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The first biography of the celebrated choreographer/director of Broadway, ballet, and Hollywood-a man of towering achievement and extraordinary personal demons.

For decades he was one of the most commanding creative forces in America. His work on such shows as On the Town, The King and I, West Side Story, Fiddler on the Roof, Gypsy, and Jerome Robbins's Broadway earned him five Tony Awards and two Academy Awards. His brilliance with American Ballet Theatre and New York City Ballet established him as one of America's great ballet masters.

But when Jerome Robbins, né Rabinowitz, died at the age of seventy-nine in 1998, he was a haunted man. All of his life, he had struggled with demons: his bisexuality, his Judaism, his often bitter relationship with his parents, his betrayals of others during the McCarthy hearings, and his perfectionism that bordered on the sadistic. He was loved and hated in equal parts; and only now, in this groundbreaking biography by insider Greg Lawrence, based upon two years of research and dozens of interviews with Robbins's family, friends, and colleagues, can the full measure of both the artist and the man be taken. It is a fascinating portrait of light and dark-like its subject, a work rich in complexity. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (9)

A Musical Legend
Jerome Robbins accomplished more in his lifetime thanmany other Broadway icons.He wrote, choreographed, danced ,and directed many musicals and ballets. He was at times very nastyand demanding of the cast he worked with. He also had lots of friend. This book chronicles his childhood through to his death.The author spends time detailing both the ballet part of Robbins life and the Broadway part. Unless you are a dancer, the Broadway life is much more interesting. There are loads of interesting facts in this book. For instance ,Mary Martin was considered for the lead in Funny Girl !!!Jerome Robbins life was fascinating. His story is easy to read and really holds your interest. Advice, skim the ballet sections.

Exhausting
I basically enjoyed the book, but I wish it had been about a hundred pages shorter.I would have preferred a book that really focused on the Broadway career.I have very little interest in ballet and a lot of the book was about ballet.It assumes the dancers mentioned are household words, but aside from Villella, Nureyev, Baryshnikov, Suzanne Farrell and a couple of others, I had no idea who these people were and what they said was not particularly interesting.This is an ambitious book and I admire its ambition, but Robbins was a part of many worlds and in order to do all these worlds justice the whole is diluted.It could have been several books - one dealing with his early life and Jewish heritage, another dealing with his sexual nature, another with his Broadway career, another with his career in dance, and yet another dealing with his early flirtation with and later repudiation of Communism.This book tries to cover all the bases and ends up being exhausting.As I said the ballet part didn't really interest me and it took up most of the last half of the book.As a result I found the last hundred pages really tough going.But I did learn a lot that interested me, like how Robbins wanted John Latouche and Arthur Laurents to write the lyrics and book for ON THE TOWN.Bernstein wanted Comden and Green....

Interesting Oral History
Greg Lawrence is less an author than a complier of an oral history of the life of Jerome Robbins in Dance With Demons.This is by no means a true biography but it does fill a certain need until that volume is written.It gives almost everybody Jerome Robbins met in his life a chance to speak, sometimes briefly and sometimes at length, about working with or knowing him.No aspect of his life is left untouched.This book is almost less about Jerome Robbins as a person than it is about the ways in which he touched people.All the nastiness is there but also all the good things people had to say about him.There is nothing defintive about this book but it makes for a fascinating read and is a testament to power of this difficult genius.

Tedious and vulgar
Very little to do with dance, this book is mostly personalities and scandal.The not-very-subtle subtext is Robbins' homosexuality, and its relation to the HUAC affair. Strictly for celebrity hounds.

Thorough, gossipy, undefinitive -- maybe unnecessary
Despite, or because of, its inclusion of hundreds of interviews, much of Greg Lawrence's biography amounts to uncorroborated hearsay. Given the backbiting and jealous atmosphere of the theatre world, a more rigorous biographer would have carefully weighed and vetted the reliability of the sources. Lawrence apparently was not given access to Robbins' own papers and therefore the man himself is decidedly absent from these pages, as has been pointed out by reviews in The Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker, and elsewehere. It's gossipy and full of facts and opinions, but curiously empty.

Another customer reviewer here compares Lawrence's book with Christine Conrad's compendium of photographs and Robbins quotes (Jerome Robbins,That Broadway Man, That Ballet Man), to Lawrence's benefit. Seems to me you get a stronger sense of Robbins the man AND the artist from Conrad's book, even though it doesn't pretend to be a biography.

