Movin' Out is a 2002 jukebox musical featuring the songs of Billy Joel. Conceived by Twyla Tharp, the musical tells the story of a generation of American youth growing up on Long Island during the 1960s and their experiences with the Vietnam War. The principal characters are drawn from those who appeared in various Joel tunes: high school sweethearts Brenda and Eddie, James ("James"), Judy, and Tony. The show is unusual in that, unlike the traditional musical, it essentially is a series of dances linked by a thin plot, and none of the dancers sing. All the vocals are performed by a pianist and band suspended on a platform above the stage while the dancers act out the songs' lyrics, making the show, in essence, a rock ballet.
John Selya is a professional dancer and choreographer. Selya was born in New York City and trained at the School of American Ballet. He joined the American Ballet Theatre in 1988, where he danced roles such as Birbanto and Lankendem in Le Corsaire, Lead Gypsy in Don Quixote, Head Fakir in La Bayadere, Dr. Coppelius in Coppelia, and an Ugly Stepsister in Ben Stevenson's Cinderella. He choreographed several ballets for the company, including Moondance, Jack and Jill, Don't Panic, Turnstile, and Disposition. In 2000, Selya joined Twyla Tharp Dance.
A répétiteur is an accompanist, tutor or coach of ballet dancers or opera singers.
Robert Joffrey was an American dancer, teacher, producer, choreographer, and co-founder of the Joffrey Ballet, known for his highly imaginative modern ballets. He was born Anver Bey Abdullah Jaffa Khan in Seattle, Washington to a Pashtun father from Afghanistan and a mother from Italy.
Contemporary ballet is a genre of dance that incorporates elements of classical ballet and modern dance. It employs classical ballet technique and in many cases classical pointe technique as well, but allows greater range of movement of the upper body and is not constrained to the rigorously defined body lines and forms found in traditional, classical ballet. Many of its attributes come from the ideas and innovations of 20th-century modern dance, including floor work and turn-in of the legs.
The American National Ballet (Minnesota) closed in 2006. It was a ballet company based in Duluth, Minnesota, founded by Armando Maldonado in 2001.
Lawrence Pech is a dancer, choreographer and teacher currently living and working in the San Francisco Bay Area.
William David "Bill" Brohn was an American arranger and orchestrator, best known for his scores of musicals such as Miss Saigon, Ragtime and Wicked. He won the Tony Award for Best Orchestrations for Ragtime and won the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Orchestrations three times.
Ashley Tuttle is an American musical theatre actress and dancer who is best known for her role in the musical Movin' Out, which earned her a Tony Award nomination in the category of "Best Performance by a Featured Actress".
Miami City Ballet is an American ballet company based in Miami Beach, Florida, led by artistic director Lourdes Lopez. MCB was founded in 1985 by Toby Lerner Ansin, a Miami philanthropist. Ansin and the founding board hired Edward Villella, former New York City Ballet principal dancer to be the founding artistic director.
Lucia Chase was an American dancer, actress, ballet director and also the co-founder of the American Ballet Theatre.
Ann Marie DeAngelo is an American choreographer, director, producer, teacher, consultant and former dancer - an expert in all areas of dance. She was leading ballerina with the Joffrey Ballet, where early on she was pegged by TIME magazine as "one of America's most outstanding ballerinas" and where she later served as associate director at the time of the company's move to Chicago, Illinois in 1995. DeAngelo was the founding artistic director of Mexico's Ballet de Monterrey, and served as artistic director of Ballet Omaha during the 1990s. She founded her own experimental troupe in the late 1980s called Ballet D’Angelo, creating several full-evening productions, which toured extensively in Europe. She is currently the Director of DeAngelo Productions, an umbrella company for creating and producing dance related projects. DeAngelo continues to work internationally as a director, choreographer, and teacher.
Chalnessa Eames is a ballet dancer who performed with the Royal Winnipeg Ballet and the Pacific Northwest Ballet.
Keith Roberts is a professional dancer who performed in Twyla Tharp's Las Vegas show Sinatra Dance With Me, which opened on December 11, 2010 and ran through April 2, 2011
Elizabeth Parkinson is an American stage actress and dancer. She is best known for playing Brenda in the original production of the musical Movin' Out. For this performance she was nominated for the 2003 Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Musical, the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actress in a Musical and won the 2003 Astaire Award for Best Female Dancer.
Elaine Kudo is a ballet dancer and choreographer. She is the ballet master at the Washington Ballet and was formerly a ballet mistress at the American Repertory Ballet. She danced formerly with the American Ballet Theatre as a soloist, "excelling" in Twyla Tharp's choreography.
Gil Boggs is the Artistic Director of Colorado Ballet in Denver, Colorado. Boggs accepted the position of Artistic Director with Colorado Ballet in the Spring of 2006. In August 2014, Boggs re-signed a five-year contract to remain as Colorado Ballet's Artistic Director. During Boggs’ tenure with Colorado Ballet, he has re-staged full-length productions of Swan Lake, The Sleeping Beauty, Giselle, Don Quixote and Coppélia along with adding new full-length productions of Romeo & Juliet, Cinderella, Le Corsaire, Beauty and the Beast and Peter Pan. Boggs has also presented 15 world premieres and 12 Colorado Ballet premieres by choreographers Twyla Tharp, Lar Lubovitch, Antony Tudor, Val Caniparoli, Dwight Rhoden and Lynne Taylor-Corbett.
Beatrice Collenette was an Guernsey-born American dancer and dance educator, founder of the Collenette School of Dancing in Pasadena, California in 1926. She was a protegée of Anna Pavlova and the first ballet teacher of Twyla Tharp.
