Stuart Hodes Gescheidt was born in New York City in November 1924 and grew up in Flushing, Miami Beach, and Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn.

[3] Among his roles was Adolescent Love (Yellow) in Diversion of Angels, Creature of Fear in Errand into the Maze, Husbandman in Appalachian Spring, Seer in Night Journey, Dark Beloved in Deaths and Entrances, Brother Fire in Canticle for Innocent Comedians, Mad Tom in Lear, Highwayman in Punch and the Judy, and as one of the three male roles in (Theatre for a) Voyage.

[1] Graham dancers were not paid for rehearsals so for income, Hodes taught and danced on Broadway, TV, and night clubs.

[3] He was in the original casts of Do Re Mi, First Impressions, Milk and Honey, Paint Your Wagon, Peer Gynt, Sophie, The Barrier, To Broadway with Love, Ziegfeld Follies (1956 edition), and the City Center revival of Annie Get Your Gun.

[4] On TV he danced The Wild Horse in Annie Get Your Gun,[5] swam with Esther Williams as her counter in The Esther Williams AquaSpectacle, also Buick Circus Show, The Milton Berle Show,[6] and specials such as Satins and Spurs, Stingiest Man In Town,[1] Cinderella,[7] The American Cowboy and others.

He danced with younger choreographers including, DJ McDonald, Claire Porter,[8] Stephan Koplowitz,[9][10] and Gus Solomons, Jr.[11] In 1985, he performed in Kathy Acker's The Birth of the Poet, directed by Richard Foreman in the Brooklyn Academy of Music's Next Wave Festival.

[12] From 1992 through 1996, he and his wife, Elizabeth Hodes, created and toured their one and two-person musical shows, traveling nationwide in Dancing on Air with Fred Astaire, La Musique de Piaf, Kurt Weill—Berlin to Broadway, Our Marlene (Marlene Dietrich), The Sound of Wings (Amelia Earhart), A Woman's World, Two Americans in Paris, and others.

In 2000 and 2001, they performed a two-person musical The O’Tooles Tonight!, written by Gayle Stahlhuth, and presented at the East Lynne Theater in Cape May, NJ.

[14] Hodes’ choreographic debut at the 92nd Street YM-YWHA in 1951 included FLAK, a solo based on World War II bombing missions, Surrounding, Unknown, and No Heaven in Earth, original score by Eugene Lester.

In 1966, he joined Harkness House for Ballet Arts where he created young audiences dance shows performed at Hunter College and NYC Public Schools.

In 1968, he founded his own young-audience troupe, The Ballet Team, which toured nationally,[23] and in 1969, became Dance Associate for the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) at the start of its grant-making Aid to Cultural Organizations project.

He brought about sale of its commercial co-op loft in SoHo and secured its present multistory Chelsea building.

Former students include Joan Finklestein, head of the Harkness Foundation for Dance,[29] Stephanie Skura, American choreographer and teacher,[30] Aydin Teker, major choreographer from Istanbul,[31] and Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, whose groundbreaking FASE was first shown in a studio at NYU School of the Arts.

As part of the Graham Company's 80th anniversary celebration in 2007, a special performance of From the Horse's Mouth, Magical Tales of Real Dancers, was presented at the Joyce Theater.