I've read that two other full-scale biographies are in the works whose authors have been allowed to see Robbins's archives; hopefully they will provide a deeper and more balanced view of the man. If anyone still cares. ... Read more

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He has danced and choreographed his way to stardom and he's garnered millions of admirers along the way. Now Broadway's 6'6" answer to Fred Astaire gives readers a magical "Tune-ful"--in a buoyant, beguiling theatrical memoir to rank with Moss Hart's Act One and Neil Simon's Rewrites. Photos & line drawings.Amazon.com Review
Broadway icon Tommy Tune rummages through the packed attic ofhis eventful life as a nine-time Tony-winning dancer, director, andchoreographer for his colorful memoir, Footnotes. Tune bringsforth a surprising amount of grit from the glitter and froufrou, plusseveral startlingly graphic passages. His Texas boyhood amidsupportive parents lead to a quick rise in the world of 1970sBroadway, and brought this modern-day Fred Astaire to success at thehelm of shows such as Nine, My One and Only, GrandHotel, and The Club. There are regrets, philosophy, affairswith men and women, and soft-focus reminiscences of FredAstaire, GeneKelly, Agnesde Mille, and others. But behind it all he reveals anunaccountable feeling of emptiness and hunger for light, movement, andbeauty. A sidelining foot injury in 1995 left him in the reflectivemood conveyed in Footnotes, but Tune's story isn't over yet. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

Fascinating but bizarre
A very fascinating memoir by a living Musical Theatre legend. The book does have x-rated parts which are more bizarre than titillating.

A Definite Ten
Like a wonderful Broadway play, FOOTNOTES keeps its audience spellbound from the opening scene.This beautiful memoir is deeply moving, extremely interesting, and at times, delightfully humorous.All of Tommy Tune's stories, from dance recitals and backyard musical productions of his childhood to his personal relationships and professional triumphs in New York, are fascinating. Generosity and loyalty are abundant as he praises many who have influenced and supported his artistry as well as those who have contributed to his personal sense of well-being.In the theatre, Tommy Tune has always enlightened us with beauty and truth, and he does it again in this book as he bares his soul so we can see the truth in his heart. What we discover is a caring, compassionate man of integrity who also happens to be an artistic genius.I didn't want this book to end.....

Not what most theatre buffs would hope for
As one of the last important figures in 20th Century musical theatre, Tommy Tune was part of many important shows.One would hope his autobiography would include at least some insight into his performing anddirecting techniques -- but such is not the case here.As for his personallife, Mr. Tune shares a great deal -- but it is hard to rely on thefrankness of someone who seems to change his sexual preferences as easilyas most of us change clothes. And the chapter discussing the woman hewronged but refuses to name is so obvious in who it refers to that theauthor's sincerity rings false. Some interesting anecdotes and photos notfound elsewhere, but overall a great disappointment.

A Piece of Tommy Tune's Heart
Footnotes was one of the most honest and heartwarming memoirs I have ever read.Tommy Tune's honesty and openness with his readers is incredible.He has definately shared a part of himself with all of us.This kind andgenerous man is tops with me.While reading Footnotes I laughed, cried,and truly came to know this wonderful man.I highly recommend this book toeveryone.

A Great Book!!!!!!
This is a wonderful book. It is written with such a casual and relaxed tone. It tells of Tommy's professional experiences and all of the wonderful people he has worked with including Twiggy and Lucie Arnaz. A wonderful"must'have" book. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Inaccuarate but profitable
Alot of inaccuracies. Many misquotes.
Mr. Kelly obviously had no regard for his subject or the truth,only his own agenda and profit margin.Don't waste your time or money.
This book is suitable for the circular file.

Excellent
Engrossing and very frank interpretation of the life, genius and dark side of Michael Bennett. Interviews with Michael's mother, brother and his many collaborators helped the late author Kevin Kelly to paint a portrait of Michael as a driven and complex individual. This is brutally honest and fascinating. ... Read more

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Transcending Boundaries is an autobiography tracing the multifaceted and wide-ranging career of choreographer, director, performer and professor of dance, Donald McKayle. His chance meeting with the legendary Bill Robinson, who obligingly responded to the entreaties of a nine-year-old and executed an impromptu version of his infectious stair tap-dance, and an electric encounter as a teenager sitting in a darkened theatre witnessing a performance by concert artist Pearl Primus, are key early experiences which bring about McKayle's life in dance, theatre, film, television, entertainment, and education. He learned at the feet of the masters, trained and developed some of the profession's top practitioners, and worked in theatres and studios around the world, on - Broadway, in Hollywood - creating a repertoire of acclaimed masterworks. He experienced failure, success, love, marriage and family. Readers will find his autobiography a revelation in an ongoing and still evolving story. ... Read more

