Glen Tetley

Born in Cleveland, Ohio, Glen Tetley is one of the 20th century’s most renowned and respected choreographers. His distinguished career has brought him extraordinary acclaim as a choreographer who forged a new contemporary dance vocabulary, fusing classical and modern idioms to create a new form of artistic expression.
Mr. Tetley has created over 50 ballets for the world’s major dance companies. The impressive list of commissions includes American Ballet Theatre, the Stuttgart Ballet, Ballet Rambert, The Royal Ballet, the Netherlands Dance Theatre, The Australian Ballet, Aterballetto, the Royal Swedish Ballet, the Norwegian National Ballet, The Houston Ballet, the Royal Danish Ballet, Dance Theatre of Harlem, Deutsche Oper Am Rhein, London Festival Ballet (now the English National Ballet), and The National Ballet of Canada. For these and many other companies, Mr. Tetley has restaged and produced existing works into their repertoire.
Glen Tetley had been a medical student before he embarked on a career in dance. He studied modern and classical dance with such legendary teachers as Hanya Holm, Martha Graham, Antony Tudor and Margaret Craske. He quickly established himself as a leading male dancer of virtuoso technique performing with such companies as American Ballet Theatre, Jerome Robbins’ Ballets: USA, the Martha Graham Dance Company as well as with Jose Limon, John Butler, and Pearl Lang. He was assistant to Hanya Holm when she staged Cole Porter’s Kiss Me Kate and he performed a show stopping solo choreographed by Agnes de Mille in the Broadway musical Juno.
In 1962, Mr. Tetley began his first choreographic venture, gathering a group of talented dancers together to perform the first program of his own choreography at New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology, which included the premiere of the now classic, Pierrot Lunaire. Since then he has gone on to create works that are now heralded as 20th century classics.
Mr. Tetley has been Artistic Director of both the Netherlands Dance Theatre and the Stuttgart Ballet, where he created some of his most acclaimed ballets.
In February, 1986, Glen Tetley choreographed his first original work for The National Ballet of Canada, a commission he received from the late Erik Bruhn. Alice was instantly acclaimed by both critics and audiences alike and was the beginning of the most artistically creative era in the history of The National Ballet of Canada. Alice was performed in every major dance center in the wor1d, including New York’s Metropolitan Opera House, the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., and London’s Coliseum. From that point Mr. Tetley was appointed Artistic Associate to The National Ballet of Canada, where he remained until 1989.
Honored by the Queen Elizabeth II Coronation Awards from the Royal Academy of Dance, The Tenant Caledonian Award, the Priz Italia RAI Prize, plus numerous other awards and honors, Glen Tetley continues to choreograph new works for companies around the world.