Advertisement
| famous black dancers in history: Black Ballerinas Misty Copeland, 2021-11-02 From New York Times bestselling and award-winning author and American Ballet Theatre principal dancer Misty Copeland comes an illustrated nonfiction collection celebrating dancers of color who have influenced her on and off the stage. As a young girl living in a motel with her mother and her five siblings, Misty Copeland didn’t have a lot of exposure to ballet or prominent dancers. She was sixteen when she saw a black ballerina on a magazine cover for the first time. The experience emboldened Misty and told her that she wasn’t alone—and her dream wasn’t impossible. In the years since, Misty has only learned more about the trailblazing women who made her own success possible by pushing back against repression and racism with their talent and tenacity. Misty brings these women’s stories to a new generation of readers and gives them the recognition they deserve. With an introduction from Misty about the legacy these women have had on dance and on her career itself, this book delves into the lives and careers of women of color who fundamentally changed the landscape of American ballet from the early 20th century to today. |
| famous black dancers in history: African-American Concert Dance John O. Perpener, 2001 Provides biographical and historical information on a group of African-American artists who worked during the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s to legitimize dance of the African diaspora as a serious art form. |
| famous black dancers in history: Night's Dancer Yaël Tamar Lewin, 2015-08-14 The biography of the first African-American prima ballerina Winner of the The Marfield Prize / National Award for Arts Writing (2011) Dancer Janet Collins, born in New Orleans in 1917 and raised in Los Angeles, soared high over the color line as the first African-American prima ballerina at the Metropolitan Opera. Night's Dancer chronicles the life of this extraordinary and elusive woman, who became a unique concert dance soloist as well as a black trailblazer in the white world of classical ballet. During her career, Collins endured an era in which racial bias prevailed, and subsequently prevented her from appearing in the South. Nonetheless, her brilliant performances transformed the way black dancers were viewed in ballet. The book begins with an unfinished memoir written by Collins in which she gives a captivating account of her childhood and young adult years, including her rejection by the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. Dance scholar Yaël Tamar Lewin then picks up the thread of Collins's story. Drawing on extensive research and interviews with Collins and her family, friends, and colleagues to explore Collins's development as a dancer, choreographer, and painter, Lewin gives us a profoundly moving portrait of an artist of indomitable spirit. |
| famous black dancers in history: Black Dance in America James Haskins, 1990 Surveys the history of black dance in America, from its beginnings with the ritual dances of African slaves, through tap and modern dance to break dancing. Includes brief biographies of influential dancers and companies. |
| famous black dancers in history: Dance We Do Ntozake Shange, 2020-10-13 In her first posthumous work, the revered poet crafts a personal history of Black dance and captures the careers of legendary dancers along with her own rhythmic beginnings. Many learned of Ntozake Shange’s ability to blend movement with words when her acclaimed choreopoem for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf made its way to Broadway in 1976, eventually winning an Obie Award the following year. But before she found fame as a writer, poet, performer, dancer, and storyteller, she was an untrained student who found her footing in others’ classrooms. Dance We Do is a tribute to those who taught her and her passion for rhythm, movement, and dance. After 20 years of research, writing, and devotion, Ntozake Shange tells her history of Black dance through a series of portraits of the dancers who trained her, moved with her, and inspired her to share the power of the Black body with her audience. Shange celebrates and honors the contributions of the often unrecognized pioneers who continued the path Katherine Dunham paved through the twentieth century. Dance We Do features a stunning photo insert along with personal interviews with Mickey Davidson, Halifu Osumare, Camille Brown, and Dianne McIntyre. In what is now one of her final works, Ntozake Shange welcomes the reader into the world she loved best. |
| famous black dancers in history: What the Eye Hears Brian Seibert, 2015-11-17 The first authoritative history of tap dancing, one of the great art forms—along with jazz and musical comedy—created in America. Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Nonfiction Winner of Anisfield-Wolf Book Award An Economist Best Book of 2015 What the Eye Hears offers an authoritative account of the great American art of tap dancing. Brian Seibert, a dance critic for The New York Times, begins by exploring tap’s origins as a hybrid of the jig and clog dancing and dances brought from Africa by slaves. He tracks tap’s transfer to the stage through blackface minstrelsy and charts its growth as a cousin to jazz in the vaudeville circuits. Seibert chronicles tap’s spread to ubiquity on Broadway and in Hollywood, analyzes its decline after World War II, and celebrates its rediscovery and reinvention by new generations of American and international performers. In the process, we discover how the history of tap dancing is central to any meaningful account of American popular culture. This is a story with a huge cast of characters, from Master Juba through Bill Robinson and Shirley Temple, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, and Gene Kelly and Paul Draper to Gregory Hines and Savion Glover. Seibert traces the stylistic development of tap through individual practitioners and illuminates the cultural exchange between blacks and whites, the interplay of imitation and theft, as well as the moving story of African Americans in show business, wielding enormous influence as they grapple with the pain and pride of a complicated legacy. What the Eye Hears teaches us to see and hear the entire history of tap in its every step. “Tap is America’s great contribution to dance, and Brian Seibert’s book gives us—at last!—a full-scale (and lively) history of its roots, its development, and its glorious achievements. An essential book!” —Robert Gottlieb, dance critic for The New York Observer and editor of Reading Dance “What the Eye Hears not only tells you all you wanted to know about tap dancing; it tells you what you never realized you needed to know. . . . And he recounts all this in an easygoing style, providing vibrant descriptions of the dancing itself and illuminating commentary by those masters who could make a floor sing.” —Deborah Jowitt, author of Jerome Robbins: His Life, His Theater, His Dance and Time and the Dancing Image |
| famous black dancers in history: Firebird Misty Copeland, 2014-09-04 In her debut picture book, Misty Copeland tells the story of a young girl--an every girl--whose confidence is fragile and who is questioning her own ability to reach the heights that Misty has reached. Misty encourages this young girl's faith in herself and shows her exactly how, through hard work and dedication, she too can become Firebird. Lyrical and affecting text paired with bold, striking illustrations that are some of Caldecott Honoree Christopher Myers's best work, makes Firebird perfect for aspiring ballerinas everywhere. |
| famous black dancers in history: Joan Myers Brown and the Audacious Hope of the Black Ballerina Brenda Dixon Gottschild, 2016-04-29 Founder of the Philadelphia Dance Company (PHILADANCO) and the Philadelphia School of Dance Arts, Joan Myers Brown's personal and professional histories reflect the hardships as well as the advances of African-Americans in the artistic and social developments of the second half of the twentieth and the early twenty-first centuries. |
| famous black dancers in history: Sonidos Negros K. Meira Goldberg, 2019 How is the politics of Blackness figured in the flamenco dancing body? What does flamenco dance tell us about the construction of race in the Atlantic world? Sonidos Negros traces how, in the span between 1492 and 1933, the vanquished Moor became Black, and how this figure, enacted in terms of a minstrelized Gitano, paradoxically came to represent Spain itself. The imagined Gypsy about which flamenco imagery turns dances on a knife's edge delineating Christian and non-Christian, White and Black worlds. This figure's subversive teetering undermines Spain's symbolic linkage of religion with race, a prime weapon of conquest. Flamenco's Sonidos Negros live in this precarious balance, amid the purposeful confusion and ruckus cloaking embodied resistance, the lament for what has been lost, and the values and aspirations of those rendered imperceptible by enslavement and colonization. |
| famous black dancers in history: Black Dance Edward Thorpe, 1990 From its origins in Africa to its influence on ballet and modern dance, Thorpe presents the most comprehensive history of black dance available today. 75 photographs. |
| famous black dancers in history: Tap Dancing America Constance Valis Hill, 2014-11-12 Here is the vibrant, colorful, high-stepping story of tap -- the first comprehensive, fully documented history of a uniquely American art form. Writing with all the verve and grace of tap itself, Constance Valis Hill offers a sweeping narrative, filling a major gap in American dance history and placing tap firmly center stage. |
| famous black dancers in history: America Dancing Megan Pugh, 2015-01-01 The history of American dance reflects the nation's tangled culture. Dancers from wildly different backgrounds watched, imitated, and stole from one another. Audiences everywhere embraced the result as deeply American. Chronicling dance from the minstrel stage to the music video, Megan Pugh shows how freedom--that nebulous, contested American ideal--emerged as a genre-defining aesthetic. Ballerinas mingled with slumming thrill-seekers, and hoedowns showed up on elite opera-house stages. Steps invented by slaves captivated the British royalty and the Parisian avant-garde. Dances were better boundary crossers than their dancers, however, and the racism and class conflicts that haunt everyday life shadow American dance as well. Center stage in America Dancing is a cast of performers who slide, glide, stomp, and swing their way through history. At the nadir of U.S. race relations, cakewalkers embraced the rhythms of black America. On the heels of the Harlem Renaissance, Bill Robinson tap-danced to stardom. At the height of the Great Depression, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers unified highbrow and popular art. In the midst of 1940s patriotism, Agnes de Mille brought jazz and square dance to ballet, then took it all to Broadway. In the decades to come, the choreographer Paul Taylor turned pedestrian movements into modern masterpiecds, and Michael Jackson moonwalked his way to otherworldly stardom. These artists both celebrated and criticized the country, all while inspiring others to get moving. For it is partly by pretending to be other people, Pugh argues, that Americans discover themselves ... America Dancing demonstrates the centrality of dance in American art, life, and identity, taking us to watershed moments when the nation worked out a sense of itself through public movement--Publisher's description. |
