to celebrate more than the musicians produced in the city. If Frankie Avalon is good enough, how about including some dancers—starting with Catherine Littlefield?

"Catherine Littlefield: A Life in Dance," through Dec. 31, Free Library of Philadelphia, 1901 Vine St., 215-686-5309.