Bill Evans (dancer)

Bill Evans is a choreographer, performer, teacher, administrator, writer and movement analyst. More than 250 of Evans' works have been performed by professional and pre-professional ballet, modern dance and tap dance companies throughout the United States, including his own Bill Evans Dance Company, Repertory Dance Theatre, Concert Dance Company of Boston, Ballet West, Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company, Ruth Page Chicago Ballet, Pacific Northwest Ballet, North Carolina Dance Theater, Stars of American Ballet at Jacob's Pillow, Chicago Tap Theatre, Rochester City Ballet, FuturPointe Dance and many other companies. He has also created works for companies in Canada, Mexico and New Zealand.

A native of Lehi, Utah, James William "Bill" Evans began his performing career during childhood, appearing regularly on the Juvenile Jamboree, a Salt Lake City television program in the 1950s. He studied tap and ballet in Salt Lake City with Charles Purrington and then June Purrington Park from 1948 through 1955. He began studying ballet and character dance with Willam Christensen (founder of the San Francisco Ballet and Ballet West) at age 15. He opened his own studio, the Bill Evans School of Dance in Lehi in 1957 and added branches in Sandy (1958) and Draper (1959). He also taught for the Utah Conservatory of Dance in Provo, Heber, Spanish Fork, Moroni and Nephi, Utah.

He graduated as salutatorian from Lehi High School in 1958. Throughout high school, he was active in the debate club (for two years he and his partners were undefeated in the state championship and the winners of the multi-state Weber College Invitation Tournament) and an actor in several school plays.

He was a scholarship student at the University of Utah, where he danced in Orchesis, directed by Shirley Ririe and Joan Woodbury and in the Utah Theatre Ballet (later named Ballet West), directed by Willam Christensen. He received a Bachelor of Arts (BA) Degree in English and a BA-equivalent in ballet, from the University of Utah in Salt Lake City in 1963.

He served for two years as an officer in the U.S. Army at Fort Knox, Kentucky, where he was printing control officer at the U.S. Army Armor School. During this time, he danced as a soloist with the Louisville Civic Ballet and took leading roles in musical theatre productions at the University of Louisville Belknap Theatre and the Iroquois Amphitheatre.

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