Eliot Feld

American ballet choreographer, teacher, and director

Eliot Feld (born July 5, 1942) is an American modern ballet choreographer, performer, teacher, and director. Feld works in contemporary ballet. His company and schools, including the Feld Ballet and Ballet Tech, are involved in dance and dance education in New York City. Feld has choreographed 149 ballets since 1967, with his work being performed by such companies as American Ballet Theatre, the Joffrey Ballet, the Juilliard School, New York City Ballet, the New York City Opera, and Mikhail Baryshnikov, among many others.

Feld was born in Brooklyn, New York, Feld attended the High School of Performing Arts in New York, and studied at the School of American Ballet and the New Dance Group, as well as with Richard Thomas and Donald McKayle. He performed as a child in George Balanchine's original production of The Nutcracker as the Nutcracker Prince; and later with the companies of Mary Anthony, Pearl Lang, and Sophie Maslow. At sixteen he appeared on Broadway in West Side Story and was cast as Baby John in the movie version of the musical; His other Broadway credits from this period include I Can Get It for You Wholesale and Fiddler on the Roof. He appeared on television on The Garry Moore Show and The Ed Sullivan Show. Later, Feld joined American Ballet Theatre, leaving at age 25 to form his own company. In the early 1980s, with Cora Cahan, Feld founded the Joyce Theater as a home for the Feld Ballet. Feld was also instrumental in the creation of the Lawrence A. Wien Center for Dance & Theater at 890 Broadway in New York City.

In 1967, at the age of twenty five, Feld broke away from the American Ballet Theatre to form his own company, the American Ballet Company. Feld used his new company, later known simply as Feld Ballet, to explore a variety of dance genres. In 1978, Feld began a ballet school, the New Ballet School. Feld believed that all children should have the opportunity to learn dance, regardless of their family income. In keeping with that philosophy, and in partnership with the New York City Board of Education, he auditioned more than 1,500 children at eight New York City public schools; almost 150 students were then enrolled, tuition free, to a 17 week course at the New Ballet School. Additional dancers at the school were drawn from other troupes and academies. Since its 1978 founding, Feld's school has auditioned more than 900,000 New York City public school students, and invited more than 26,000 children to take free Introduction to Ballet classes. In 1996 the school changed its name to the New York City Public School for Dance. In 1997, Feld merged the New York City Public School for Dance and Feld Ballet into Ballet Tech, providing a unified organization, and establishing a professional performing outlet for the school's graduates. In 2003, Feld disbanded Feld Ballet to focus on his schools. Today, Ballet Tech's activities include the tuition free New York City Public School for Dance, and Kids Dance, a pre professional children's group. Feld's choreography also appeared in the revival of the Broadway musical On the Town (2001), performed in Central Park. In place of the company's usual summer engagement at the Joyce Theater, Feld included several of his own dancers of the Ballet Tech company. Feld uses aspects from ballet and modern dance and fuses them together in his work. "The down of one, the up of the other — both beauties attracted me, I think I've spent my choreographic life trying in some way to reconcile, cope, deal with these two elements. He claims to have always "loved the pointe shoe." Feld's works are varied and contain anything from off beat music to aerobic exercises, including somersaults, push ups, sprints, leaps, and calisthenics. Some of his choreography was inspired by Jewish material; other works were influenced by Martha Graham. Feld has choreographed 15 ballets to the music of Steve Reich. Pointing 3, Feld's most recent ballet, premiered in New York in June 2018; it was choreographed for 4 students from the Ballet Tech school, to the second movement of Music for Airports, by Brian Eno, arranged by David Lang.

Feld has picked up numerous awards, including the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship (1969), the Dance Magazine Award (1990), and an honorary doctorate degree from Juilliard (1991).