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Betsy Baytos headshot
Betsy Baytos suiting up

Baytos suiting up in the New York Muppet Workshop with assistance from Caroly Wilcox and Cheryl Blaylock.

Betsy Baytos (b. August 27, 1956) is a dancer who joined The Muppet Show during the last season to perform Betsy Bird, a character created to showcase her dancing. Baytos was considered "an eccentric" dancer in the style of Ray Bolger. She could do splits vertically as she danced, with a loose-limbed and comedic style.

Betsy Bird had two dance segments in Episode 505 with James Coburn, with Baytos providing dancing, voice and choreography. Baytos continued to perform puppetry and voice in the fifth season, including pigs, a cow and a singing fish in Episode 524 with Roger Moore (seen in the documentary Of Muppets and Men). She performed a pig and Timmy Monster in Episode 504 with Shirley Bassey. She performed right hands for characters like Kermit and Fozzie, and helped research vaudeville material and jokes for head writer Jerry Juhl.

Baytos began her career as an animator for Disney Studios, where she promoted animated films and danced with an animated Thumper (from Bambi). The combination of Betsy's animation background and eccentric dancing led her to animation choreography, staging the live-action reference dancers for several animated features, including Disney's The Princess and the Frog.

Baytos continued her work with dance and puppets, performing at the American Dance Festival Salute to Vaudeville, on a Steve Allen broadcast, designing and choreographing puppets for Shelley Duvall's Fairy Tale Theatre, and perfoming an eccentric dance specialty with a full-sized puppet Maurice in Broadway's Stardust. Her work has also encompassed the Coca-Cola Polar Bear licensing campaign and the Ready Kids mascot for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. She continues to design for Jimmy Buffett, John Fogerty and various other projects.

Baytos guest lectures, consults and teaches character movement, having appeared at England's Oxford University, Cal Arts, Disney, Pixar, Universal Studios Osaka, Ringling Bros. Clown College alumni, The Physical Theatre Institute and Cirque du Soleil.

Betsy Baytos made a feature documentary, Funny Feet: The Choreography of Comedy, with the work-in-progress presented at the Motion Picture Academy of Arts & Sciences in 2015. The film, with over 50 interviews spanning seven countries, taps into over 1,000 hours of eccentric dance footage she's collected. Bill Irwin joined Baytos in the event at the Academy. Completed interview subjects include Red Skelton, Lord Lew Grade, Jerry Lewis, Marcel Marceau, Chuck Jones, Dick Van Dyke, Shirley MacLaine, Simon Callow, and Al Hirschfeld. Further screenings occurred in 2015.

Muppet credits[]

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