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Acclaimed choreographer explores the idea of intercultural performance. ... Read more

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An urgent new voice in the civic dialogue on race and the creative process. ... Read more

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In this authoritative biography, Deborah Jowitt explores the life, works, and creative processes of the complex genius Jerome Robbins (1918-1998), who redefined the role of dance in musical theater and is also considered America's greatest native-born ballet choreographer.

This meticulously researched and elegantly written story of a life's work is illuminated by photographs, enlivened by anecdotes, and grounded in insights into ballets and musical comedies that have been seen and loved all over the world. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Love Letter to Tanaquil Le Clercq
All in all, I'm touched by Deborah Jowitt's well meaning and comprehensive biography of Jerry Robbins.She digs under the surface of his ballet and Broadway work and finds a whole lot more than I had ever imagined.Again and again she returns to the paradox of the name, how "Jerry Robbins" was a fake, all-American and showbizzy place name for the real, suffering, inward, outcast Jerome Wilson Rabinowitz, and how Robbins could never be happy knowing this.He loathed himself from the inside out and the outside in: no wonder he treated others so terribly.Deborah Jowitt's years of research into the Robbins papers, those revealing scrapbooks and journals, have really paid off, for although I think in general Greg Lawrence's biography better in most ways, Jowitt's contains innumerable examples of revelation right from the horse's mouth, scraps of diaristic strip-tease that really pay off in almost every case.We can see how, in Gypsy, there had to be a strip-tease number in which three women explain, "You Gotta Have a Gimmick," because Robbins realized early on that was the path to artistic greatness--not the gimmick per se, but the emotional and psychological undressing.

Along the way Jowitt sketches in many portraits, some of them ravishingly done.Leonard Bernstein has never seemed so much himself before.John Kriza, the gadabout dancer from Ballet Theater days, seems as "Fancy Free" as the roles he created in Robbins' early work.Jowitt's greatest "creation" as it were is Tanaquil Le Clercq, the tragic, French-born ballerina who came down with polio while Balanchine's fourth wife.Le Clercq is the real heroine of the book: everything we think about, oh, say, Audrey Hepburn was really Tanaquil Le Clercq gone commercial: gorgeous, radiant, utterly chic, loveable, wildly talented in many different areas.I had just barely heard of her before and now I want me my Tanaquil Le Clercq!I'm going to have to go down to the Robbins Foundation and watch some primitive kinescopes of her.Jowitt actually saw her dance and has apparently never gotten over it.Her next book should be all about "Tanny"!

I did think that Jowitt is a bit sklmpy in her treatment of the HUAC thing.Growing up, I got the sense that Robbins' naming names made hum utterly despised.Even I, as a child of five, knew what he had done made him scum.And yet you never get a sense of what it was like for Robbins living, if not with guilt, then with the simple fact that thousands of people abhorred him.Likewise I think Jowitt isn't exactly the right person to write about Robbins' sex life, and when AIDS enters the picture, she seems bound and determined to avoid the glum subject once and for all.Finally, her lack of editorializing is all very well, but I for one do not believe that the later, experimental work is on a par with INTERPLAY, THE GUESTS, THE CAGE, AFTERNOON OF A FAUN or THE CONCERT.Why not?We don't get an explanation.It was the sixties, pretty much, and Robbins started taking the drugs and stopped wearing suits.But there must have been more to it.WATERMILL is no picnic.

A PRIMER OF GENIUS
Any valid bio of Robbins would have to result in a narrative of the development of dance and musical theatre in America, since the 1940s. While Jowitt gives us the, often sad, milestones in this man's life, her major thrust throughout this long and always exciting book is on his work. She delves into virtually every creation of his, including his generally poorly received occasional forays into non-musical theatre. Detailed attention is given to both concept, creation and execution of his prolific endeavors. Her in depth analysis of each of his works, often quite technical, VIVIDLY recall many great performances of these masterpieces.
While not necessarily for those with a casual interest in dance, the facts of his life, as well as the cavalcade of his shows and ballets, makes for a read that is always more than just factual. Interestingly, Jowitt seems never to editorialize on Robbins' work.But then again, why attempt to laud a universally acclaimed genius ?

