Robert Joseph Banas (September 22, 1933 – July 29, 2024) was an American dancer and actor who worked in films such as West Side Story (1961), Down and Out in Beverly Hills (1986) and Always (1989).
He was also a choreographer and dance coach.
Early life
Banas said he began to dance at age five. "I would immediately run and stand in a doorway pretending it was a frame for a small stage. I then would jive, moving my body to and fro, trying to keep up with the beat of the music, knowing that when the music would crescendo I’d leap in the air defying gravity, only to land in a heap. I’d pick myself up and start it all over again. I just couldn’t sit still when I’d hear those big bands: Tommy Dorsey, Ray Anthony, Count Basie, Les Brown and Stan Kenton."[1]
During World War II, his father became a military chief inspector for the steel mills in McKeesport, Pennsylvania, while his mother became a propeller inspector for Curtiss-Wright in Erie.[1]
In 1942, his father arranged ballroom dance lessons for Banas and his sister Faith. “I was on the move trying different lifts with Sis and we had so much fun; at times we couldn’t stop laughing. I just couldn’t stop. I had the music in me and had to move or explode.”[1]Natalie Wood was his dancing partner in the Michael Panaieff Children’s’ Ballet Company, to which he received a scholarship and in which Jill St. John and Stefanie Powers were members. Banas also attended the Hollywood Professional School.[1]
Banas later became a choreographer, as well as a dance teacher in the Los Angeles area.[2]
A dance he choreographed for the Shirley Ellis song "The Nitty Gritty" and performed (with five other dancers) on The Judy Garland Show in 1964 drew him renewed attention on YouTube in the 2010s, where copies of it had been viewed more than 5.9 million times by August 2024.[3][4]
Death
Banas died of pneumonia at an assisted living facility in Encino on July 29, 2024, at the age of 90.[5]
.jpg)