| famous black dancers in history: Josephine Baker Alan Schroeder, Heather Lehr Wagner, 2009 * Critically acclaimed biographies of history's most notable African-Americans * Straightforward and objective writing * Lavishly illustrated with photographs and memorabilia * Essential for multicultural studies |
| famous black dancers in history: Class Act Cholly Atkins, Jacqui Malone, 2003-04-09 Cholly Atkins's career has spanned an extraordinary era of American dance. He began performing during Prohibition and continued his apprenticeship in vaudeville, in nightclubs, and in the army during World War II. With his partner, Honi Coles, Cholly toured the country, performing with such jazz masters as Louis Armstrong, Cab Calloway, and Count Basie. As tap reached a nadir in the fifties, Cholly created the new specialization of vocal choreography, teaching rhythm-and-blues singers how to perform their music by adding rhythmical dance steps drawn from twentieth-century American dance, from the Charleston to rhythm tap. For the burgeoning Motown record label, Cholly taught such artists as the Supremes, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, the Temptations, Gladys Knight and the Pips, and Marvin Gaye to command the stage in ways that would enhance their performances and sell their songs. Class Act tells of Cholly's boyhood and coming of age, his entry into the dance world of New York City, his performing triumphs and personal tragedies, and the career transformations that won him gold records and a Tony for choreographing Black and Blue on Broadway. Chronicling the rise, near demise, and rediscovery of tap dancing, the book is both an engaging biography and a rich cultural history. |
| famous black dancers in history: Jazz Dance Marshall Stearns, Jean Stearns, 1994-03-22 The phrase jazz dance has a special meaning for professionals who dance to jazz music (they use it to describe non-tap body movement); and another meaning for studios coast to coast teaching 'Modern Jazz Dance' (a blend of Euro-American styles that owes little to jazz and less to jazz rhythms). However, we are dealing here with what may eventually be referred to as jazz dance, and we could not think of a more suitable title. The characteristic that distinguishes American vernacular dance--as does jazz music--is swing, which can be heard, felt, and seen, but defined only with great difficulty. . . . --from the Introduction |
| famous black dancers in history: Paris Blues Andy Fry, 2014-07-04 The Jazz Age. The phrase conjures images of Louis Armstrong holding court at the Sunset Cafe in Chicago, Duke Ellington dazzling crowds at the Cotton Club in Harlem, and star singers like Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey. But the Jazz Age was every bit as much of a Paris phenomenon as it was a Chicago and New York scene. In Paris Blues, Andy Fry provides an alternative history of African American music and musicians in France, one that looks beyond familiar personalities and well-rehearsed stories. He pinpoints key issues of race and nation in France’s complicated jazz history from the 1920s through the 1950s. While he deals with many of the traditional icons—such as Josephine Baker, Django Reinhardt, and Sidney Bechet, among others—what he asks is how they came to be so iconic, and what their stories hide as well as what they preserve. Fry focuses throughout on early jazz and swing but includes its re-creation—reinvention—in the 1950s. Along the way, he pays tribute to forgotten traditions such as black musical theater, white show bands, and French wartime swing. Paris Blues provides a nuanced account of the French reception of African Americans and their music and contributes greatly to a growing literature on jazz, race, and nation in France. |
| famous black dancers in history: Breadth of Bodies Emmaly Wiederholt, Silva Laukkanen, 2022-03 Breadth of Bodies seeks to investigate and dismantle the language and stereotypes often used to describe professional dancers with disabilities. Spearheaded by dancer/writer Emmaly Wiederholt and dance educator Silva Laukkanen with illustrations by visual artist Liz Brent-Maldonado, the team collected interviews with 35 professional dance artists with disabilities from 15 countries, asking about training, access, and press, as well as looking at the state of the field. |
| famous black dancers in history: Dances of Haiti Katherine Dunham, 1983 |
