Andy Blankenbuehler

Andy Blankenbuehler is an American dancer, choreographer, and director born on March 7, 1970, in Cincinnati, Ohio. He attended Nativity School, graduating in 1984, and later St. Xavier High School, graduating in 1988. He earned a bachelor's degree from Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas.

Blankenbuehler began his Broadway performing career in 1992, appearing in productions including Guys and Dolls, Steel Pier, Fosse, A Saturday Night, and Man of La Mancha, among others, with his performing credits extending through 2002. He appears briefly in the 2008 documentary Every Little Step, which chronicled the 2006 Broadway revival of A Chorus Line, with his Polaroid shown among those cut from a callback for the production.

His transition into choreography brought significant recognition. He choreographed In the Heights on Broadway during the 2007–08 season, earning both the Tony Award for Best Choreography and the Drama Desk Award for that work. Additional New York choreography credits include the City Center Encores! productions of The Apple Tree in 2006 and The Wiz in 2009, as well as contributions to the Broadway By The Year series covering the years 1930, 1938, and 1978. His Broadway choreography credits also include 9 to 5, which ran during the 2008–09 season, and the 2012 revival of Annie.

Blankenbuehler served as both director and choreographer of Bring It On: The Musical, written by Jeff Whitty with music by Lin-Manuel Miranda and Tom Kitt and lyrics by Miranda and Amanda Green. The production premiered at the Alliance Theatre in Atlanta, Georgia, on January 16, 2011, and subsequently played the Ahmanson Theater in Los Angeles, where Blankenbuehler received the 2011 L.A. Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Choreography. He also choreographed the Frank Wildhorn world premiere production of Waiting for the Moon, a show featuring six full-length dance sequences, including one exceeding ten minutes in length, and received a Barrymore Award nomination for that work.

Blankenbuehler directed and choreographed Bandstand, which premiered at Paper Mill Playhouse in New Jersey in October 2015, with music by Richard Oberacker and book and lyrics by Robert Taylor and Oberacker. A developmental lab of the production had taken place in August and September 2014. Bandstand subsequently moved to Broadway, where Blankenbuehler's work earned him the Tony Award for Best Choreography in 2017.

His choreography for Hamilton, which he worked on both Off-Broadway and on Broadway beginning in 2015, earned him a special Drama Desk Award that year as well as the Tony Award for Best Choreography in 2016. The Drama Desk citation recognized the choreography as indispensable to the musical's storytelling and noted a dynamic and fluid style consistently present across his body of work. In 2018, Blankenbuehler received the Kennedy Center Honor in recognition of his contributions to Hamilton.

In 2016, Blankenbuehler choreographed both the Broadway revival of Cats, which began previews on July 14 and opened on August 2, and a television revival of Dirty Dancing starring Abigail Breslin and Shane Harper. He later choreographed the film adaptation of Cats. He has also choreographed for Bette Midler and directed, choreographed, and co-conceived the production Nights on Broadway at Caesars Palace. Most recently, Blankenbuehler choreographed, directed, and co-wrote Only Gold, a new musical with music by Kate Nash, at MCC Theater. Across his career, Blankenbuehler has received five Tony Award nominations for Best Choreography, winning three times, for In the Heights in 2008, Hamilton in 2016, and Bandstand in 2017.