Ann Reinking

Ann Reinking (November 10, 1949 – December 12, 2020) was an American dancer, actress, choreographer, and singer born in Seattle, Washington, and raised in Bellevue. Her father, Walter Floyd Reinking, worked as a hydraulic engineer, and her mother, Frances (née Harrison), was a homemaker. As a child, Reinking studied ballet with former Ballets Russes dancers Marian and Illaria Ladre in Seattle. During her middle and high school years, she attended the San Francisco Ballet on a summer scholarship, and after graduating from Bellevue High School she took summer classes offered by the Joffrey Ballet at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington. Her professional performing debut came at age 12 in a production of Giselle with The Royal Ballet in the United Kingdom.

At 18, Reinking relocated to New York City, where she danced in the corps de ballet at Radio City Music Hall and performed in the ensemble of the second national tour of Fiddler on the Roof. She made her Broadway debut at 19 in Cabaret, subsequently appearing as a chorus dancer in Coco (1969), Wild and Wonderful (1971), and Pippin (1972). It was during Pippin that director and choreographer Bob Fosse took notice of her, and the two developed both a professional and romantic relationship, with Reinking becoming his protégée even as Fosse remained legally married to, though separated from, Gwen Verdon.

Reinking's Broadway career spanned from 1966 to 1999 and encompassed a wide range of productions. She earned critical recognition in 1974 playing Maggie in Over Here!, a role that brought her a Theatre World Award. The following year she starred as Joan of Arc in Goodtime Charley (1975), receiving Tony Award and Drama Desk nominations for Best Actress in a Musical. In 1976 she replaced Donna McKechnie as Cassie in A Chorus Line, and in 1977 she stepped into the starring role of Roxie Hart in Chicago, taking over from Verdon in the Fosse-directed production. Reinking appeared in Fosse's revue Dancin' in 1978, earning another Tony nomination. That same year, her romantic relationship with Fosse ended when he began dating Julie Hagerty, though their creative collaboration continued. In 1986, she returned to Broadway in a revival of Sweet Charity, replacing Debbie Allen in Fosse's production.

Her screen work during this period included the semi-autobiographical Fosse film All That Jazz (1979), in which she played Katie Jagger, a role drawn loosely from her own life and relationship with Fosse. She subsequently appeared as Grace Farrell in Annie (1982) and as Micki Salinger in Micki & Maude (1984). In March 1985, Reinking appeared at the 57th Academy Awards to perform the Phil Collins song "Against All Odds (Take a Look at Me Now)" in a mostly lip-synced routine that drew criticism from reviewers at the Los Angeles Times and People, as well as from Collins himself in a Rolling Stone interview.

In 1991, Reinking appeared in the Broadway National Tour of Bye Bye Birdie alongside Tommy Tune, her first theatrical engagement following the birth of her son Christopher. That same year she founded the Broadway Theatre Project, a Florida training program connecting students with theater professionals including Gwen Verdon, Julie Andrews, Gregory Hines, Ben Vereen, Jeff Goldblum, Terrence Mann, James Naughton, Patrick Wilson, and Desmond Richardson. In 1992 she contributed choreography to Tommy Tune Tonite!, a three-man revue featuring Tune, and in 1995 she choreographed the ABC television movie version of Bye Bye Birdie.

The defining achievement of Reinking's later career came in 1996, when she was asked to create choreography in the style of Bob Fosse for a concert staging of Chicago at City Center's Encores! series. When no suitable actress could be secured for Roxie Hart, Reinking agreed to reprise the role herself after nearly two decades. The production transferred to Broadway with its Encores! cast — Reinking, Bebe Neuwirth, Joel Grey, James Naughton, and Marcia Lewis — and became a landmark revival. It celebrated its 20th anniversary in November 2016 and, as of March 2020 when theaters closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, held the record as the longest-running American musical on Broadway. For her choreography on the revival, Reinking received the Tony Award for Best Choreography and the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Choreography, both in 1997. She subsequently recreated her choreography for the 1997 London transfer of Chicago, which starred Ute Lemper and Ruthie Henshall.

In 1998, Reinking co-created, co-directed, and co-choreographed the revue Fosse, receiving a Tony Award co-nomination for Best Direction of a Musical. The production also appeared on Broadway among her credits. For the 2000 West End production of Fosse, she and the late Bob Fosse jointly received the 2001 Olivier Award for Best Theatre Choreographer. In 2005, she appeared in Mad Hot Ballroom, a documentary about New York City public school dance competitions for inner-city youth, having served as a judge of those competitions. In 2012, she contributed choreography to the Broadway production of An Evening with Patti LuPone and Mandy Patinkin, and she served on the advising committee of the American Theatre Wing.

Reinking collaborated with composer Bruce Wolosoff and Thodos Dance Chicago in 2011 to create the ballet The Devil in the White City, based on Erik Larsen's novel of the same name; the Chicago Sun-Times named it Best Dance of 2011. In 2013, she and Wolosoff created A Light in the Dark, a ballet inspired by the lives of Helen Keller and Ann Sullivan, which received a nomination for a Chicago/Midwest Emmy Award in Outstanding Achievement for Arts/Entertainment Programming. In 2001, Florida State University awarded her an honorary doctorate for her contributions to the arts.

Reinking married four times. Her first marriage, to Broadway actor Larry Small, took place on March 19, 1972, and ended in divorce the same year. She was married to investment banker Herbert Allen Jr. from 1982 to 1989, and subsequently to businessman James Stuart, with whom she had her son Christopher, before that marriage ended in 1991. In 1994 she married sportswriter Peter Talbert. Her son Christopher has Marfan syndrome, and Reinking worked with the Marfan Foundation to raise awareness of the disease, producing the 2009 documentary In My Hands: A Story of Marfan Syndrome. She retired in 2017 and lived in Paradise Valley, Arizona.

Reinking died in her sleep at a hotel in Seattle on December 12, 2020, at the age of 71, while visiting family in the area. She is interred at Paradise Memorial Gardens in Scottsdale, Arizona. Following her death, the lobby of the Ambassador Theatre, home of the Chicago revival, displayed an In Memoriam poster of her in costume as Roxie Hart from the 1996 opening cast. Students of her Broadway Theatre Project subsequently produced a documentary in her honor titled The Joy is in the Work.