| famous black dancers in history: Apollo's Angels Jennifer Homans, 2010-11-02 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW, LOS ANGELES TIMES, SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE, AND PUBLISHERS WEEKLY For more than four hundred years, the art of ballet has stood at the center of Western civilization. Its traditions serve as a record of our past. Lavishly illustrated and beautifully told, Apollo’s Angels—the first cultural history of ballet ever written—is a groundbreaking work. From ballet’s origins in the Renaissance and the codification of its basic steps and positions under France’s Louis XIV (himself an avid dancer), the art form wound its way through the courts of Europe, from Paris and Milan to Vienna and St. Petersburg. In the twentieth century, émigré dancers taught their art to a generation in the United States and in Western Europe, setting off a new and radical transformation of dance. Jennifer Homans, a historian, critic, and former professional ballerina, wields a knowledge of dance born of dedicated practice. Her admiration and love for the ballet, as Entertainment Weekly notes, brings “a dancer’s grace and sure-footed agility to the page.” |
| famous black dancers in history: British Dance: Black Routes Christy Adair, Ramsay Burt, 2016-10-04 British Dance, Black Routes is an outstanding collection of writings which re-reads the achievements of Black British dance artists, and places them within a broad historical, cultural and artistic context. Until now discussion of choreography by Black dance practitioners has been dominated by the work of African-American artists, facilitated by the civil rights movement. But the work produced by Black British artists has in part been within the context of Britain’s colonial legacy. Ramsay Burt and Christy Adair bring together an array of leading scholars and practitioners to review the singularity and distinctiveness of the work of British-based dancers who are Black and its relation to the specificity of Black British experiences. From sub-Saharan West African and Caribbean dance forms to jazz and hip-hop, British Dance, Black Routes looks afresh at over five decades of artistic production to provide an unparalleled resource for dance students and scholars. Appendix 2 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license. |
| famous black dancers in history: Revelations Alvin Ailey, A. Peter Bailey, 1995 World-class choreographer Alvin Ailey was a pioneer in the world of dance. Now, the intensely private man opens up to tell his own story in his own words. It is a revelation that will astound even those who think they knew Alvin Ailey--the man who forever changed the face and the rhythm of the world of dance. photographs. |
| famous black dancers in history: Dancing Many Drums Thomas F. Defrantz, 2002-04-01 Few will dispute the profound influence that African American music and movement has had in American and world culture. Dancing Many Drums explores that influence through a groundbreaking collection of essays on African American dance history, theory, and practice. In so doing, it reevaluates black and African American as both racial and dance categories. Abundantly illustrated, the volume includes images of a wide variety of dance forms and performers, from ring shouts, vaudeville, and social dances to professional dance companies and Hollywood movie dancing. Bringing together issues of race, gender, politics, history, and dance, Dancing Many Drums ranges widely, including discussions of dance instruction songs, the blues aesthetic, and Katherine Dunham’s controversial ballet about lynching, Southland. In addition, there are two photo essays: the first on African dance in New York by noted dance photographer Mansa Mussa, and another on the 1934 African opera, Kykunkor, or the Witch Woman. |
| famous black dancers in history: Father Comes Home From the Wars (Parts 1, 2 & 3) Suzan-Lori Parks, 2015-06-01 By turns philosophical and playful, lyrical and earthy, Father Comes Home from the Wars (Parts 1, 2 & 3), swoops, leaps, dives and soars, reimagining a turbulent point in American history through a cockeyed contemporary lens . . . The finest work yet from this gifted writer.—The New York Times Thrilling. . . . A masterpiece . . . A story that engages the deepest possible issues in the most gripping possible ways.—New York Offered his freedom if he joins his master in the ranks of the Confederacy, Hero, a slave, must choose whether to leave the woman and people he loves for what may be another empty promise. As his decision brings him face to face with a nation at war with itself, the ones Hero left behind debate whether to escape or wait for his return, only to discover that for Hero, freedom may have come at a great spiritual cost. A devastatingly beautiful dramatic work, Father Comes Home from the Wars (Parts 1, 2, & 3) is the opening trilogy of a projected nine-play cycle that will ultimately take us into the present. Suzan-Lori Parks became the first African American woman to receive the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for her play Topdog/Underdog in 2002. Her other plays include The Book of Grace, In the Blood, Venus, The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World, Fucking A, Imperceptible Mutabilities in the Third Kingdom and The America Play. In 2007 her 365 Days/365 Plays was produced at more than seven hundred theaters worldwide. Parks is a MacArthur Fellow and the Master Writer Chair at the Public Theater. |
