Showing posts with label choreographer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label choreographer. Show all posts

January 16 - Happy Birthday, Debbie Allen

 Posted on January 16, 2021



Actor. Dancer. Choreographer. Dance academy founder, and dance teacher. Former member of the President's Committee on the Arts and Humanities. Director. Producer. Writer. Singer/songwriter.

Debbie Allen achieved a whole lot - and won many awards - even though she faced racial discrimination. She was denied admittance by several dance academies and university programs and was told that her body wasn't "right" for ballet dance.



At one point, Allen decided to concentrate on academics, and she ended up earning a B.A. from Howard University in classical Greek literature as well as speech and theater. But luckily for the rest of us, she persisted with her love of dance!

There are too many highlights of Allen's career to list them all, but I will mention a few:


Debbie Allen was an actor and choreographer in the 1980 movie Fame and the 1980s TV show based on the movie. I include this because she won a lot of awards during that show AND because I really enjoyed this musical-drama series about a performance arts high school.

Allen taught choreography to singer/dancer Paula Abdul.

Allen not only encourages young dancers on TV shows like So You Think You Can Dance, where she served as a judge, but she also in her Los Angeles-based dance academy, where she teaches and mentors young dancers.



I had no idea Allen directed so many TV and film projects! She has been the director on hundreds of episodes of dozens of shows!

Allen's mom Vivian Allen was a Pulitzer-prize nominee artist and poet; her sister Phylicia Rashad is a prize-winning actor most famous for her role as Clair Huxtable; her husband is former NBA All-Star and Championship basketball player Norm Nixon. Lots of talent everywhere in that family!










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March 2 – First Ballet in Britain

Posted on March 2, 2016



I am a bit surprised that the first ballet in Britain was in the 1700s. After all, ballet developed as a kind of performance dance in Italy in the 1400s and as a form of concert dance in France and Russia in the mid-1500s and 1600s. It seems surprising that it took centuries for the art form to reach Britain!

Apparently, most classical ballet up to and in the early 1700s lacked any sort of story. English choreographer John Weaver not only wanted to bring ballet to his nation but wanted to bring drama to ballet. He created a ballet based on a play, which in turn was inspired by Greek mythology; both the play and the ballet were called The Loves of Mars and Venus.

Drury Lane Theatre
Weaver attempted to portray the plot and the emotions of the play through dance – through movement, pantomime, etc. Nobody spoke lines; nobody even sang lines.

The ballet was popular enough to inspire a parody version by an influential producer.

On this date in 1717, The Loves of Mars and Venus premiered in Drury Lane Theatre in London.

Ballets that tell stories are so common now, I think of ballets that do NOT do so as experimental, but back in 1717, Weaver was the one doing the experimentation!






  • Wood TV tells how the Grand Rapids Ballet company tells stories – here about a World War II hero, and there about Beethoven.

  • ArtsEdge has a lesson about how to tell a story through movement, and SEDL offers another, similar three-session lesson. 




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Peasants' Day in Myanmar







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May 27 – Happy Birthday to the “Mother of Modern Dance”

Posted on May 27, 2014

Although the world-famous dancer and choreographer Isadora Duncan was born in America – in my home state of California, actually – she lived most of her adult life in Europe and the Soviet Union.

Duncan (born on this date in 1877, according to some sources) grew up very poor, in a “broken home” (her parents divorced, so her mom raised her and her two brothers and sister). Her mom was a piano teacher who was passionate about the arts, and Isadora discovered an early passion, too, in dance. She began to teach “movement” to neighborhood children when she was just six years old. By the time she was ten, her classes had become pretty large, and she and her older sister dropped out of school to work teaching dance for pay.

When Duncan first went to Europe, she studied Greek mythology, and she fell in love with flowing tunics worn by the Ancient Greeks. She learned about the ancient rituals surrounding dance, and she developed a unique style that she carried into her own work as a dancer and choreographer.

For example, she often dressed like this when she danced:


At the time that Duncan was introducing dancing barefoot in loose, flowing tunics, everyone else was into rigid ballet technique, corseted costumes, and painful-to-wear pointe shoes. Duncan combined her love of Ancient Greece with Americans' love of freedom as she introduced natural movements such as skipping, plus “great strides, leaps and bounds, with lifted forehead and far-spread arms.” 

Duncan was a maverick off the dance floor, too, but she faced great tragedies in her life. She had three children, but they all died in childhood. Her husband was mentally ill and committed suicide. Isadora Duncan herself died earlier than she should have – at age 50 – when her long, flowing scarf tangled in the spokes of the automobile she rode in, and her neck was broken.

The world always loves a good, gossipy story, and Duncan's life allowed plenty of such stories. But the world mostly remembers her as a dancer who earned fame and acclaim in Europe, and as a pioneer whose work led to an entirely new, much freer form: modern dance.











To this day, there is a dance company
carrying on Duncan's work.
Here is a sample of some of this natural, modern movement. Note: this is a pretty old video, but I'm sure it was filmed decades after Duncan died.

This video clip, I believe, offers some very early motion picture footage of Duncan herself. 





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January 22 – Happy Birthday, George Balanchine

Posted on January 22, 2014

George Balanchine is sometimes called the Father of American Ballet. One of the world's most famous choreographers (someone who plans and arranges dance movements), he co-founded the New York City Ballet and was its balletmaster for more than 35 years!


He was not, however, from NYC or even America. Balanchine was born in Saint Petersburg, in the Russian Empire, on this date in 1904. And his name when he was born was Giorgi Melitonovitch Balanchivadze.

His father's family were from Georgia (but not the peachy American state Georgia; rather the Eastern European country Georgia), and they included artists, soldiers, and an opera singer/composer who had helped to create the Tbilisi Ballet Theatre. His mother was Russian and was very fond of the ballet. She was not from high society like her husband, and she thought of ballet as a way to be more cultured and highbrow. She insisted that her 9-year-old son Giorgi audition with his sister for ballet, even though he wasn't all that interested in ballet.

Based on that audition, Balanchine was put into the Imperial Ballet School!

When the Bolsheviks revolted against the Russian czar and took over the government, they closed down the Imperial Ballet School. Balanchine played piano for food, in order to survive. Eventually the school was reopened, Balanchine graduated, and he began to work as a dancer. He also enrolled in a conservatory where he studied music.

George Balanchine got married very young—just 19 years old!—to an even-younger woman, who was just 16 years old. She was also a dancer. (Eventually Balanchine married and divorced five times—always to one of his dancers!) The two took advantage of being outside of the restrictive Soviet Union, on a dance tour with the Soviet State Dancers, to flee to Paris and freedom.


Balanchine had done some choreography even at a young age, so when he had to reduce his dancing because of a knee injury, he turned to choreography in Paris and Monte Carlo. Then he was persuaded by a patron of the arts named Lincoln Kirstein to relocate to America to start a ballet company.

And that's how a Georgian-Russian boy became the Father of American Ballet!

I LOVE Balanchine's Nutcracker! 

Balanchine's production of Tchaikovsky's ballet The Nutcracker is one of the most famous versions of a famous ballet. Watch this short video on how kids train to be a part of that show!




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Answer Your Cat's Questions Day 



















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