![the chorus line state theater the chorus line state theater](https://wagner.edu/performing-arts/files/2016/09/2016-A-Chorus-Line-01.jpg)
Avian recounted the first rehearsal in “Dancing Man”: Avian his assistant, and from the beginning they realized that they had their work cut out for them. There was, for instance, “Coco,” a 1969 André Previn-Alan Jay Lerner musical that garnered a lot of attention, both for its enormous budget and for its star, Katharine Hepburn, who played the fashion designer Coco Chanel. Some of their projects were more challenging than others. Bennett, a summer stock production of the Richard Rodgers musical “No Strings.” Not long after, he got his first chance to see a show choreographed by his friend Mr. He also studied at the Boston Ballet School.Īfter the “West Side Story” tour - which was playing Berlin when the Berlin Wall went up in 1961 - he booked a national tour of “Carnival!,” working under the director and choreographer Gower Champion. He didn’t have any formal training, though, until he enrolled at Boston University, where he graduated from the College of Fine Arts in 1958. “Boys weren’t supposed to dance, especially not in Armenian culture, but I loved music, and I especially loved the freedom I found in dancing.” “When my parents went out, I would push back the furniture, clear an open space, turn on the record player and leap around the apartment,” he wrote in his memoir. By the time he was 11, he knew he loved to dance and was pretty good at it. His father was a chef, and his mother was a seamstress. 26, 1937, in Manhattan to John and Esther (Keleshian) Avedisian, Armenian immigrants.
THE CHORUS LINE STATE THEATER PROFESSIONAL
Robert Avedisian (he shortened the name when he became a professional dancer) was born on Dec. I didn’t want to be Michael, and he didn’t want to be me.”
![the chorus line state theater the chorus line state theater](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/d563CaxWySM/maxresdefault.jpg)
Michael was a more mercurial personality than I, and ambitious though I was, I did not possess Michael’s burning intensity. In effect I seemed to instinctively assume the role of his editor. “I knew him so well that I could tell him exactly what I thought. “I wasn’t cautious with Michael,” he wrote. Avian wrote about what made his creative partnership with Mr. “The conservative word for ‘A Chorus Line’ might be tremendous, or perhaps terrific,” Clive Barnes wrote in The New York Times, reviewing the original production at the Public Theater in May 1975 it quickly moved uptown and ran for 15 years and 6,137 performances on Broadway, a record at the time (though it has since been surpassed by several shows).
![the chorus line state theater the chorus line state theater](https://www.stagewhispers.com.au/sites/default/files/editor/Line_2_12180_CMYK.jpeg)
Avian’s snazzy footwork and Marvin Hamlisch’s catchy music, it caused a sensation. “A Chorus Line” is a musical about dancers creating a musical, and with Mr. Then, in 1975, came their biggest hit of all, “A Chorus Line,” on which they were co-choreographers.
![the chorus line state theater the chorus line state theater](http://www.cassieabate.com/uploads/4/5/5/0/45504785/23770050728-5668ffd5bc-o_orig.jpg)
He was assistant or associate choreographer for Mr. Avian aboard as assistant choreographer, and they worked together for the next two decades, until Mr. In 1968, when he choreographed the Neil Simon/Burt Bacharach/Hal David musical “Promises, Promises” for Broadway, he brought Mr. Bennett had graduated from dancer to choreographer. The two became friends, and within a few years Mr. “I loved the adventure of traveling around the world,” he wrote in “Dancing Man: A Broadway Choreographer’s Journey,” a memoir written with Tom Santopietro and published last year, “but the tour would prove even more momentous for one all-encompassing reason: During rehearsals in New York, I met a fellow castmate, Michael Bennett, a 17-year-old high school dropout marked for greatness.” Avian began his career as a dancer, and early on, about 1960, he was cast in an international tour of “West Side Story.” It all started with a happenstance of casting. Bennett for “A Chorus Line” (1975) and “Ballroom” (1978). He shared Tony Awards for choreography with Mr. Avian also choreographed the Broadway hits “Miss Saigon” (1991) and “Sunset Boulevard” (1994), among others, and directed a 2006 revival of “A Chorus Line” that ran on Broadway for almost two years, as well as productions of that show in London in 2013 and at New York City Center in 2018. His husband, Peter Pileski, said through a spokesman that the cause was cardiac arrest. Bob Avian, a choreographer, director and producer who was deeply involved in some of the biggest Broadway shows of the last 60 years, including - with his frequent collaborator, Michael Bennett - “A Chorus Line,” one of the longest-running musicals in history, died on Thursday in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.