| famous black dancers in history: Black American History For Dummies Ronda Racha Penrice, 2021-04-14 Go deeper than the Black History you may think you know! Black American History For Dummies reveals the terrors and struggles and celebrates the triumphs of Black Americans. This handy book goes way beyond what you may have studied in school, digging into the complexities and the intrigues that make up Black America. From slavery and the Civil Rights movement to Black Wall Street, Juneteenth, redlining, and Black Lives Matter, this book offers an accessible resource for understanding the facts and events critical to Black history in America. The history of Black Americans is the history of Americans; Americans dance to Black music, read Black literature, watch Black movies, and whether they know it or not reap the benefits of the vibrant political, athletic, and sociological contributions of Black Americans. With this book, you can dive into history, culture, and beyond. See how far there’s yet to go in the approach to studying Black American culture and ending racism. Get the authoritative story on the growth and evolution of Black America from slavery, Reconstruction, Jim Crow, the Civil Rights era through to today Discover the Black artists, musicians, athletes, and leaders who have made the United States what it is Develop a fuller understanding of concerns about police brutality and other front-and-center race issues Find out how every aspect of American life connects to Black history Black American History For Dummies is for anyone who needs to learn or re-learn the true history about Black Americans. |
| famous black dancers in history: Notable Black American Women Jessie Carney Smith, Shirelle Phelps, 1992 Arranged alphabetically from Alice of Dunk's Ferry to Jean Childs Young, this volume profiles 312 Black American women who have achieved national or international prominence. |
| famous black dancers in history: Ballerina Body Misty Copeland, 2017-06-20 The celebrated ballerina and role model, Misty Copeland, shares the secrets of how to reshape your body and achieve a lean, strong physique and glowing health. Misty Copeland believes There has been a shift in recent years in which women no longer desire the bare bones of a runway model. Standards have changed: what women do want is a long, toned, powerful body with excellent posture. In other words, the body of a ballerina. In her first health and fitness book, Misty will show women how to find the motivation to get healthier and stronger, and how to reshape their bodies to be lean and flexible, with step-by-step advice, meal plans, workout routines, and words of inspiration. Celebrating the importance of healthy fats and a fitness regimen based on ballet exercises, Misty shares her own time-tested exercises and an eating plan focusing on healthy fats, both of which keep her in top shape. Tips for motivation and words of encouragement as well as tips on how to keep going even when you may want to give up. An inspiring section on the importance of finding mentors, and eventually being one, plus excerpts from Misty's personal journal, round out this important book on grace and strength. |
| famous black dancers in history: Bunheads Misty Copeland, 2020-09-29 Instant New York Times bestselling series opener inspired by prima ballerina and author Misty Copeland's own early experiences in ballet. From prima ballerina and New York Times bestselling author Misty Copeland comes the story of a young Misty, who discovers her love of dance through the ballet Coppélia--a story about a toymaker who devises a villainous plan to bring a doll to life. Misty is so captivated by the tale and its heroine, Swanilda, she decides to audition for the role. But she's never danced ballet before; in fact, this is the very first day of her very first dance class! Though Misty is excited, she's also nervous. But as she learns from her fellow bunheads, she makes wonderful friends who encourage her to do her very best. Misty's nerves quickly fall away, and with a little teamwork, the bunheads put on a show to remember. Featuring the stunning artwork of newcomer Setor Fiadzigbey, Bunheads is an inspiring tale for anyone looking for the courage to try something new. |
| famous black dancers in history: Frankie Manning Frankie Manning, Cynthia R. Millman, 2007 In the early days of swing dancing, Frankie Manning stood out for his moves and his innovative routines; he created the air step in the Lindy hop, a dance that took the U.S. and then the world by storm. In this fascinating autobiography, choreographer and Tony Award winner (Black and Blue) Frankie Manning recalls how his first years of dancing as a teenager at Harlem's Savoy Ballroom led to his becoming chief choreographer and a lead dancer for Whitey's Lindy Hoppers, a group that appeared on Broadway, in Hollywood musicals, and on stages around the globe. Manning brings the Swing Era vividly back to life with his recollections of crowded ballrooms and of Lindy hoppers trying to outdo each other in spectacular performances. His memories of the many headliners and film stars, as well as uncelebrated dancers with whom he shared the stage, create a unique portrait of an era in which African American performers enjoyed the spotlight, if not a star's prerogatives and salary. With collaborator Cynthia Millman, Manning traces the evolution of swing dancing from its early days in Harlem through the post-World War II period, until it was eclipsed by rock 'n' roll and then disco. When swing made a comeback, Manning's 30-year hiatus ended. He has been performing, choreographing, and teaching ever since. |
| famous black dancers in history: Josephine Jean-Claude Baker, Chris Chase, 2001 This revelatory biography of Folies Bergere dancer Josephine Baker (1906-1975) is a study of struggle, truimph and tragedy. |
