Edward Verso

His father, Philip (or Filippo) worked in the manufacture of clothes and footwear and had emigrated from Sicily with his parents and siblings in 1924,[2] having been born in Riesi.

[7] Having graduated from the High School of the Performing Arts in New York, Verso was cast as Baby John in the 1958 London production of West Side Story after the hit Broadway musical went on tour.

Among his many performances, he was the male lead in Eliot Feld's "Harbinger", Frederick Ashton's "Les Patineurs", Agnes De Mille's "Rodeo", Jerome Robbins' "Fancy Free", Michael Smuin's "Catherine Wheel" and Antony Tudor's "Undertow".

[8] In June 1967, he and his wife Janet Mitchell, a former Metropolitan Opera Company dancer who had joined ABT in 1960,[9] performed at the White House in front of President Lyndon B Johnson and the First Lady.

Additionally, his time at the ABT allowed Verso to study at the Bolshoi in Moscow as well as the Kirov School in Leningrad and the Royal Ballet in London.

The Russian ballet critic, Vera Krasovskaya of Leningrad, also praised Verso for his acting and dancing in his earlier roles in "Fancy Free" and "Rodeo".

Following a 1984 collaboration between NJ Ballet and the New Jersey State Opera, Verso and Stasick became a couple and they subsequently worked together at the Twyla Tharp Dance Studio.

[12] In 1998, Verso had returned to New Jersey to teach and run the Dance Conservatory in Bedminster in the Somerset Hills, with his wife, Karen.

Like Verso, she was with the ABT until 1968 but in that time also made appearances on the Bell Telephone Hour television show with the Robert Joffrey Ballet Company.