DAN KAMIN

Dan Kamin performs worldwide for theatres, arts festivals and symphony orchestras. On film, he created the physical comedy sequences for Chaplin and Benny and Joon, and trained Robert Downey, Jr. and Johnny Depp for their acclaimed starring performances. He also created Martian movement for Tim Burton's Mars Attacks! and played the wooden Indian come to life in the cult classic Creepshow 2.

Despite these impressive credits, Dan's artistic beginnings were humble. At age twelve he began his performing career by doing magic shows at the birthday parties of often-obnoxious children. Attending Carnegie Mellon University to study industrial design, Dan's hopes for a normal life evaporated when he saw the eye-popping movement illusions practiced by master mime Jewel Walker. Dan promptly became the sorcerer's apprentice.

The great silent comedy films of Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin added more fuel to his fire, and soon Dan was touring the country with his first original show, Silent Comedy...Live! Undeterred by the fact that Vaudeville was long dead, he cobbled a new Vaudeville circuit out of colleges, theatres and schools. His Comedy Concertos, which blend lowbrow comedy with highbrow music, have become popular with symphonies nationwide. Dan also creates special programs and pranks for corporate clients such as PPG Industries and Westinghouse. And sometimes he becomes The Corpozoid Man, an eerie character who strolls into arts festival crowds in slow motion, terrifying the very children who tormented him as a youth.

Dan returned to his comedy roots to write Charlie Chaplin's One-Man Show, revealing the secrets of Chaplin's comic art. Hailed as a breakthrough work, the book boasts a preface by another Chaplin fan, Marcel Marceau.

During the past few seasons Dan has performed Comedy Concertos with symphonies including Boston, Baltimore, Annapolis, Philadelphia, and Minnesota, toured his solo shows throughout America and England, and directed hit productions of several classic comedies in his home town of Pittsburgh, including The Rivals, Sheridan's 18th century romp that became the prototype for all romantic comedies to come.