| famous black dancers in history: Feel Free Zadie Smith, 2018-02-06 Winner of the 2018 National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism A New York Times Notable Book From Zadie Smith, one of the most beloved authors of her generation, a new collection of essays Since she burst spectacularly into view with her debut novel almost two decades ago, Zadie Smith has established herself not just as one of the world's preeminent fiction writers, but also a brilliant and singular essayist. She contributes regularly to The New Yorker and the New York Review of Books on a range of subjects, and each piece of hers is a literary event in its own right. Arranged into five sections--In the World, In the Audience, In the Gallery, On the Bookshelf, and Feel Free--this new collection poses questions we immediately recognize. What is The Social Network--and Facebook itself--really about? It's a cruel portrait of us: 500 million sentient people entrapped in the recent careless thoughts of a Harvard sophomore. Why do we love libraries? Well-run libraries are filled with people because what a good library offers cannot be easily found elsewhere: an indoor public space in which you do not have to buy anything in order to stay. What will we tell our granddaughters about our collective failure to address global warming? So I might say to her, look: the thing you have to appreciate is that we'd just been through a century of relativism and deconstruction, in which we were informed that most of our fondest-held principles were either uncertain or simple wishful thinking, and in many areas of our lives we had already been asked to accept that nothing is essential and everything changes--and this had taken the fight out of us somewhat. Gathering in one place for the first time previously unpublished work, as well as already classic essays, such as, Joy, and, Find Your Beach, Feel Free offers a survey of important recent events in culture and politics, as well as Smith's own life. Equally at home in the world of good books and bad politics, Brooklyn-born rappers and the work of Swiss novelists, she is by turns wry, heartfelt, indignant, and incisive--and never any less than perfect company. This is literary journalism at its zenith. Zadie Smith's new book, Grand Union, is on sale 10/8/2019. |
| famous black dancers in history: Choreographing Asian America Yutian Wong, 2011-07-21 Poised at the intersection of Asian American studies and dance studies, Choreographing Asian America is the first book-length examination of the role of Orientalist discourse in shaping Asian Americanist entanglements with U.S. modern dance history. Moving beyond the acknowledgement that modern dance has its roots in Orientalist appropriation, Yutian Wong considers the effect that invisible Orientalism has on the reception of work by Asian American choreographers and the conceptualization of Asian American performance as a category. Drawing on ethnographic and choreographic research methods, the author follows the work of Club O' Noodles—a Vietnamese American performance ensemble—to understand how Asian American artists respond to competing narratives of representation, aesthetics, and social activism that often frame the production of Asian American performance. |
| famous black dancers in history: Island Possessed Katherine Dunham, 2012-05-16 Just as surely as Haiti is possessed by the gods and spirits of vaudun (voodoo), the island possessed Katherine Dunham when she first went there in 1936 to study dance and ritual. In this book, Dunham reveals how her anthropological research, her work in dance, and her fascination for the people and cults of Haiti worked their spell, catapulting her into experiences that she was often lucky to survive. Here Dunham tells how the island came to be possessed by the demons of voodoo and other cults imported from various parts of Africa, as well as by the deep class divisions, particularly between blacks and mulattos, and the political hatred still very much in evidence today. Full of the flare and suspense of immersion in a strange and enchanting culture, Island Possessed is also a pioneering work in the anthropology of dance and a fascinating document on Haitian politics and voodoo. |
| famous black dancers in history: Final Bow for Yellowface: Dancing Between Intention and Impact Phil Chan, 2020-06-30 Who would have guessed that one short conversation with New York City Ballet Artistic Director Peter Martins would change the course of how we approach America's favorite holiday ballet, and serve as a catalyst for changing how we talk about race in America? Phil Chan, arts advocate and co-founder of Final Bow for Yellowface, chronicles his journey navigating conversations around race, representation, and inclusion arising from issues in presenting one short dance-the Chinese variation from The Nutcracker. Armed with new vocabulary, he recounts his process and pitfalls in advising Salt Lake City's Ballet West on the presentation of a lost Balanchine work from 1925, Le Chant du Rossignol.Chan encounters orientalism, cultural appropriation, and yellowface, and witnesses firsthand the continuing evolution of an Old World aristocratic dance form in a New World democratic environment. As a storyteller, Chan presents a mix of dance and Chinese American history, personal anecdotes, and best practices for any professional arts organization to use for navigating issues around race, while outlining an essential path American ballet must take in order for our beloved art form to stay alive for a growingly diverse 21st century audience. |
