Donald Saddler

Person
Biography
Donald Saddler was a dancer and choreographer whose career spanned more than 60 years and embraced opera, television, movies, ballet, and Broadway. Born in California as the youngest of 12 children, he started dancing to regain strength after a bout of scarlet fever, and as a teenager danced in MGM musicals. In his first class, Saddler met Tula Ellice Finklea, who would later marry their teacher (Nico Charisse) and change her name to Cyd Charisse. By 1939, he had moved to New York as a charter member of Ballet Theatre, the company that would later evolve into ABT. His first Pillow experience was as a member of that company in 1941, when the dancers scraped by on unemployment while living and rehearsing at Jacob's Pillow. In addition to appearing here in ballet classics with Alicia Markova and Anton Dolin (an experience he described in his journal as “one of the most thrilling days of my dancing career”), he danced in the landmark revival of Ruth St. Denis's 1905 Radha, now preserved on film. Saddler also first encountered Joe Pilates here that summer, and he continued a Pilates regimen well into his 80s. He earned his first Tony for choreographing Leonard Bernstein's Wonderful Town on Broadway in 1953, and he created a dance drama called Winesburg, Ohio in 1958, presented on a shared program at the Pillow. He returned to the Pillow two years later as a performer with Valerie Bettis, in the world premiere of a work based on Truman Capote stories. As a Broadway hoofer, his shows spanned from Jerome Robbins's High Button Shoes in 1947 to the 2001 revival of Follies in which he partnered Marge Champion. His partnership with Champion led to weekly studio sessions in Manhattan, chronicled in a 2009 documentary film, Keep Dancing. During his lifetime, he maintained that he had been born several months after Champion, in January of 1920. But after his death on November 1, 2014, at the Actors Fund Home in New Jersey, it was revealed that he had actually been born in 1918, making him the senior partner of this dance couple by 18 months.
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Festival Artist Programs, Bios and Correspondence 1958
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