Eugene Loring

Eugene Loring, born LeRoy Kerpestein on August 2, 1911, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, was an American dancer, choreographer, teacher, and administrator who appeared on Broadway between 1935 and 1941. The son of a saloon-keeper, he grew up on a small island in Milwaukee's river system and began dancing in his father's saloon. Nine years of piano study broadened his musical understanding into orchestration, and his involvement with the Wisconsin Players, under the direction of Russian-born Boris Glagolin, cultivated a strong theatrical sensibility and an awareness of dance as a dramatic force. He also took gymnastic lessons during his formative years in Milwaukee.

Using savings from work as a hardware-store manager, Loring traveled to New York City in 1934, near the lowest point of the Great Depression, and gained entry to the School of American Ballet, the institution newly established by George Balanchine and Lincoln Kirstein. Trained in the Russian Imperial tradition at SAB, he danced with Balanchine's first American company, American Ballet, and successfully auditioned for Michel Fokine. When Kirstein founded Ballet Caravan in 1936 as a company dedicated specifically to American choreographic development, Loring emerged alongside Lew Christensen as one of its most significant products. The two later formed a small company together, Dance Players, which operated from 1941 to 1942.

Within two years of joining Ballet Caravan, Loring both choreographed and performed in Billy the Kid, a work that has maintained an unbroken production history and holds recognition as the first American ballet classic. Following a choreographic residency at Bennington College in Vermont, he joined Ballet Theatre, now known as American Ballet Theatre, in 1939. In that company's inaugural season, he choreographed and danced in The Great American Goof, a work with a libretto by William Saroyan.

His Broadway credits include The Beautiful People, Gizelle, the musical Miss Pocahontas, The Devil and Daniel Webster, and Alma Mater. He also choreographed the Broadway musicals Carmen Jones and Silk Stockings. In 1943, Loring relocated to Los Angeles under contract to MGM, where he took on a feature role in National Velvet before beginning his choreographic work for the studio. His film credits as director and choreographer include Ziegfeld Follies, Funny Face, Silk Stockings, The Toast of New Orleans, Deep in My Heart, and Meet Me in Las Vegas. Among the dancers he collaborated with most frequently were Fred Astaire, Cyd Charisse, and James Mitchell.

In 1959, Loring commissioned architect Richard Neutra to design his home in the Hollywood Hills. His work in Los Angeles also encompassed the development of a versatile approach to professional dance training he called Freestyle, which included his own system of dance notation, Kineseography, introduced in 1955. He operated the American School of Dance in Hollywood according to these principles. In 1965, on invitation from Dean Clayton Garrison, Loring moved into university education to chair the Department of Dance within the School of Fine Arts at the newly formed University of California, Irvine. He retired from UCI in 1981 and returned to New York. He died on August 30, 1982, at the age of 71.