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 and/or life:
“It is not too much to say that next after the passion to learn there is no quality so indispensable to the successful prosecution of science as imagination. Find me a people whose early medicine is not mixed up with magic and incantations, and I will find you a people devoid of all scientific ability.”
—Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914)
“He can have this old life anytime he wants to. You hear that? Huh, you hear it? Come on. You’re welcome to it, Old Timer. Let me know you’re up there, come on. Love me, hate me, kill me,
anything. Just let me know it.”
—Donn Pierce, U.S. screenwriter, Frank R. Pierson, and Stuart Rosenberg. Luke Jackson (Paul Newman)