Cole attended Columbia University for a time, but dropped out in 1930 after seeing a performance by Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn, founders of the Denishawn School of Dancing and Related Arts.

[4] Cole became well-versed in bharata nāṭyam, India's oldest dance technique, first by studying with dancers Uday Shankar and La Meri[6] and later by sharing rehearsal space with Bhaskar Roy Chowdhury.

The large Cuban migration to New York in the late 1940s brought the mambo, rumba, and cha-cha-cha to the dance halls, and Cole drew from these vocabularies as well.

[6] Cole also studied classical ballet with Luigi Albertieri, the adopted son and student of Enrico Cecchetti, while he was still part of the modern dance movement.

He started at the very roots of modern dance, then segued into a commercial career in nightclubs across the nation, first at Manhattan's Embassy Club, then opening the Rainbow Room on its inaugural evening in October 1934.

[8] Cole made his professional dance debut at Lewisohn Stadium at the City College of New York with the Denishawn Dancers, led by St. Denis and Shawn, in August 1930, only six weeks after beginning his training with them.

He later studied and performed with the pioneering modernists Doris Humphrey and Charles Weidman, who had earlier managed the Denishawn school's New York City operations before leaving to form their own troupe.

Eager to make a living as a dancer during the Depression, he left the modern dance world in 1934 and opted for opportunities in nightclubs, initially partnering with Alice Dudley, another former Denishawn student.

[10] He began his commercial dance career at Manhattan's Embassy Club, owned by Dutch Schultz, then opened the Rainbow Room on its inaugural evening in October 1934.

[6] Cole went in a different direction in 1939, forming "Ballet Intime" with dancers Ernestine Day, Letitia Ide, Fe Alf, George Bockman, and Eleanor King.

They adapted the rumba to Cole Porter's Begin the Beguine in West Indian Impressions while using the characteristic arched stance and rapid-tapping heels of flamenco dance in Babalu.

Yet even though his dances now referred overtly to American and Latin cultures rather than Asian ones he continued to use the sharp dynamics and clarity of line characteristic of bharata nāṭyam.

[6] After moving to Hollywood in the early 1940s, Cole returned to nightclubs at the end of the decade when a studio strike left him free to take his troupe of Columbia Pictures dancers, which included Florence Lessing, Rod Alexander, Carol Haney, Buzz Miller, and Gwen Verdon, to Chez Paree in Chicago in 1947.

[13] He had a few Broadway roles over the next decade, the most prominent being "The Groom" in The Wedding of a Solid Sender and the lead in the Hindu Serenade segment, both featured in the Ziegfeld Follies of 1943.

He played with homoerotic images in both Betty Grable's number "No-Talent Joe" in Meet Me After the Show and "Ain't There Anyone Here For Love" sung by Jane Russell in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, both of which featured scantily clad young men stoically ignoring those two bombshells.

Censors also insisted on the removal of some of the lyrics and dance moves from the Cole Porter number "Ladies in Waiting" in Les Girls (1957), which nonetheless remains quite racy, even in redacted form.

Although Monroe was acquiring a reputation for being difficult and undisciplined, she responded positively to Cole's controlling style on this shoot and insisted on language in her next contract with 20th Century-Fox that required that he be hired to choreograph her in any movie in which she was called on to dance.

"[19] He cursed at nearly everyone, even his long-term friends and collaborators, and once dragged a student by her hair across the rehearsal room floor and threatened to toss another out a second-story window.

[21] According to Martin Gottfried, Cole "won a place in choreographic history for developing the basic vocabulary of jazz dancing—the kind of dancing done in nightclubs and Broadway musicals".

[22] Cole-style dancing is acrobatic and angular, using small groups of dancers rather than a large company; it is closer to the glittering nightclub floor show than to the ballet stage.

[23] His style required a great deal of concentration; as Florence Lessing, one of his earliest partners, observed "So many parts of the body, so many muscles moving in opposition to each other, and each in isolation from the other!

"[24] Cole derived many of his isolations from bharata nāṭyam, and used them to show rhythmic flow throughout the body,[17] just as African-American dancers did after swing gave way to bop.

[17] Cole's style also featured a great deal of coiled energy; as Village Voice dance critic Debra Jowitt wrote, "Cole dancing strikes me as immensely aggressive; almost every gesture is delivered with maximum force, but then has to be stopped cold in mid-air to achieve the clarity of design he wanted...an immense counter effort has to be used to stop the gesture.