Word: dancers
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...directors improvised as well. In early talkies the camera could hardly move, but Dudley Murphy's Black and Tan Fantasy (1929) daringly depicted the Duke Ellington composition in bold chiaroscuro, then used woozy prismatic images to show that a star dancer (the gorgeous Fredi Washington) is feeling ill before she goes on for a fatal final number. Fred Waller directed Ellington's Symphony in Black: A Rhapsody of Negro Life (1934) with artful lighting of black laborers, and moody shadows caressing the young Billie Holiday. Aubrey Scotto set most of A Rhapsody in Black and Blue (1932) in a cleaning...
...Russia in 1924 but never defected from its classical dance traditions; at her home in New York City. Orphaned at three, Danilova fell in love with the stage. At the Ballet Russes in the 1920s and '30s, she soared as Odette in Swan Lake and sizzled as the street dancer in Le Beau Danube. As a teacher at the School of American Ballet, she inspired generations of dancers. "I sacrificed marriage, children and country to be a ballerina," she wrote, "and there was never any misunderstanding on my part: I knew the price." Her audiences knew only the profit...
This plot was no joke. Many Commusicals were censored for having a decadent Westernized tone. As an officious official bellows to a young dancer in Carnival Night (U.S.S.R., 1957), "We want to raise the consciousness of our workers. But what do you expect to raise with naked legs?" Only about 40 Soviet-bloc musicals were made in 40 years, from The Jolly Fellows to the glossy, ginchy No Cheating, Darling (G.D.R., 1973). Yet these films brought vigorous fun to an audience starved for it. Their makers deserved to be named Heroes of the Soviet People...
...trip has been Jamison's dream ever since Nelson Mandela's release from Victor Verster Prison Farm in 1990 signaled the beginning of the end of apartheid. "I feel like I'm coming home," said the majestic 54-year-old former dancer who took over the company following Ailey's death in 1989. "This is my homeland, my lineage. South Africans are not the same as African Americans, but we greet each other as brothers and sisters because we've both been through turmoil and we understand that. We have so much to learn from them, and they have...
Hovering over South Africa last week was the spirit of Ailey, the brilliant Texas-born dancer and choreographer who, guided by the central tenet "Dance came from the people--we must take it back to the people," formed his company in 1958 as an incubator for contemporary black dance and nurtured it into a major American cultural icon. "There are times on stage when I speak to Alvin before I perform and ask him to guide me," said Nasha Thomas, 35, an 11-year veteran of the company. At the first performance, Thomas drew a thunderous ovation with her wrenching...