Stephen Reed is a performer, director and choreographer with a long career in American musical theater. He has appeared in six Broadway productions, four of them Tony Award-winning musicals: Once Upon a Mattress (with Sarah Jessica Parker and Jane Krakowski), How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (with Matthew Broderick), Crazy For You, Jerome Robbins’ Broadway (with Jason Alexander), CATS (as the rock-and-roll Rum Tum Tugger) and Susan Stroman’s 110 in the Shade. He has toured internationally with Broadway productions of Ragtime, Crazy For You, 42nd Street, A Chorus Line, Evita, Annie Get Your Gun, Kiss Me, Kate and Jerome Robbins’ Broadway. As a concert dancer, he performed with the Milwaukee Ballet junior company under Jean-Paul Comelin. He was also a full company member of Gus Giordano’s Jazz Dance Chicago, working directly with Giordano himself.

Stephen’s career has gone well beyond the stage. He has danced in music videos for Prince, Gloria Estefan, Steve Winwood and Peter Frampton, and he staged and choreographed Frampton’s “Holding On to You.” He was dance supervisor for Liza Minnelli’s touring production of Minnelli on Minnelli and assistant choreographer for the New York Philharmonic’s Candide on PBS Great Performances. On screen, you can catch him tap-dancing on a tin roof in PBS Great Performances: Crazy For You, jitterbugging with Martin Short in Disney’s The Making of Me, in the 2018 documentary Bathtubs Over Broadway, and most recently in FX’s FEUD: Capote vs. The Swans (2024).

Among the roster of directors and choreographers Stephen has worked with are Jerome Robbins, Susan Stroman, Frank Galati, Dame Gillian Lynne, Michael Blakemore, Wayne Cilento, Fred Ebb, Gerald Gutierrez, Mike Ockrent, Tina Landau, Kathleen Marshall, Jerry Mitchell, JoAnn Hunter, Casey Nicholaw, Sergio Trujillo and Rob Ashford. He brings that experience, along with what he’s learned about auditions and the working life of a performer, into his teaching, giving students practical guidance for building a career.

Stephen is also Artistic Director and Owner of Ballet Arts Center for Dance, the longest continuously operating dance studio in New York City. Ballet Arts was founded in 1937 by the American dancer Yeichi Nimura and is located at New York City Center, 130 W. 56th St. It offers classical ballet and theater dance training to professional and pre-professional students from around the world.