Robert La Fosse

Robert La Fosse is a dancer, choreographer, teacher, and performer who built a career across classical ballet, Broadway, and American vernacular dance forms. Born in Beaumont, Texas, La Fosse trained locally and in New York before joining American Ballet Theatre in 1977, where he rose to principal dancer. In 1986, he joined New York City Ballet as a principal dancer, a position from which he would also develop his work as a choreographer.

La Fosse began choreographing in 1985, creating works that responded to classical structure through distinctly American idioms. His ballets *Puss in Boots* and *Woodland Sketches* were presented in the 1988 American Music Festival. In *Concerto in Five Movements*, set to Prokofiev, La Fosse shaped bravura ensembles and kaleidoscopic movement to respond to the composer's shifting meters. His collaboration with NYCB and Jazz at Lincoln Center on *Duke!* drew explicitly on Lindy hop, 1940s swing, bebop, and tap, integrating these vernacular forms into ballet structure.

Beyond the stage, La Fosse appeared on Broadway in *Dancin'* and *Jerome Robbins' Broadway*, and performed on screen as Dr. Stahlbaum in George Balanchine's film version of *The Nutcracker*. Throughout his career, he has balanced performance with teaching, sharing his knowledge of both classical technique and the jazz and swing vocabularies that inform his artistic vision.