Celebrating Dance Magazine Award Honoree Kenny Ortega
This week we’re sharing tributes to all of the 2025 Dance Magazine Award honorees. For tickets to the awards ceremony on December 8, visit store.dancemedia.com.
Even when he was a young, up-and-coming choreographer, Kenny Ortega didn’t take on just any project. There always had to be a “raison d’être,” a purpose behind the creation—a lesson Ortega learned from Gene Kelly, one of his mentors, whom he met on the set of the 1980 film Xanadu. Kelly told Ortega there must be “a depth of purpose that lives at the center of an idea that gives you a reason every day,” Ortega recalls. “No matter how tired, how beat up you feel, that will inspire you to get up and come at it again.”
The wisdom of that approach is evident in Ortega’s resumé, which includes the High School Musical series, Dirty Dancing, Newsies, and Michael Jackson’s This Is It documentary. Behind the magic he creates onscreen lies a deep love of theater. He says that acting became a way for him to escape his experience of being bullied as a kid—it allowed him to evolve into a new character. He toured as a performer in Hair, and for a decade was the artistic director and choreographer of the band The Tubes, work that earned him the attention of Disney, Madonna, David Bowie, KISS, and Danny Elfman.
In nearly every film project he’s worked on, Ortega has served as both choreographer and director. His approach is collaborative, working with the performers to craft a story with movement that advances the character’s arc, whether it be a big parade sequence in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off or a tense dancing fight scene in one of the Descendants movies. He seeks talent that shows promise and personality, “creating an environment where people feel free and safe and unjudged, and that they have a voice and that they matter,” he says.
Today Ortega is one of the most influential dance figures on the West Coast, with his own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. He attributes his success to the people within the Los Angeles entertainment industry and beyond who have uplifted his work and challenged him to be better, including Michael Jackson, Toni Basil, John Hughes, his high school drama teacher, and—especially—Kelly. “There’s no playbook, and without them, who knows where I would be today,” Ortega says.
