Ned Wayburn

Ned Wayburn
Born	March 30 1874
Died	September 2 1942

Ned Wayburn, born Edward Claudius Weyburn, (March 30, 1874 - September 2, 1942) was a choreographer. He was born in Pennsylvania, a grandson of Samuel Fletcher Weyburn but spent much of his childhood in Chicago where he was introduced to theater and studied classical piano. At the age of 21, he abandoned his family’s tradition of manufacturing and began teaching at the Hart Conway School of Acting in Chicago. There he worked with three faculty members who influenced his growing interest in dance and movement: C.H. Jacobsen, Colonel Thomas Hoyer Monstery, and Ida Simpson-Serven, whose teachings were based on Delsarte’s concepts about the meaning of gestures and their ability to communicate the emotion.

After leaving the school, Wayburn spent many years in theater staging shows for producers. He worked with such teams as William Hammerstein and Oscar Hammerstein, and Marc Klaw and A.L. Erlanger. In 1906, he began his own management group called the Headline Vaudeville Production Company. Through his own firm he staged many feature acts, while collaborating with other producers such as Lew Fields, Florenz Ziegfeld and the Shuberts. In 1915, he began working with Ziegfeld and became the main choreographer of the Ziegfeld Follies.

Wayburn’s choreography was based on five techniques: musical comedy, tapping and stepping, acrobatic work, toe specialties, and exhibition ballroom. As a child, he was captivated by Minstrel shows and recreated them in many of his works. Formation symmetry was common in minstrel shows, as well as parade. Wayburn used Minstrel style costumes and makeup in his show Minstrel Misses (1903).

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