Early Life
Cole was born John Ewing Richter in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Early on he decided to pursue dance with the Denishawn Dance Company led by Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn. He made his first professional appearance in August 1930, and although he had previously studied ballet, Cole was entranced by the Asian influences Denishawn utilized in its choreography and costuming. Cole also performed with another pair of pioneering modernists, Doris Humphrey and Charles Weidman, but eventually left the modern dance world for commercial dance career in nightclubs, performing with Alice Dudley, Anna Austin and Florence Lessing.
No other American dance artist had a similar career trajectory, starting at the roots of modern dance, becoming a commercial dancer in nightclubs across the nation, and ending his career as a desired coach to Hollywood stars and a highly innovative choreographer for the camera.
Read more about this topic: Jack Cole (choreographer)
Famous quotes containing the words early life, early and/or life:
“Many a woman shudders ... at the terrible eclipse of those intellectual powers which in early life seemed prophetic of usefulness and happiness, hence the army of martyrs among our married and unmarried women who, not having cultivated a taste for science, art or literature, form a corps of nervous patients who make fortunes for agreeable physicians ...”
—Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)
“In the true sense one’s native land, with its background of tradition, early impressions, reminiscences and other things dear to one, is not enough to make sensitive human beings feel at home.”
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940)
“And all the great traditions of the Past
They saw reflected in the coming time.
And thus forever with reverted look
The mystic volume of the world they read,
Spelling it backward, like a Hebrew book,
Till life became a Legend of the Dead.”
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1809–1882)