Ruth Sobotka

Ruth Sobotka (Vienna, 1925 – New York, 1967) was an Austrian-born American dancer, costume designer, art director, painter and actress. She is remembered for her work with the New York City Ballet in the mid-twentieth century and for her link to filmmaker Stanley Kubrick, whom she married in 1955 and divorced in 1957.

She emigrated with her parents to the United States in 1938. Trained at the School of American Ballet, she joined George Balanchine's Ballet Society and then the New York City Ballet, where she danced from 1949 to 1961 in works such as The Four Temperaments and Agon. She designed the costumes for Jerome Robbins's The Cage and also worked with Paul Taylor, Erick Hawkins and John Taras.

On screen she appeared in Hans Richter's Dreams That Money Can Buy and in Kubrick's Killer's Kiss, in a small role as a ballerina. She was art director of The Killing (1956). After leaving the ballet in 1961 she turned to the theatre, working with Shakespeare and Chekhov. Her painting remained secondary to her stage career, and she died at 41.