Eliot Feld was born on July 5,1942 and is an American modern ballet choreographer, performer, teacher, and director.
21 Facts About Eliot Feld
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Eliot Feld was born in Brooklyn, New York, the son of Alice, a travel agent, and Benjamin Noah Eliot Feld, an attorney.
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Eliot Feld attended the High School of Performing Arts in New York, and studied at the School of American Ballet and the New Dance Group, as well as with Richard Thomas and Donald McKayle.
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Eliot Feld performed as a child in George Balanchine's original production of The Nutcracker as the Nutcracker Prince; and later with the companies of Mary Anthony, Pearl Lang, and Sophie Maslow.
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At sixteen he appeared on Broadway in West Side Story and was cast as Baby John in the movie version of the musical; during the filming of "Cool", Eliot Feld was sick with pneumonia.
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Eliot Feld appeared on television on The Garry Moore Show and The Ed Sullivan Show.
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Later, Eliot Feld joined American Ballet Theatre, leaving at age 25 to form his own company.
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In 1967, at the age of twenty-five, Eliot Feld broke away from the American Ballet Theatre to form his own company, the American Ballet Company.
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Eliot Feld used his new company, later known simply as Eliot Feld Ballet, to explore a variety of dance genres.
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In 1978, Eliot Feld began a ballet school, the New Ballet School.
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Eliot Feld believed that all children should have the opportunity to learn dance, regardless of their family income.
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Since its 1978 founding, Eliot Feld's school has auditioned more than 900,000 New York City public school students, and invited more than 26,000 children to take free Introduction to Ballet classes.
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In 1997, Eliot Feld merged the New York City Public School for Dance and Eliot Feld Ballet into Ballet Tech, providing a unified organization, and establishing a professional performing outlet for the school's graduates.
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In 2003, Eliot Feld disbanded Eliot Feld Ballet to focus on his schools.
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Eliot Feld planned a ballet for Patrick Swayze and Mikhail Baryshnikov, prevented by Swayze's knee reconstruction.
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Eliot Feld's choreography appeared in the revival of the Broadway musical On the Town, performed in Central Park.
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In place of the company's usual summer engagement at the Joyce Theater, Eliot Feld included several of his own dancers of the Ballet Tech company.
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Eliot Feld uses aspects from ballet and modern dance and fuses them together in his work.
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Eliot Feld's works are varied and contain anything from off-beat music to aerobic exercises, including somersaults, push-ups, sprints, leaps, and calisthenics.
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Eliot Feld has choreographed 15 ballets to the music of Steve Reich.
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Eliot Feld has picked up numerous awards, including the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, the Dance Magazine Award, and an honorary doctorate degree from Juilliard.