When Bob Fosse died on September 23, 1987, many, many people were saddened by his untimely passing. But few, if any, were surprised by it. Fosse had always been a man who fully embraced life, and his death at the relatively young age of sixty came as a shock to almost no one. Indeed, many of his associates were amazed he lived as long as he did.

Possessed of both unbridled energy and tremendous artistic gifts, Fosse was one of this century's great choreographers. Though he forged his craft on the Broadway stage and on film, he was as much an artist as Nijinsky, Balanchine, or DeMille.

As an artist, Fosse was known for his thoroughly modern style, a signature one could never  mistake for anyone else's. Snapping fingers are omnipresent, so are rakishly tilted bowler hats. Both hip and shoulder rolls appear frequently, as do backward exits. Swiveling hips and strutting predominate, as do white-gloved, single-handed gestures. Fosse himself often called the en masse amalgamation of these moves the "amoeba", and that word as much as any describes his particular style, one at once fluid and angular.