Graciela Daniele

Graciela Daniele, born December 8, 1939, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, to Raúl Daniele and Rosa del Carmen Almoina, is an Argentine-American dancer, choreographer, theatre director, and composer whose Broadway career spans from 1964 to the present. Following her parents' divorce, her mother worked as a secretary for the Argentine government before later becoming an actress. Daniele began formal dance training at age seven at Teatro Colón, Argentina's national opera house and the country's equivalent of Moscow's Bolshoi Theatre.

She subsequently relocated to Paris to continue her ballet studies. While living there, she attended a performance of West Side Story featuring Jerome Robbins's original choreography. The experience of witnessing dance function as an integral component of storytelling led her to move to New York City to pursue jazz and modern dance, forms she regarded as particularly suited to expressing human emotion on stage. In New York, she studied with Martha Graham and Merce Cunningham while working alongside Bob Fosse, Agnes de Mille, and Michael Bennett.

Daniele made her Broadway debut in What Makes Sammy Run? in 1964. Her subsequent performing credits include Here's Where I Belong (1968), Promises, Promises (1968), Coco (1969), Follies (1971), and Chicago (1975). Bennett hired her to assist him on Follies, and she went on to earn her first full choreographer credit with the 1979 revival of The Most Happy Fella.

Her Broadway choreography and direction credits are extensive. She choreographed The Pirates of Penzance (1981), Zorba (1983), The Rink (1984), The Mystery of Edwin Drood (1985), and The Goodbye Girl (1993). She served as director and choreographer for Once on This Island (1990), Marie Christine (1999), and Annie Get Your Gun (1999). For Chronicle of a Death Foretold (1995), she held the combined roles of director, choreographer, and writer. Additional credits include Ragtime (1998, choreographer), Chita Rivera: The Dancer's Life (2005, director and choreographer), The Pirate Queen (2007, musical staging), and The Visit (2015, choreographer). She also contributed additional Spanish lyrics to Working (1978) and provided musical staging for A History of the American Film (1978). She served as creative consultant on Barbara Cook's Broadway! (2004) and as movement consultant on Elaine Stritch at Liberty (2002).

Daniele has received numerous Tony Award nominations across multiple categories. Her choreography nominations include The Pirates of Penzance (1981), The Rink (1984), The Mystery of Edwin Drood (1986), Dangerous Games (1990), Once on This Island (1991), The Goodbye Girl (1993), Chronicle of a Death Foretold (1996), and Ragtime (1998). She received Tony nominations for Best Direction of a Musical for Once on This Island (1991) and for Best Book of a Musical for Chronicle of a Death Foretold (1996). In 2020, she received a Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre. Her Drama Desk Award nominations span choreography, direction, and book across productions including The Pirates of Penzance (1981), Hello Again (1994), Chronicle of a Death Foretold (1996), Ragtime (1998), A New Brain (1999), and Bernarda Alba (2006).

Beyond Broadway, Daniele directed and choreographed for opera, dance, and theatre companies throughout the United States. She choreographed for Ballet Hispanico and served as a director-in-residence at Lincoln Center. In 1991, she became the first director to stage William Finn's two one-act musicals, March of the Falsettos and Falsettoland, as a single evening of theatre, produced at the Hartford Stage Company; that combination subsequently became the musical Falsettos. Her Off-Broadway work includes several productions with writers Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty, among them Dessa Rose (2005) and The Glorious Ones (2007), both at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater at Lincoln Center, as well as collaborations with Michael John LaChiusa, including Little Fish (2003) and Bernarda Alba (2006). She also worked with Woody Allen on three films: Mighty Aphrodite, Everyone Says I Love You, and Bullets over Broadway.

In 2005, Daniele was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame. A stage musical based on her life, The Gardens of Anuncia, created by Michael John LaChiusa, premiered in 2021.