Cocktail Party Fact: Choreographer Kurt Jooss gained the attention of the world with this anti-war piece at the choreographic competition of the Archives Internationales de la Danse in Paris. The jury voted unanimously to give Jooss first place.
Here’s the plot: The scene opens with a group of bald-headed bureaucrats around a green table arguing. Helmeted [...]

Active Years: 1940-today
Position: American show and film dancer and choreographer.
Career Highlights: Tune has won seven Tony awards in the fields of acting, directing and choreography. He is best known for his tap dancing in the 1973 Seesaw and in the more recent My One and Only, and for his work on the 1978 musical, The [...]

Active Years: c. 1956-today
Position: American show dancer and choreographer.
Career Highlights: Stroman drew her first bout of big-time attention through her staging of the successful Gershwin musical Crazy for You, for which she won a Tony. Her second Tony came just a few years later with Show Boat.
Career Totals: Stroman established her name in Philadelphia before [...]

Active Years: 1918-1998
Position: American dancer and choreographer for ballet and the theater.
Career Highlights: Robbins’ street-smart choreography in the Broadway hit West Side Story is one of his most enduring works. Three years after its opening, Robbins choreographed “Cool,” “Jets,” and “America” for the film version. He won two Academy Awards for choreography and directing. West [...]

Active Years: 1949-today
Position: American show dancer, singer and choreographer.
Career Highlights: Reinking is known as a Broadway dancer. Her most notable roles have been in Chicago in 1975, Dancin’, which came out three years later, and in the role of Cassie in A Chorus Line, following on the footsteps of Donna McKechnie. She choreographed (winning the [...]

Active Years: 1818-1910
Position: French dancer and choreographer for the ballet.
Career Highlights: Petipa is perhaps best known for co-creating Swan Lake in 1895, one of the most loved ballets of all time. He shaped Russian ballet with numerous other works, including the 1876A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Career Totals: Although Petipa may have choreographed his first piece at [...]

Active Years: 1881-1931
Position: Russian ballet dancer and choreographer.
Career Highlights: Pavlova is considered by some to be the perfect female ballerina. She is best remembered for her role as the Dying Swan in Fokine’s The Swan. In film, her name was spread through The Dumb Girl of Portici,done in 1916.
Career Totals: Pavlova danced her first lead [...]

Active Years: 1889-1950
Position: Russian dancer and choreographer
Career Highlights: Even at 18, Nijinsky wowed the critics with his technical brilliance. In the Blue Bird pas de deux from The Sleeping Beauty, he was compared to a “soaring angel” for the wonders of his leaps. His most well-known role is Petruska, which Michel Fokine based on Nijinsky’s [...]

Active Years: 1946 -
Position: Danish born dancer and choreographer, artistic director of the New York City Ballet
Career Highlights: The partnership between Martins and ballerina Suzanne Farrell is arguably one of the most famous partnerships in the dance world.
Career Totals: Though Martins began in the Royal Danish Ballet, most of his career has been spent dancing, [...]

Active Years: 1917-today
Position: American ballet dancer and choreographer of shows and films.
Career Highlights: Kidd won four successive Tony awards between 1950 and 1959 for his choreography of Broadway’s Guys and Dolls, Can-Can, Li’l Abner and Destry Rides Again. In the midst of this successful bout of musicals, Kidd also worked on two favorite dance films [...]