Deborah Jowitt's Life and Times of Jerome Robbins
Jerome Robbins was a hard act to follow. Deborah Jowitt's Jerome Robbins: His Life, His Theater, His Dance should be placed upon every public library shelf, alphabetically, before William Shakespeare, for only he could. Robbins is to 20th Century American Modern Dance Theater what Shakespeare was to the Elizabethan Stage, an author of infinite variety, a man for all ages.

Ms. Jowitt gives us a scholarly blueprint for amateur, musical theater lover, and balletomane; one that should be made available to all engaged in the academic pursuits of the Arts, Letters, and Sciences. Jerome Robbins, legendary theatrical genius, is brilliantly extolled in exacting detail and rendered with the loving care of a biographer dedicated to communicating this great artist's "message." He was the least difficult of men. All he wanted was boundless love.

Deborah Jowitt's Jerome Robbins is written in a trenchant prose style, a cross between WCBS TV celebrity correspondent Walter Cronkite's You Are There, and Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace.

Her tone is one of a high-powered sports newscaster delivering to her audience a polished blow-by-blow description of celebrity "plays." These are not professional precision ball passing reports; they are larger than life descriptive interactions of 20th Century Show Business's great personalities Robbins knew and loved.

Jowitt presents us with an eyeful. It were as though she uses a high definition, technicolor, movie screen attached to a time machine to fly us, like a motion picture director's crane, throughout multiple three dimensional scenes Jerome Robbins choreographs, before our eyes. In Jerome Robbins: His Life, His Theater, His Dance, Deborah Jowitt has delivered a state-of-the art biography that goes beyond the intricate prose of great fiction.

Jowitt instantaneously captures "the moment," and translates into words that in effect rolls a continuous major motion picture before us, without skipping a beat. One can almost hear the music that Robbins brilliantly illustrates. Jowitt delineates visions of Robbins forging The Great White Way for talented choreographers to follow: Bob Fosse, Michael Bennett, Twyla Tharp.

Jowitt's dance training and choreographic practice is revealed in her ability to poetically describe Robbins at work. "...he excelled at the artificed use of the apparently accidental. When a moment in a Robbins ballet looks contrived, it can be because one is not simply moved by it but aware of how the choreographer calculated its effect...."

A culmination of five years of writing, and an historical perspective of thirty-five years of looking at the dance, Deborah Jowitt has emerged as America's Dean of 21st Century Dance; following in the tradition of a great poet's translation of classical ephemera, the work of Edwin Denby, a chronicler of The New York City Ballet. Her Jerome Robbins is a masterpiece. Deborah Jowitt's Jerome Robbins: His Life, His Theater, His Dance should remain on the public library shelf beside William Shakespeare's The Complete Works for all time.
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Customer Reviews (5)

rbgggg
If you are a fan of George Balanchine, this is a great book.It gives you insight of his creativity.

Ex New York City Ballet Dancer
Ms. Goldner's response to Balanchine is almost as much a pleasure to read as Balanchine's ballets used to be to watch.She brings forwardthe intricacies of physical movement musicality and emotional intent inherent in the choreography without missing a single element's importance and depth. She does it succinctly easily and pleasurably, in a kind of way Balanchine himself would have done.He must have been looking over her shoulder.
How she makes me miss dancing these wonderful ballets.For the dancer who knew Balanchine she offers a joyful nostalgia at what in his work is immortal.If you have never seen a Balanchine Ballet read this first.If you go to New York City to see the Company go to the Lincoln Center Performing Arts library as well just so you know what she and I were looking at during the time Balanchine was there.

Compelling read and quite an education
I knew very little about ballet before diving into this book, and while reading it, I didn't feel that I was at a disadvantage.Reading it is like sitting next to a trusted friend at a ballet, having her point out bits of backstory, criticism, and praise.You can tell that Goldner really loves Balanchine's ballets, and without having seen most of these, I loved them too.

Excellent Dance History Resource
Writer Wellness: A Writer's Path to Health and Creativity This is a valuable and unique work of dance history from the keen eyes of dance critic Nancy Goldner. While there are many books on the life of Balanchine, this is a first for a book that explores and explains many of his greatest choreographic achievements. Dance students, dance history scholars, all libraries, and any person interested in Balanchine's legacy will appreciate the concise writing and interesting details that Goldner includes.

clear choice
This book is written and researched with care and detail. The author has a superb degree of observation and understands the subject matter, as well as being familiar with the person for whom the book written. ... Read more

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winner, 2009 de la Torre Bueno Book Prize presented by the Society of Dance History Scholars (SDHS). and Honorable Mention, Music and the Performing Arts category, 2008 PROSE Awards presented by the Professional/Scholarly Publishing Division of the Association of American Publishers.