| famous black dancers in history: Katherine Dunham Joanna Dee Das, 2017-05-23 One of the most important dance artists of the twentieth century, dancer and choreographer Katherine Dunham (1909-2006) created works that thrilled audiences the world over. As an African American woman, she broke barriers of race and gender, most notably as the founder of an important dance company that toured the United States, Latin America, Europe, Asia, and Australia for several decades. Through both her company and her schools, she influenced generations of performers for years to come, from Alvin Ailey to Marlon Brando to Eartha Kitt. Dunham was also one of the first choreographers to conduct anthropological research about dance and translate her findings for the theatrical stage. Katherine Dunham: Dance and the African Diaspora makes the argument that Dunham was more than a dancer-she was an intellectual and activist committed to using dance to fight for racial justice. Dunham saw dance as a tool of liberation, as a way for people of African descent to reclaim their history and forge a new future. She put her theories into motion not only through performance, but also through education, scholarship, travel, and choices about her own life. Author Joanna Dee Das examines how Dunham struggled to balance artistic dreams, personal desires, economic needs, and political commitments in the face of racism and sexism. The book analyzes Dunham's multiple spheres of engagement, assessing her dance performances as a form of black feminist protest while also presenting new material about her schools in New York and East St. Louis, her work in Haiti, and her network of interlocutors that included figures as diverse as ballet choreographer George Balanchine and Senegalese president Léopold Sédar Senghor. It traces Dunham's influence over the course of several decades from the New Negro Movement of the 1920s to the Black Power Movement of the late 1960s and beyond. By drawing on a vast, never-utilized trove of archival materials along with oral histories, choreographic analysis, and embodied research, Katherine Dunham: Dance and the African Diaspora offers new insight about how this remarkable woman built political solidarity through the arts. |
| famous black dancers in history: Living Atlanta Clifford M. Kuhn, 2005-03-01 From the memories of everyday experience, Living Atlanta vividly recreates life in the city during the three decades from World War I through World War II--a period in which a small, regional capital became a center of industry, education, finance, commerce, and travel. This profusely illustrated volume draws on nearly two hundred interviews with Atlanta residents who recall, in their own words, the way it was--from segregated streetcars to college fraternity parties, from moonshine peddling to visiting performances by the Metropolitan Opera, from the growth of neighborhoods to religious revivals. The book is based on a celebrated public radio series that was broadcast in 1979-80 and hailed by Studs Terkel as an important, exciting project--a truly human portrait of a city of people. Living Atlanta presents a diverse array of voices--domestics and businessmen, teachers and factory workers, doctors and ballplayers. There are memories of the city when it wasn't quite a city: Back in those young days it was country in Atlanta, musician Rosa Lee Carson reflects. It sure was. Why, you could even raise a cow out there in your yard. There are eyewitness accounts of such major events as the Great Fire of 1917: The wind blowing that way, it was awful, recalls fire fighter Hugh McDonald. There'd be a big board on fire, and the wind would carry that board, and it'd hit another house and start right up on that one. And it just kept spreading. There are glimpses of the workday: It's a real job firing an engine, a darn hard job, says railroad man J. R. Spratlin. I was using a scoop and there wasn't no eight hour haul then, there was twelve hours, sometimes sixteen. And there are scenes of the city at play: Baseball was the popular sport, remembers Arthur Leroy Idlett, who grew up in the Pittsburgh neighborhood. Everybody had teams. And people--you could put some kids out there playing baseball, and before you knew a thing, you got a crowd out there, watching kids play. Organizing the book around such topics as transportation, health and religion, education, leisure, and politics, the authors provide a narrative commentary that places the diverse remembrances in social and historical context. Resurfacing throughout the book as a central theme are the memories of Jim Crow and the peculiarities of black-white relations. Accounts of Klan rallies, job and housing discrimination, and poll taxes are here, along with stories about the Commission on Interracial Cooperation, early black forays into local politics, and the role of the city's black colleges. Martin Luther King, Sr., historian Clarence Bacote, former police chief Herbert Jenkins, educator Benjamin Mays, and sociologist Arthur Raper are among those whose recollections are gathered here, but the majority of the voices are those of ordinary Atlantans, men and women who in these pages relive day-to-day experiences of a half-century ago. |
| famous black dancers in history: Encyclopedia of African American History, 1896 to the Present: O-T Paul Finkelman, 2009 Alphabetically-arranged entries from O to T that explores significant events, major persons, organizations, and political and social movements in African-American history from 1896 to the twenty-first-century. |
