Patricia Birch

Patricia Birch began dancing in her youth. She says it was her passion for being on stage in pretty clothes that kept her interested. She was eventually discovered by esteemed choreographer Merce Cunningham while attending a dance camp where he was an instructor. He took her under his wing and introduced her to Martha Graham who enrolled her in the School of American Ballet in New York. She went on to work sporadically with Graham for 20 years. By 1960 however, she had moved away from ballet, drawn by the accessibility of Broadway musicals. That year she appeared in a production of "West Side Story," and fell in love with the form, thus beginning her long association with theater. Her first choreography job came on a production of "You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown," and from there she never looked back. She first choreographed for television on the children's series "The Electric Company" in 1971. That same year, she had also earned her first Tony Award nomination for choreographing the musical "Grease," so when the motion picture came along in 1978, she was enlisted to work on it as well. In 1980, she had her first regular job with a six- year stint on the sketch comedy series "Saturday Night Live." From there she went on to work on such films as 1988's "Big," 1991's "Billy Bathgate," and "The Human Stain" in 2003. In 2010, she was back to television again, as the choreographer on the prohibition-era series "Boardwalk Empire."