In her dance and performances of the 1960s, Yvonne Rainer famously transformed the performing body—stripped it of special techniques and star status, traded its costumes and leotards for T-shirts and sneakers, and asked it to haul mattresses or recite texts rather than leap or spin. Without discounting these innovations, Carrie Lambert-Beatty argues in Being Watched that the crucial site of Rainer's interventions in the 1960s was less the body of the performer than the eye of the viewer—or rather, the body as offered to the eye. Rainer's art, Lambert-Beatty writes, is structured by a peculiar tension between the body and its display.

Through close readings of Rainer's works of the 1960s—from the often-discussed dance Trio A to lesser-known Vietnam war-era protest dances—Lambert-Beatty explores how these performances embodied what Rainer called "the seeing difficulty." (As Rainer said: "Dance is hard to see.") Viewed from this perspective, Rainer's work becomes a bridge between key episodes in postwar art. Lambert-Beatty shows how Rainer's art (and related performance work in Happenings, Fluxus, and Judson Dance Theater) connects with the transformation of the subject-object relation in minimalism and with emerging feminist discourse on the political implications of the objectifying gaze. In a spectacle-soaked era, moreover, when images of war played nightly on the television news, Rainer's work engaged the habits of viewing formed in mass-media America, linking avant-garde art and the wider culture of the 1960s. Rainer is significant, argues Lambert-Beatty, not only as a choreographer but as a sculptor of spectatorship. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (8)

Stinx
The shame about this terribly written book is that it will discourage a good writer from writing a good biography of a fascinating man. The sentence by sentence writing is so difficult to understand that it makes one doubt the veracity of anything the writer says. This is the man responsible for a terrible book on B'way Musicals which had something like 3.000 errors in it. If you're interested, then force yourself to get through his clumsy prose. I just feel sad for his editor; what torture it must have been. Avoid-someday someone will write a good one.

A Fine Biography of The Greatest American Choreographer That Ever Lived
Bob Fosse, in this reader's opinion, is, besides the greatest director\choreography of musicals, the greatest choreographer that ever lived. His brilliant, simplistic style has entertained millions and has shown an inpact in current pop culture.
Mr. Fosse himself was a fascinating man. A slightly short, mumbling chainsmoker, his many demons included alcohol, drugs, paranoia, sex and women. Mr. Gottfried lets us know about those demons. However, he gives interesting accounts of all of Fosse's work for stage and screen.
This book is excellent, but to truly learn about the genius that was Bob Fosse, this reader recommends Mr. Fosse's autobiographical film "All That Jazz."

Fascinating Guy, Fascinating Book
I'll tell you right off the top, I'm not a huge fan of Broadway musicals.Mostly I'm a fan of Fosse because of his films, which rank among my favorites.But regardless of any of that, Fosse's personality and his life make him a fascinating subject for biographical study.

Gottfried's book is heavily detailed, describing the events of Fosse's life, exploring his work and his personal realtionships, and really getting inside the man's head, all the while maintaining a very readable, and appropriately jazzy style.There's also enough quoted dialogue to keep the book flowing almost like a work of fiction.

A great read and an informative one.Highly recommended to fans of Fosse and his work, or those simply interested in one of the most intriguing of showbiz lives.

Pure Fun
Maybe I'm biased: I'm a shrink. I lived in New York in the early 80's. I knew some of the people mentioned in the book. But this was the most fun I've had reading since Letters from a Nut. Full of tidbits about a raft of celebrities. Another reviewer complained about the lack of pictures. Why stop there? We need all the films, too. Must watch All That Jazz again ASAP, AND try to get my hands on Sweet Charity and Cabaret. A great ride!

