American contemporary dancer and dance choreographer Danny Tidwell was born on August 1, 1984 in Norfolk, Virginia. He is a top 20 finalist on the third season of the reality show So You Think You Can Dance. Often mistaken for American martial artist and actor Taimak Guarriello, Danny is the adopted brother of Travis Wall, who was a runner-up in the second season of SYTYCD. Danny started out dancing at Denise Wall’s Dance Energy under the direction of Vicky Cooke and Denise Wall, and at the age of 15 he was invited to study classical ballet at the Universal Ballet Academy in Washington under Anatoli Kucheruk and Vladimir Djouloukhadze.
In 2001, he won second prize at an international ballet competition in Shanghai, China, then in 2002 he received the silver medal at the Jackson International Ballet Competition. Danny then went on to join the American Ballet Theatre’s Studio Company, and was hired in May 2003 as the ABT’s Corps de Ballet. He has worked on a number of classical ballet repertory productions such as Spectre de la Rose and Peasant pas de deux in Giselle. He also performed contemporary works by choreographers Robert Hill and William Forsythe. He danced with Complexions Contemporary Ballet, Debbie Allen, and guest for several companies around the US after he left
ABT in 2005.
Since So You Think You Can Dance in 2007, he remained an independent performer and is currently the Artistic Director of
movmnt magazine , a dance and pop culture lifestyle quarterly he co-founded in 2006 with journalist David Benaym. Tidwell also teaches Ballet for JUMP, a dance convention that tours the US all year long.