Milton Greenwald

Michael Kidd, born Milton Greenwald in New York in 1915, turned everyday labor, gesture, athleticism, and character behavior into dramatically integrated dance for Broadway and Hollywood. He grew up in Brooklyn and initially studied chemical engineering at City College of New York before shifting toward dance after seeing modern performance and receiving training connected with the School of American Ballet. With Ballet Caravan he danced in American-themed repertory including Eugene Loring's *Billy the Kid*, and at Ballet Theatre he performed in Jerome Robbins's *Fancy Free*.

Greenwald adopted the professional name Michael Kidd while touring. His ballet experience supplied technical rigor, but his imagination increasingly centered on recognizable people and tasks. When he moved to Broadway choreography, he treated dance as a consequence of character and circumstance: performers did not stop being gamblers, workers, soldiers, or rural men when a number began. Instead, their activities and social worlds generated the physical vocabulary.

Kidd's Broadway breakthrough was *Finian's Rainbow* (1947), for which he received a Tony Award for choreography. He followed with *Guys and Dolls*, *Can-Can*, *Li'l Abner*, and *Destry Rides Again*, becoming the first choreographer credited with five Tony Awards. Hollywood gave Kidd a different scale and camera grammar. He choreographed *The Band Wagon* (1953), including the noir-parody "Girl Hunt Ballet," and *Seven Brides for Seven Brothers* (1954), directed by Stanley Donen, with songs by Gene de Paul and Johnny Mercer. The barn-raising sequence transforms chopping, balancing, courtship, rivalry, and construction into an athletic dramatic contest. His insistence on highly trained dancers allowed dangerous-looking action to remain musically precise, though the finished numbers also depend on performers, stunt expertise, camera placement, editing, sets, and music.

Kidd was also a memorable performer. In *It's Always Fair Weather* (1955), he danced and acted beside Gene Kelly and Dan Dailey as former servicemen confronting postwar disappointment. Later work ranged from *Hello, Dolly!* to television, acting roles, and music-video consultation. His broad career demonstrates that choreographic intelligence can operate through performance, direction, staging, and the adaptation of movement to different media.

At the 69th Academy Awards in March 1997, Kidd received an Honorary Award in recognition of his services to the art of the dance in the art of the screen. The wording is significant: this was not a competitive choreography category for a single film, but career recognition from the Academy. Kidd died at his Los Angeles home on December 23, 2007, leaving a repertory that remains central to discussion of the integrated musical.