Staś Kmieć

Staś Kmieć is an American theater and dance choreographer and performer born in Haverhill, Massachusetts, of Polish descent. He trained at Tufts University and later graduated with distinguished honors from the Maria Curie-Skłodowska University Studium Folklorzystczne in Lublin, Poland. His work spans classical ballet, folk dance, tap, and musical theater, and he is recognized as the foremost authority in the United States on Polish folk dance and culture.

Kmieć began his professional performance career with the Boston Ballet, through which he toured internationally alongside Rudolf Nureyev in Nureyev's production of Don Quixote. After relocating to New York City, he performed with Lee Theodore's American Dance Machine and danced with the Metropolitan Opera Ballet. He completed two two-year national tours of Jerome Robbins' Fiddler on the Roof, accumulating a total of 1,682 performances across those productions and subsequent stagings featuring Theodore Bikel, Paul Sorvino, and Spiro Malas. His Broadway career extended from 1983 to 2000 and included credits in Happy Birthday, Mr. Abbott!, work with the Boston Ballet Company, and Fiddler on the Roof.

On screen, Kmieć appeared as a dancer in Mona Lisa Smile and The Thing About My Folks, and took acting roles in Robert Redford's Quiz Show, Woody Allen's Don't Drink the Water, and Todd Haynes' Dottie Gets Spanked, which was featured at the Sundance Film Festival and on the PBS series TV Families. As a choreographer for film, he created the dance sequences for Billy Crudup in Trust the Man and choreographed the wedding sequence in The Comedian.

His choreographic work for the stage includes Off-Broadway productions at La Mama and New World Stages, the national tour of Me and My Girl, and the Irish premiere of The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. He has also choreographed plays including Thieves' Carnival, Summit Conference, Jest, You Can't Take It With You, Dead Souls with Hank Azaria and Oliver Platt, and The Defense of Prague. Director Scott Schwartz, who selected Kmieć through a DanceBreak 2007 panel of Broadway choreographers, directors, and composers, engaged him as part of the creative team for My Antonia, a play with music by Stephen Schwartz that premiered in Los Angeles at the Rubicon Theater and Pacific Resident Theaters in 2008. In 2014, Kmieć received the Excellence in Choreography Award at the New York Musical Theater Festival for his work on the new musical The Mapmaker's Opera.

Kmieć founded two dance companies: the Sarabande Repertory Dance Ensemble and The Lublin Polish Song and Dance Ensemble, which he established in 1977 while still in his teens and which has performed internationally. The Lublin ensemble was the first group outside of Poland to present the songs and dances of the Lublin sub-regions of Chełm, Biłgoraj, and Powiśle, and toured Poland in 1986. He also served as director of the 1995 and 1999 Dożynki Harvest Festival in Orange County, New York, incorporating over 250 performers. In 2011, he became Artistic Director of Ballet Western Reserve in Youngstown, Ohio, returning again from 2014 to 2016, during which time he created A Youngstown Nutcracker, set in the city after the Civil War and portraying the central Stahlbaum family as interfaith.

As an educator, Kmieć has been a guest instructor at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy, Boston Conservatory of Music, Tufts University, Hofstra University, Hunter College, and Youngstown State University. He served on the faculty at Ballet Arts in Manhattan's City Center and directed the New York City Ballet Education Department's NYCB Workout program. His teaching focuses on the Broadway styles of Jack Cole, Jerome Robbins, Bob Fosse, and other choreographers of the Golden Age of musical theater.

Kmieć is co-author of Polish Folk Dances and Songs: A Step-by-Step Guide, published by Hippocrene Books in 1997 and regarded as the definitive encyclopedia of Polish dance in the English language. He has served as culture editor of The Polish American Journal since 1987 and as an arts columnist for The Post Eagle. PBS has featured him as its resident Polish culture expert and cultural ambassador for Poland's Mazowsze Polish Song and Dance Company. In 1989, Poland's Ministry of Culture honored him with the Oskar Kolberg Award for his promotion of Polish culture abroad. He is a member of Actors' Equity Association, Screen Actors' Guild, the American Guild of Musical Artists, and the Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers, has served on the National Council of Actors' Equity and the AGMA Board of Governors, and is a voter for the Tony Awards. Kmieć resides in Manhattan.