Betsy Baytos
Betsy Baytos has been a performer, dance specialist, and
historian and filmmaker focusing on eccentric dance, for the past 30
years. Betsy has been described as a “dancing cartoon” because of
her connections to eccentric dance and cartoon animation.
While working as an animator at Walt Disney Studios, Betsy
discovered eccentric dance, leading to animation choreography on The
Rescuers, Pete’s Dragon, Banjo the Woodpile Cat, Mickey’s Christmas
Carol and Kingdom of the Sun. During the next 17 years, Betsy toured
nationally as a Disney spokeswoman, including a one-woman show
dancing with a cartoon Thumper, while promoting the animated feature
Bambi. Through the Disney Channel, she conducted animation workshops
around the country, focusing on dance and animation, including one
called “Cable In The Classroom,” working with teachers to focus on
art in education.
It was a natural progression for Betsy to transition from
hand-drawn animation to her creation of the eccentric-dancing “Betsy
Bird” for Jim Henson’s Muppet Show in London. Upon returning to the
States, Betsy was invited to perform as Betsy Bird in the Muppets’
first live performance at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.
Soon after she joined the cast of Will B. Able’s dinner theatre
burlesque show, “Baggy Pants & Co.,” in which she was featured as a
comedienne and eccentric dance specialist. An invitation soon
followed to perform her eccentric dancing at the renowned American
Dance Festival’s “Salute To Vaudeville,” followed by the Symphony
Space and the Julliard School, demonstrating period dance styles
backed by Terry Waldo and the Julliard Orchestra.
Betsy was then featured on NBC’s “Steve Allen Comedy Hour,” in a
comedy spot built around her eccentric dancing and featuring Allen.
Exploring ways to combine her skills, Betsy began work on Shelley
Duvall’s “Faerie Tale Theatre,” designing characters and
puppeteering and choreographing for “Jack and the Beanstalk,” “The
Nightingale” and “Pinocchio.”
Betsy continued researching eccentric dance, tracking down many
of its original masters, and studying with them as she began
performing a 1920s eccentric dance act with the top Cotton Club
Orchestras throughout New York and California.
Betsy then landed her first Broadway-bound show, the musical
review “Stardust,” as the physical comedienne featuring an eccentric
dance act she choreographed with her full-sized puppet partner,
Maurice. As her reputation spread, Betsy was invited to demonstrate
and lecture at the Walker Arts Museum in Minnesota, San Francisco
University, and the Artists Development Program at Walt Disney
Studios, where she continues to instruct character movement and
eccentric dance in a series of workshops for the next generation of
animators, while exposing them to the early dance influences of
their mentors.
Through her years of research, Betsy has been collecting visual
comedy and eccentric dance material, and has amassed the only
collection of its kind. She began to refocus her collecting toward a
goal of creating a film about eccentric dance, and began
interviewing the last remaining eccentric dancers and animators in
earnest. In 1996 she presented a special screening of her rough cut,
composed of rare clips and interviews, at the Alex Theatre in
Glendale, California for more than 1,000 animators and special
guests.
During her research, Betsy developed a close relationship with
the New York Performing Arts Library, and through a grant from the
Jerome Robbins Foundation, she began working to establish the first
oral history on eccentric dance, as well as overseeing the film
restoration of the rare Fred Stone Collection (Stone himself was one
of the great exponents of the eccentric tradition). Within this
collection is some film of Stone’s daughter Dorothy dancing in “Gay
Divorce” on the Broadway stage with Fred Astaire.
Betsy consulted on Cirque Du Soleil’s “Kooza,” which opened in
2007. She is currently working with Cirque on a new show built
around eccentric dancing. She is also choreographing, dancing and
consulting on Walt Disney’s upcoming 2-D animated feature, The
Princess and the Frog, set in the New Orleans of the 1920s. These
projects will aid Betsy in her mission to pass on the art of
eccentric dance and physical comedy to the next generation of
performers and animators. She continues to conduct workshops and
demonstrate and lecture in universities and festivals around the
world.
Betsy is now in the final phase of her eccentric dance film
project, with a collection of more than 50 interviews representing
eccentric dancers and animation artists from eight countries. She
also plans for an educational offshoot organizing the material into
an interactive database to make clips and interviews accessible for
the next generation of performers, researchers and animators. Betsy
continues to dance and choreograph in the eccentric tradition and
work as an artist.
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