During the intermission of Colorado Ballet's final performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream, I stopped by the table where they were selling season tickets for next year to take a glance at what was on the schedule. I noticed that one of the works was listed as being choreographed by someone named "Brain Reeder".

http://www.abt.org/insideabt/news_display.asp?News_ID=176

Brian Reeder was a dancer with ABT at one time. Boy what an expensive mistake (typo)!

Perhaps I'm missing something.

Reeder is from Pennsylvania, where he began training in Carlisle; he finished at the School of American Ballet; danced in New York City Ballet, Ballett Frankfurt, and American Ballet Theatre. since then he's been teaching and choreographing ballets.

And I'm willing to bet he got teased with this particular anagram when he was growing up!

it goes back even to Bryan Pitts, formerly of NYCB, who was sometimes listed in print as Brayn.

He was one of the best Mother Ginger's I've ever seen. Hilariously funny.

It isn't just the Colorado Ballet. Check the second page of this announcement :

http://www.millertheatre.com/pdf/pressreleases/onrelease.pdf

While we're at it, what's the story on the double-A in Edwaard Liang? (His work is also on the program linked by YouOverThere.)

I spelled it wrong -- one "a" only -- on another thread and was corrected, very gently, by YouOverThere. Somehow, I had never even noticed the spelling before. Perhaps, we tend to see what we expect to see.

I cannot easily find a reference right now, but this is absolutely true. We see the first couple letters of a word, and our brains fill in the rest. You can see this phenomenon play itself out with most text message programs on cell phones. You type in the first couple of letters and it will guess what you're trying to say, getting closer and closer to the 'truth' with each letter. The more sophisticated programs will learn your vocabulary preferences over time, and suggest words they've seen you use frequently.

(dare I say, just like a Brain Reeder. Sorry, couldn't resist)

I recall that someone explained this on an old, old post here, but I'm not able to find it at the moment.

During his first years with NYCB, Mr. Liang spelled his given name the conventional way. Then he left NYCB, joined Fosse on Broadway, joined Equity. Equity already an actor named Edward Liang, so he had to change his name, which he did by adding the eye-catching, extra A.