Jane Comfort of Oak Ridge, Tennessee is an American choreographer, director, and dancer. She is the founder and artistic director of Jane Comfort and Company based in New York, NY.
Jane Comfort earned a B.A. in Painting from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill before finding her way to dance. After two years in the Peace Corps in Venezuela, she moved to New York and began studying with Merce Cunningham. She performed with a number of downtown choreographers, including David Gordon, Dana Reitz, Kenneth King, and Jamie Cunningham, before founding her own company in 1978. She has collaborated with visual artists, composers, spoken word artists, DJ's, puppeteers, and dancers to create dance theater works that integrate text, movement, politics, and explicitly "un-dance-like" theatrical scenarios. Her work has been produced in Europe, South America, and throughout the United States. Comfort has never shied from relevant social issues and her work gives voice to those afflicted by these issues: women, gays and lesbians, the homeless, the disabled, and the abused. [1]
Jane Comfort has choreographed many works for modern dance stage as well as off-Broadway, Broadway, and opera stages.
Comfort has worked with several artists to produce multidisciplinary dance theater works throughout her career. Her past collaborators include Tigger Benford, Arthur Elgort, Carl Hancock Rux, Joan La Barbara, Steve Miller, Toshi Reagon, Keith Sonnier, DJ Spooky, and puppeteer Basil Twist.
Jerome Robbins was an American dancer, choreographer, film director, theatre director and theater producer who worked in classical ballet, on stage, film, and television.
James Elliot Lapine is an American stage director, playwright, screenwriter, and librettist. He has won the Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical three times, for Into the Woods, Falsettos, and Passion. He has frequently collaborated with Stephen Sondheim and William Finn.
Susan P. Stroman is an American theatre director, choreographer, film director and performer. Her notable theater productions include The Producers, Crazy for You, Contact, and The Scottsboro Boys. She is a five-time Tony Award winner, four for Best Choreography and one as Best Director of a Musical for The Producers. In addition, she is a recipient of two Laurence Olivier Awards, five Drama Desk Awards, eight Outer Critics Circle Awards, two Lucille Lortel Awards, and the George Abbott Award for Lifetime Achievement in the American Theater. She is a 2014 inductee in the American Theater Hall of Fame in New York City.
Donald McKayle was an American modern dancer, choreographer, teacher, director and writer best known for creating socially conscious concert works during the 1950s and '60s that focus on expressing the human condition and, more specifically, the black experience in America. He was "among the first black men to break the racial barrier by means of modern dance." His work for the concert stage, especially Games (1951) and Rainbow Round My Shoulder (1959), has been the recipient of widespread acclaim and critical attention. In addition, McKayle was the first black man to both direct and choreograph major Broadway musicals, including the Tony Award-winners Raisin (1973) and Sophisticated Ladies (1981), and he worked extensively in television and film. As a young man he appeared with some of the twentieth century's most important choreographers, including Martha Graham, Anna Sokolow, and Merce Cunningham, and in some of Broadway's landmark productions, including House of Flowers (1958) and West Side Story (1957), where he served for a time as the production's dance captain. A Tony Award and Emmy Award nominee, McKayle held an endowed chair for the last decades of his life in the Dance Department at UC Irvine, where he was the Claire Trevor Professor of Dance. He previously served on the faculties of Connecticut College, Sarah Lawrence College, and Bennington College.
Trisha Brown was an American choreographer and dancer, and one of the founders of the Judson Dance Theater and the postmodern dance movement.
William Tass Jones, known as Bill T. Jones, is an American choreographer, director, author and dancer. He is the co-founder of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company. Jones is Artistic Director of New York Live Arts, the company's home in Manhattan, whose activities encompass an annual presenting season together with allied education programming and services for artists. Independently of New York Live Arts and his dance company, Jones has choreographed for major performing arts ensembles, contributed to Broadway and other theatrical productions, and collaborated on projects with a range of fellow artists. Jones has been called "one of the most notable, recognized modern-dance choreographers and directors of our time."
Dame Gillian Barbara Lynne was an English ballerina, dancer, choreographer, actress, and theatre-television director, noted for her theatre choreography associated with two of the longest-running shows in Broadway history, Cats and The Phantom of the Opera. At age 87, she was made a DBE in the 2014 New Year Honours List.
