3/27/15 O&A Shall We Dance Friday: Serenade

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Serenade is a ballet by George Balanchine to Tschaikovsky’s 1880 Serenade for Strings in C, Op. 48. Students of the School of American Ballet gave the first performance on Sunday, 10 June 1934 on the Felix M. Warburg estate in White Plains, N.Y., where Mozartiana had been danced the previous day. This was the first ballet Balanchine choreographed in the United States.  Continue reading

3/20/15 O&A Shall We Dance Friday: Bones The Machine

 

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Steven Hill, aka Bones The Machine is a Flex dancer, actor and model. He performs jaw-dropping style of dance that originated from Jamaican brukup, and is rooted in the streets of east Brooklyn. The dance, which consists mainly of shapes you form with your arms, is called ‘Bone Breaking’ as it really looks like Steven has traded his skeleton for some sort of elastic gum. Bones has spent several years to develop his unique technique where he mixes contortion and improvisation with other styles from parallel dance movements such as tutting, popping, connecting and waving – and even a bit of ballet. Continue reading

3/13/15 Shall We Dance Friday: Excerpts From The Ballerinas (1987) – Starring Carla Fracci

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In The Ballerinas, a sumptuously produced two-part ballet drama, Fracci places her rare artistry in the service of dance history as she recreates roles first premiered by such luminous ballerinas as Marie Taglioni, Emma Livry, Carlotta Grisi, Fanny Elssler, Giuseppina Bozzacchi, Carlotta Brianza, Matilde Kschessinska, Anna Pavlova, Tamara Karsavina and Olga Spessitzeva. Continue reading

3/6/15 O&A Shall We Dance Friday: Promethean Fire- Paul Taylor Dance Company

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Promethean Fire (2002) is danced to the music of three of Leopold Stokowski’s famous Bach transcriptions (Opus 116). The ensemble work is one of Paul Taylor’s six ballets set to the music of the baroque master. This excerpt is the first movement choreographed to the celebrated Toccata and Fugue in D minor.   Continue reading

2/27/15 Shall We Dance Friday: Diana Vishneva in Moses Pendleton’s F.L.O.W. I, II and III

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Diana Vishneva is a Russian ballet dancer who performs as a principal dancer with both the Mariinsky Ballet (formerly the Kirov Ballet) and the American Ballet Theatre. Vishneva’s repertoire includes Don Quixote, Romeo and Juliet, La Bayadère, Sleeping Beauty, Swan Lake, The Firebird and Giselle. She also performs the works of modern choreographers, especially those of George Balanchine, William Forsythe, Martha Graham, Roland Petit and Moses Pendleton. Continue reading

2/20/15 O&A Shall We Dance Friday: Dances From The Cotton Club

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Out and About NYC Magazine is proud to present three dance and music clips from the legendary Cotton Club. Opened in 1923, the Cotton Club on 142nd St & Lenox Ave in the heart of Harlem, New York. The Cotton Club was operated by white New York gangster Owney Madden who used the club as an outlet to sell his alcohol to the prohibition crowd. 

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The Cotton Club at first excluded all but white patrons although the entertainers and most of staff were African-American.  Dancers at the Cotton Club were held to strict standards; they had to be at least 5’6” tall, light-skinned with only a slight tan, and under twenty-one years of age.

The Apollo Dancer sat the Cotton Club Revue in 1938.

Shows at the Cotton Club were musical reviews that featured dancers, singers, comedians, and variety acts, as well as a house band. Duke Ellington led that band from 1927 to 1930, and sporadically throughout the next eight years. The Cotton Club and Ellington’s Orchestra gained national notoriety through weekly broadcasts on radio station WHN some of which were recorded and released on albums. In this clip Duke Ellington and his orchestra perform  Rockin in Rhythm & Bugle Call Rag with dancers Bessie Dudley and Florence Hill from 1933.

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Cotton Club Dancers Bessie Dudley and Florence Hill

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The entertainers who played at the Cotton Club were some of the most widely known blues and jazz performers of their time including Cab Calloway. This is one of Cab’s broadcasts from The Cotton Club in the 30’s after Duke Ellington took to touring on the road. They later became co- house bands at the club.

Cab ( Cotton Club) Calloway 1934 Zaz Zuh Zaz

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Elegant black show girls ditch Opera for Jazz as they get seduced by a hot jazz tune in Red Hot. You’ve never seen this kind of action from the 1930s main stream Hollywood before, it was cut by the Hays Code. Red Hot stars Dorothy Salter and Maurice Rocco.

Red Hot 1930s Cotton Club Show

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The Silver Belles of Harlem are dancers who performed at the Cotton Club during its heyday era. Group members include Marion Coles, Elaine Ellis, Cleo Ellis, Fay Ray, and Bertye Lou Wood were featured in the 2006 documentary directed by Heather Lyn MacDonald, entitled Been Rich All My Life.

Been Rich All My Life

2/13/15 O&A Shall We Dance: Lloyd Knight – A Dancer’s World

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One of Martha Graham’s most memorable quotes, “It takes ten years, usually, to make a dancer. It takes ten years of handling the instrument, handling the material with which you are dealing, for you to know it completely.” This year marks Lloyd Knight’s tenth year with the Martha Graham Dance Company. His ascent through the ranks of the company culminated with Knight becoming a principal dancer prior to the 2015 New York City season. Continue reading

(REPOST) 2/6/15 SHALL WE DANCE FRIDAY: Appalachian Spring- Celebrating the 90 Anniversary of the Martha Graham Dance Company

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To celebrate the 90th Anniversary Season of the Martha Graham Dance Company April 14th, 15th, 16th and 18th at New York City Center O&A NYC Magazine reposts Martha Graham’s Appalachian Spring.

Appalachian Spring premiered on October 30th, 1944, at the Library of Congress, Coolidge Auditorium in Washington DC, with Martha Graham dancing the lead role. Created during the darkest days of War World II Graham wanted to create inspiring art that came out of the American experience.  Graham spoke of the work, “To be great art… it must belong to the country in which it flourishes, not be a pale copy of some art form perfected by another culture and another people”. Continue reading

8/23/24 O&A Shall We Dance Friday: Happy Birthday Dudley Williams- Conversation with Jennifer Dunning (Part One)

By Walter Rutledge

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August 18th came and went with little fanfare for Ailey dancer emeritus Dudley Williams. In 2004 Dudley became a member of theIMG_1407

On Thursday October 23, 2015 Clack Center NYC hosted A Conversation with Dudley Williams at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts Bruno Walter Auditorium, 40 Lincoln Center Plaza at 6pm. Dance critic and author Jennifer Dunning talked with Williams about his career that spans almost six decades. Williams was frank, funny and informative, discussing a wide range of his experiences with some of the world’s most renowned choreographers.  Continue reading

10/11/24 O&A SHALL WE DANCE FRIDAY: The Fountain of Bakhchisarai Starring Galina Ulanova and Maya Plisetskaya

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The Fountain of Bakhchisarai (Russian: Бахчисарайский фонтан) is a Russian ballet inspired by the 1823 poem by Alexander Pushkin of the same title. With music by Boris Asafyev and choreography by Rostislav Zakharov, the ballet premiered in Saint Petersburg, (then Leningrad) in 1934 at the Kirov Academic Theatre of Opera and Ballet (now the Mariinsky Theatre). Continue reading