| famous black dancers in history: Taking Flight Michaela DePrince, Elaine DePrince, 2014 The memoir of Michaela DePrince, who lived the first few years of her live in war-torn Sierra Leone until being adopted by an American Family. Now seventeen, she is one of the premiere ballerinas in the United States-- |
| famous black dancers in history: Black Dance Lynne Fauley Emery, 1988 A complete history of black dance forms, this book explores folk, ballet, jazz, tap, Broadway/Hollywood, disco, and breakdancing. An ultimate research tool, it includes portraits of hundreds of important black dancers and choreographers. |
| famous black dancers in history: American Notes Charles Dickens, 2021-02-26 All that is loathsome, drooping, or decayed is here. In 1842 Dickens sailed to America to observe The New World that held such fascination for the English. He went to magnificent landmarks like Niagara Falls but also included visits to mental institutions and prisons. He met President John Tyler in D.C and the well-educated Laura Bridgman, who was deaf-blind. Dickens found lots to admire, but also noted how coarse and ill-mannered the Americans were. That did not go over well with the Americans. With superb language and humour, Dickens gathered these fascinating observations in this travelogue that will have anyone with the slightest interest in cultural differences completely spell-bound. Charles Dickens (1812-1870) was an English author, social critic, and philanthropist. Much of his writing first appeared in small instalments in magazines and was widely popular. Among his most famous novels are Oliver Twist (1839), David Copperfield (1850), and Great Expectations (1861). |
| famous black dancers in history: And Still I Rise Maya Angelou, 2011-08-17 Maya Angelou’s unforgettable collection of poetry lends its name to the documentary film about her life, And Still I Rise, as seen on PBS’s American Masters. Pretty women wonder where my secret lies. I’m not cute or built to suit a fashion model’s size But when I start to tell them, They think I’m telling lies. I say, It’s in the reach of my arms, The span of my hips, The stride of my step, The curl of my lips. I’m a woman Phenomenally. Phenomenal woman, That’s me. Thus begins “Phenomenal Woman,” just one of the beloved poems collected here in Maya Angelou’s third book of verse. These poems are powerful, distinctive, and fresh—and, as always, full of the lifting rhythms of love and remembering. And Still I Rise is written from the heart, a celebration of life as only Maya Angelou has discovered it. “It is true poetry she is writing,” M.F.K. Fisher has observed, “not just rhythm, the beat, rhymes. I find it very moving and at times beautiful. It has an innate purity about it, unquenchable dignity. . . . It is astounding, flabbergasting, to recognize it, in all the words I read every day and night . . . it gives me heart, to hear so clearly the caged bird singing and to understand her notes.” |
Celebrities - Page 2 - FamousBoard
Dec 5, 2006 · Page 2- Talk about celebrities. Post REAL photos & videos | Post your first reply here @ Famous …
Celebs | FamousBoard.com
Nov 27, 2021 · Join Date Mar 2010 Posts 57 Thanks Given 6,912 Thanks Received 52 Thanked in 21 Posts
Forum: Celebrity Fakes - FamousBoard
Jul 12, 2004 · Check out Adult FriendFinder, the easiest way to meet single people in your area. Find hot …
Famous Board | FamousBoard.com
Jun 22, 2011 · Join Date Oct 2004 Posts 3,382 Thanks Given 36,638 Thanks Received 11,274 Thanked in 3,038 Posts
Forum: Celebrity Fakes - FamousBoard
Jul 12, 2004 · Fake photos of famous female stars. Read the rules! | Post your first reply here @ Famous Board
Celebrities - Page 2 - FamousBoard
Dec 5, 2006 · Page 2- Talk about celebrities. Post REAL photos & videos | Post your first reply here @ Famous Board
Celebs | FamousBoard.com
Nov 27, 2021 · Join Date Mar 2010 Posts 57 Thanks Given 6,912 Thanks Received 52 Thanked in 21 Posts
Forum: Celebrity Fakes - FamousBoard
Jul 12, 2004 · Check out Adult FriendFinder, the easiest way to meet single people in your area. Find hot adventurous women now!
Famous Board | FamousBoard.com
Jun 22, 2011 · Join Date Oct 2004 Posts 3,382 Thanks Given 36,638 Thanks Received 11,274 Thanked in 3,038 Posts
Forum: Celebrity Fakes - FamousBoard
Jul 12, 2004 · Fake photos of famous female stars. Read the rules! | Post your first reply here @ Famous Board
Melissa Rauch - Celebrity Fakes Forum | FamousBoard.com
Aug 8, 2011 · Melissa Ivy Rauch (born June 23, 1980 in Marlboro, New Jersey, USA) is an American actress and comedian. She is best known for her role as Bernadette Rostenkowski on the CBS …
Forum: Celebrity Fakes - FamousBoard
Jul 12, 2004 · Forum: Celebrity Fakes Fake photos of famous female stars. Read the rules! | Post your first reply here
FamousBoard Support - Page 2
May 11, 2013 · Page 2- Discussion about the FamousBoard and any problems with it. @ Famous Board
Mariah Carey - Celebrity Fakes Forum | FamousBoard.com
Aug 21, 2005 · Mariah Carey (born March 27, 1970) is an American R&B singer, songwriter, record producer, and actress. She made her recording debut in 1990 under the guidance of Columbia …
Sabrina Carpenter - Nude Celebrities Forum | FamousBoard.com
Sabrina Ann Lynn Carpenter (born May 11, 1999) is an American singer and actress. She stars as the young version of Chloe Goodwin in The Goodwin Games and as rebellious Maya Hart in the …