Jazzed out!
The book is very thorough and does give a very accurate blow by blow description of every moment in Bob Fosse's life.If you love the man and want to relive his life for him, read this book.On the other hand, if you are trying to do a paper, you might want to start reading this about 6 months before your paper is due.It is very hard to weigh through the many, colorful words and facts in this book in any small amount of time.I will someday read this book for pleasure but right now, after only reading three chapters (though be very interesting), I am totally jazzed out!phew! ... Read more

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In-depth interviews with the maverick British choreographer best known for his revolutionary, tony award-winning Swan Lake

In the ten years since Matthew Bourne started his dance company, Adventures in Motion Pictures, he has earned a reputation as one of the most exciting choreographers at work today. His experimental style can be seen in his original dances-such as Town and Country, a work that includes a pas de deux that Bourne describes as "a Fred and Ginger number for two men"-and in his new versions of ballet classics, including his groundbreaking Swan Lake, with its cast of male swans, and The Nutcracker, set in a Dickensian orphanage. Drawing on his years of studying all varieties of dance as well as on his vast knowledge of dance history, theater, and popular culture, Bourne has been able to fuse elements of classical and modern dance, theatrical innovation, and sexual expression in a new way, reflecting a uniquely ironic, postmodern sensibility in his playing with the elements of classical dance and reexamining the traditional relationships between-and within-the sexes.

In these interviews with the distinguished dance and theater critic Alastair Macaulay, Bourne demonstrates persuasively just how he has synthesized these disparate elements to create an experience that audiences around the world have found mesmerizing and startling in its beauty and originality.
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The dancer and choreographer Jean-George Noverre's Letters on Dancing and Ballets were first published in Stuttgart in 1760 and set forth his ideas for the reform of ballet, ideas which were considered revolutionary in their day and indeed anticipated changes to be carried out more than a century later by Laban, Fokine and Jooss. At a time when court ballet had degenerated into a meaningless succession of conventional dances, Noverre advocated a unity of design and a logical progression from introduction to climax in which the whole was not sacrificed to the part and anything unnecessary to the theme was eliminated. Movement was to be defined by the tone and time of the music and choreographers were advised to avoid overcomplicated steps and turn to nature for natural means of expression which could be understood by all. He advocated also the reform of costume and lived to see masks, full-bottomed wigs and cumbersome dresses abandoned in favour of attire better suited to the roles portrayed.Noverre's Letters can be said without exaggeration to be one of the most important dance books ever published and through its influence Noverre can be seen as the grandfather of ballet as we know it. The present translation was made by the great dance historian Cyril W. Beaumont and first published by him in book form in 1930. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

The Art of Dance
This book is quite simply one of the best books ever written about dance.In spite of the fact that it was written almost 250 years ago, Noverre's thoughts about dance have great relevance today.His book offers an approach to dance that transcends ballet because it suggests that dancers should educate themselves in all the arts and in nature.It encourages dancers to study painting, poetry, music and anatomy.He presents a well developed argument against dance simply as a display of technical skill.Noverre believed that dance should touch people's souls. ... Read more

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Purchase includes free access to book updates online and a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Chapters: Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung, Hong Kong Film Award for Best Action Choreography, Jackie Chan Stunt Team, Donnie Yen, Yuen Biao, Lau Kar-Leung, Lam Ching Ying, Yuen Woo-Ping, Corey Yuen, Ching Siu-Tung, Stanley Tong, Yuen Cheung-Yan. Excerpt:This is a Chinese name ; the family name is Ching . Ching Siu Tung Tony Ching Siu-Tung (traditional Chinese : (born 1953) is a Hong Kong action choreographer , film director , actor and film producer , who has directed over 20 films , including the critically acclaimed supernatural fantasy A Chinese Ghost Story (1987). Career He began as an actor and martial arts instructor working in Hong Kong action cinema in the 1960s and 1970s (his father, Ching Gong, was a Shaw Studios director, and Ching Siu-tung had been trained in Peking opera as a child), but he made his directorial debut in 1982 with the ground-breaking wuxia classic Duel to the Death . He worked with producer Tsui Hark on 1987's A Chinese Ghost Story , which became an international sensation, although it was usually Tsui Hark who took most of the plaudits. He continued to work with Tsui Hark, directing sequels to that film in 1990 and 1991, and co-directing all three parts of the Swordsman series, starting in 1990. Other directorial highlights included the highly successful Royal Tramp films (both 1992) which starred Stephen Chow and Brigitte Lin . He continued his role as action director/choreographer throughout this period, and has continued to work in that role on high-profile international successes like Shaolin Soccer (2001), Hero (2002), and House of Flying Daggers (2004). In 2002, he was nominated twice for Best Action Choreography at the Hong Kong Film Awards , and won in 2003 for his efforts on Hero . That same year, he made his American film debut, directing Steven Seagal in... ... Read more