KIDD, MICHAEL

KIDD, MICHAEL (born Milton Greenwald) (1919– ), U.S. dancer and stage and film choreographer. Kidd studied at the school of the American Ballet in New York. His debut as dancer was in The Eternal Road (1937). He was a member of the American Ballet and toured with lincoln kirstein 's Ballet Caravan and as a soloist and assistant director of Dance Players before joining Ballet Theater in 1942. He was noted for comic and character roles in Eugene Loring's Billy the Kid and Jerome Robbins' Fancy Free. He choreographed his first ballet, On Stage\!, in 1945. Over five decades Kidd created winsome and imaginative dances for the Broadway stage and Hollywood musicals. He also choreographed for television, including the television special Baryshnikov in Hollywood (1982). For the movies Kidd choreographed Where's Charley (1949), Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954), and Hello, Dolly (1969). As he approached his sixtieth birthday Kidd capped a vital career in the theater with superb performances as a comic actor. Kidd received Antoinette Perry Awards for the choreography in the musicals Finian's Rainbow (1947), Guys and Dolls (1951), Can-Can (1953), Li'l Abner (1956), and Destry Rides Again (1959). (Amnon Shiloah (2nd ed.)