List of Dancers - D

D

• Tabitha and Napoleon D'umo, also known as Nappytabs, are choreographers and creative directors who are credited with developing the new style of hip-hop dance known as lyrical hip-hop. They have been supervising choreographers on America's Best Dance Crew since season one and recurring guest judges and choreographers Fox's So You Think You Can Dance since season four. They currently teach dance classes at The Edge performing Arts Center in Hollywood and travel around the country with Monsters of Hip Hop and Shock the Intensive dance conventions.

• Alex Da Silva is a dancer and choreographer, specializing in Salsa dancing. Da Silva is also known for being a recurring guest choreographer on the Fox TV show So You Think You Can Dance.Da Silva was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. He discovered Salsa dancing at the age of 20. He is credited with contributing to the "LA Style" of Salsa dancing. Currently, he resides in Southern California.

• Astad Deboo, (born in 1947) is an Indian dancer-choreographer, who has mixed a modern and contemporary dance styles, with Indian classical dance forms of Kathak and Kathakali in which he has trained, to create style unique to him.

• Sergei Pavlovich Diaghilev, also referred to as Serge, (March 31, 1872 – August 19, 1929) was a Russian art critic, patron, ballet impresario and founder of the Ballets Russes from which many famous dancers and choreographers would later arise.Diaghilev staged Tchaikovsky's The Sleeping Beauty in London in 1921; it was a production of remarkable magnificence both in settings and costumes, but despite being well received by the public it was a financial disaster for Diaghilev and Oswald Stoll, the theatre-owner, who had backed it. The first cast included the legendary ballerina Olga Spessivtseva. Diaghilev insisted on calling the ballet The Sleeping Princess. When asked why, he quipped, "Because I have no beauties!" The later years of the Ballets Russes were often considered too "intellectual", too "stylish" and seldom had the unconditional success of the first few seasons, although younger choreographers like George Balanchine hit their stride with the Ballet Russes.

• Charles-Louis Didelot (27 March 1767 - 7 November 1837) was a French dancer and choreographer. The son of Charles Didelot, the dance maestro of the King of Sweden, he studied dance with his father, who were instructor in dance at the Swedish Opera, and dubuted as dancer in the theatre of Bollhuset in Stockholm 1786. Didelot taught dance, having an important influence over the development of ballet.

• Isadora Duncan (May 27, 1877 – September 14, 1927) was an American dancer. She was born Angela Isadora Duncan in San Francisco, California and is considered by many to be the mother of Modern Dance. Although never very popular in the United States, she entertained throughout Europe.

• Lucinda Dickey (born August 14, 1960) is an American dancer and actress who is best known for her role as Kelly in the 1984 cult film Breakin’ and the 1984 sequel, Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo. Dickey was born and raised in Hutchinson, Kansas, where at the age of four, she began dancing. While attending college at Kansas State University, she majored in dance and competed in the Miss Kansas pageant, where she won the talent division and finished third runner-up.After college, Dickey moved to Los Angeles and won a dance scholarship with the Roland DuPree Dance Academy. After 10 months, she auditioned for the movie Grease 2, winning a role as one of film's lead dancers. That same year (1982) she landed a stint as a dancer on Solid Gold.

• Doctor Ice influenced Hip-Hop dancing to a new form. His influence can be noted by the dance moves in videos done by artists such as Kid N Play, Scrap Lover and Scoop Lover (dancers for Big Daddy Kane) and G-Wiz and the late Trouble T-Roy (from Heavy D & The Boyz). The commercial world fashioned their dance moves after Michael Jackson but the black community embraced Doc Ice because his dancing was reflective of the type of dance moves done at a house/block party or in the nightclub. He left UTFO in the late 1980s before the group's breakup in 1991 to go on a solo career. His first album, The Mic Stalker in 1989, produced by R&B group Full Force, had the singles 'Word To The Wise', 'Love Jones', and 'Sue Me'. Ice also collaborated with Dino (singer), for his 1990 song 'Romeo' (charting at #6) on the album "Swingin'". His second album, "Rely On Self" appeared in 1994.

• Katherine Mary Dunham (June 22, 1909 – May 21, 2006) was an American dancer, choreographer, songwriter, author, educator and activist who was trained as an anthropologist. Dunham had one of the most successful dance careers in American and European theater of the 20th century and has been called the Matriarch and Queen Mother of Black Dance. During her heyday in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, she was renowned throughout Europe and Latin America as La Grande Katherine, and the Washington Post called her "Dance's Katherine the Great." For more than 30 years she maintained the Katherine Dunham Dance Company, the only permanent, self-subsidized American black dance troupe at that time, and over her long career she choreographed more than 90 individual dances. Dunham was an innovator in African-American modern dance as well as a leader in the field of dance anthropology, or ethnochoreology (see also dance studies). She died in her sleep in New York City on 21 May 2006.

• Shabba Doo (May 11, 1955) is an American actor, dancer, choreographer, and director. He has appeared in film and television. He became one of the founders of hip hop dancing as a member of The Original Lockers. He is one of the pioneers the dance style commonly known as "locking". Besides his work in film and television he has served as a choreographer to many singers such as Lionel Richie, Madonna, and Luther Vandross to name a few. Presently he serves as choreographer for Jamie Kennedy's new MTV sitcom, Blowin’ Up. He is also well remembered for his choreography of Three Six Mafia's performance on the 78th Annual Academy Awards.