Famous Choregraphers, Dance Teachers “P...-”
for performance, language & visual arts, music, social studies, classrooms, home schoolers.

Hermes Pan
Jules Perrot

Marius Petipa
Pearl Primus

Hermes Pan and Ginger Rogers, Print

Hermes Pan
née Panagiotopoulos
b. 12-10-1910; Nashville, TN
d. 9-19-1990

Dancer Hermes Pan is best remembered for his choreography work with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.

Jules Perrot
b. 8-18-1810; Lyon, France
d. 8-29-1892; France

Jules Perrot was a renowned 19th century danseur (male ballet dancer), choreographer, and Balletmaster of the St. Petersburg Imperial Ballet. Perrot also choregraphed the divertimento (amusement) “Pas de Quatre” that brought together the leading ballerinas of the time as well as some of most famous ballets of the 19th century La Esmeralda, Ondine, and Giselle with Jean Coralli.

In 1874 artist Edgar Degas honored Jules Perrot in one of his dance painting by imagining the dance master commanding a practice session in the recently destroyed Paris Opera House.

Marius Petipa
b. 3-11-1818; Marseille, France
d. 7-14-1910; Crimea, Russia

Marius Petipa, a ballet dancer, teacher, and choreographer, is cited nearly unanimously to be the most influential balletmaster and choreographer that has ever lived. See the Ballets List for curriculum enrichment resources related to Petipa ballets such as Don Quixote (1869); La Bayadère (1877); Le Talisman (1889); The Sleeping Beauty (1890); The Nutcracker (1892), Raymonda (1898), Le Corsaire, Giselle, La Esmeralda, Coppélia, La Fille Mal Gardée (with Lev Ivanov), The Little Humpbacked Horse and Swan Lake (with Lev Ivanov).

Pearl Primus
b. 11-29-1919; Trinidad and Tobago
d. 10-29-1994

Pearl Primus, a dancer, choreographer and anthropologist, played an important role in the presentation of African dance to American audiences.

Primus, who was trained in classical and preclassical dance by the master teacher Louis Horst and studied with such great dance pioneers as Martha Graham, Doris Humphrey, Hanya Holm and Charles Weidman, also received a Ph.D. degree in anthropolgy from New York University.

In July 1991 she was awarded the national Medal of Arts by President Bush, the highest honor given by the National Endowment for the Arts.

• more Black History posters
• Dancing in the Light: Six Dance Compositions By African American Choreographers / Asadata Dafora, Katherine Dunham, Pearl Primus, Talley Beatty, Donald McKayle, Bill T. Jones, DVD

Alexander Pushkin
b. 1907; Russia
d. 1970

Dancer Alexander Ivanovich Pushkin is legendary as Rudolf Nureyev and Mikhail Baryshnikov's ballet teacher, as were nearly all the leading male dancers of the Kirov Ballet from the 1940s through the 1960s.