(born 1931). The U.S. actor, dancer, choreographer, director, costume designer, writer, and painter Geoffrey Holder was born in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad, in 1931. He made his stage debut in 1942 with his brother's dance company; in 1950 he formed his own dance company and toured the Caribbean. Holder earned his troupe's passage to New York by holding an exhibition of his paintings in Puerto Rico. He made his Broadway debut in the musical House of Flowers (1954) and appeared with the Metropolitan Opera as a solo dancer from 1956 to 1957. He won a Guggenheim Fellowship in painting in 1957. In that same year, he published the book Black Gods, Green Islands, a retelling of West Indian legends. In 1974 Geoffrey Holder's Caribbean Cookbook, which he also illustrated, was published.