Lezly Ziering, a professional dancer who in midlife set his art on wheels, reinventing himself as a skater, teacher, coach and promoter and achieving the fame of a guru within New York City’s roller-skating subculture, died on Thursday at his home in Manhattan. He was 82.
His wife, Robbin, said that she did not know the precise cause, but that his health had declined after an accident in 2012 when a skater on a women’s roller derby team he was coaching bowled him over and broke his femur.
Mr. Ziering’s graceful mastery of dance steps on skates — he favored the old-fashioned four-wheelers known as “quads” over in-line skates — was legend in Central Park; at the Roxy, the Manhattan roller disco and nightclub that closed in 2007; and at other venues in New York.