Nat Horne

Nathaniel Augustus Horne (born December 20, 1929) is an American dancer, choreographer, theatre director, and dance educator. A native of Richmond, Virginia, he graduated from Virginia Union University in 1951 with a degree in mathematics. Against the wishes of his father, a Baptist minister, he pursued a career as a dancer, initially working as both a dancer and choreographer in the Eighth Army division of the Special Services branch in Europe from 1952 to 1954. Upon returning to the United States he moved to New York City where he trained as a dancer under Matt Mattox, among others. He danced with Aubrey Hitchens's Negro Dance Theatre prior to having a distinguished career on Broadway as a dancer in musicals from 1957 to 1970. He was an original member of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, and performed in the world premieres of several of Ailey's early works, among them the seminal modern dance work Revelations.

Horne mainly retired from performance after 1970, re-orienting his career towards choreography and teaching. He was a long-time teacher of jazz dance at the Ailey School, joining the faculty in 1971. He began his shift toward choreographic work in 1963 at the Jones Beach Theatre, and then worked in Germany as a choreographer for several musical production in the 1960s. In 1969 he formed an artistic partnership with the director Albert Reyes with whom he worked on several musicals in regional theatre and stock theatre as a choreographer into the mid-1970s. In 1973 Reyes and Horne began teaching theatre workshops with an emphasis on training dancers to act and sing as well as move. The success of these workshops led the men to found the Nat Horne Musical Theatre and School (NHMTS) in Theatre Row on 42nd Street in 1975. The school portion of the NHMTS trained many Broadway performers during its eleven-year existence. The NHMTS also operated the Off-Off Broadway Nat Horne Theatre which remained active after the school closed. It was still operational as late as 1994.

After Reyes's death in 1992, Horne formed a close working relationship with the conductor, composer, and tenor David Dusing who had worked for Horne at the NHMTS as a voice teacher. Together the two men co-directed annual musicals for Muse Machine at the Victoria Theatre in Dayton, Ohio, from 1992 to 2010. As of 2024, Horne resides in Hell's Kitchen, Manhattan, where he has lived for more than 60 years.