Dana Robins Ivey is an American actress. She is a five-time Tony Award nominee for her work on Broadway, and won the 1997 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Featured Actress in a Play for her work in both Sex and Longing and The Last Night of Ballyhoo. Her film appearances include The Color Purple (1985), Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (1988), The Addams Family (1991), Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992), Sleepless in Seattle (1993), Addams Family Values (1993), Two Weeks Notice (2002), Rush Hour 3 (2007), and The Help (2011).
Graciela Daniele is an Argentine-American dancer, choreographer, and theatre director.
Rida Johnson Young was an American playwright, songwriter and librettist. In her career, Young wrote over thirty plays and musicals, and over 500 songs. She was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1970. Some of her best-known lyrics include "Mother Machree" from the 1910 show Barry of Ballymore, "Italian Street Song", "I'm Falling in Love with Someone" and "Ah! Sweet Mystery of Life" from Naughty Marietta, and "Will You Remember?" from Maytime.
Lucinda Childs is an American postmodern dancer/choreographer and actress. Her compositions are known for their minimalistic movements yet complex transitions. Childs is most famous for being able to turn the slightest movements into intricate choreography. Her use of patterns, repetition, and dialect has caused her to have a unique style of choreography that is often imitated for its ability to experiment.
Lawrence Leritz is an American actor, dancer, singer, producer, director, fitness expert and choreographer.
Sergio Trujillo is a theater director and choreographer. Born in Colombia and raised in Toronto, Canada, he is now an American citizen and resides in New York City. Trujillo was the recipient of the 2019 Tony Award for Best Choreography for Ain't Too Proud and the 2015 Laurence Olivier Award for Best Theatre Choreographer for Memphis. He is the first ever Hispanic recipient of the Tony Award for Best Choreography.
Valda Setterfield is an American postmodern dancer and actress born in England. She is noted for her work as a soloist with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company and for her performances in works by her husband, postmodern choreographer and director David Gordon, who died in January 2022. She has been described as his muse, and together they have been called "The Barrymores of post-modern dance." Their son, playwright, theatrical director and actor Ain Gordon, has worked with Setterfield on a number of projects as well.
Leave It to Jane is a musical in two acts, with music by Jerome Kern and book and lyrics by Guy Bolton and P. G. Wodehouse, based on the 1904 play The College Widow, by George Ade. The story concerns the football rivalry between Atwater College and Bingham College, and satirizes college life in a Midwestern U.S. town. A star halfback, Billy, forsakes his father's alma mater, Bingham, to play at Atwater, to be near the seductive Jane, the daughter of Atwater's president.
Eugene Louis Faccuito, known professionally as Luigi, was an American jazz dancer, choreographer, teacher, and innovator who created the jazz exercise technique. The Luigi Warm Up Technique is a training program that promotes body alignment, balance, core strength, and "feeling from the inside." It is also used for rehabilitation. This method became the world's first standard technique for teaching jazz and musical theater dance.
Camille A. Brown is a dancer, choreographer, director and dance educator. She is the Founder & Artistic Director of Camille A. Brown & Dancers, and has congruently choreographed commissioned pieces for dance companies, Broadway shows, and universities. Brown started her career as a dancer in Ronald K. Brown’s Evidence, A Dance Company, and was a guest artist with Rennie Harris Puremovement, and Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. Brown has choreographed major Broadway shows such as Choir Boy, Once on This Island and Jesus Christ Superstar Live in Concert! that aired on NBC. Brown also teaches dance and gives lectures to audiences at various universities such as Long Island University, Barnard College and ACDFA, among others.
Lorin Latarro is a Broadway choreographer whose work has been seen on Broadway and in dance companies internationally. She began her career as a dancer who performed in fourteen Broadway shows and toured with world renowned dance companies.
Sarah Michelson is a British choreographer and dancer who lives and works in New York City, New York. Her work is characterized by demanding physicality and repetition, rigorous formal structures, and inventive lighting and sound design. She was one of two choreographers whose work was included in the 2012 Whitney Biennial, the first time dance was presented as part of the bi-annual exhibition. Her work has also been staged at The Walker Art Center, Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, The Kitchen, and the White Oak Dance Project. She received New York Dance and Performance awards for Group Experience (2002), Shadowmann Parts One and Two (2003), and Dogs (2008). She has served as associate director of The Center for Movement Research and associate curator of dance at The Kitchen. Currently choreographer in residence at Bard's Fisher Center, she is the recipient of their four-year fellowship to develop a commissioned work with Bard students and professional dancers.
Jonathan Stuart Cerullo is an American director and choreographer, executive producer, and former performer. Cerullo is known for his work on Broadway, Off-Broadway, and regionally. He has also worked in circus, film, and television.