Word: pioneers
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...will remember him. But Kluger says that Shepard was known as "the ice commander" for good reason. "He was either all business or he was this genial swashbuckling rocket jock, and he would switch back and forth without warning, according to his own internal clock." Whatever foibles this space pioneer carried inside him, they never poisoned the camaraderie among the original seven Mercury astronauts named by NASA in April 1959. Not too long ago, says Kluger, Shepard was talking to John Glenn about Glenn's upcoming space flight. "Glenn told him that it could be Shepard going up, except...
...blues, stands at the juncture of rural country blues and a more urban form that reached its peak with the popularity of her protege, Bessie Smith. As the first broadly known traveling blues woman, Rainey represented for many women in her audiences a tangible incarnation of freedom. A pioneer on the black entertainment circuit, she shaped women's blues for many generations. As blues singer Koko Taylor said, women like "Ma" Rainey were the foundation of the blues...
Born in 1894 in Allegheny, Pa., Graham moved with her family to California when she was 14. Three years later, she attended a Los Angeles recital by the dance pioneer Ruth St. Denis. It was the first dance performance of any kind that Graham had ever seen, and it overwhelmed her; in 1916 she joined Denishawn, the school and performing troupe that St. Denis co-led with her husband Ted Shawn. At 22, dangerously late for an aspiring dancer, Graham had found her destiny...
...wear well, especially by comparison with the work of George Balanchine, the unrivaled master of neoclassical ballet, and Taylor and Cunningham, her apostate alumni. No more than half a dozen of her dances, most notably Cave of the Heart and Appalachian Spring (1944), her radiant re-creation of a pioneer wedding, seem likely to stand the test of time. The rest are overwrought period pieces whose humorless, lapel-clutching intensity is less palatable now that their maker is no longer around to bring them to life...
...these films and songs--an undying verve and assurance. But the energy was controlled, confined by the need for universal acceptance. In a homogenous culture you want everyone to see your movie, listen to your radio show, sing your song. That meant playing by the rules. Even the pioneer rebel Paul Robeson did that, speaking eloquently, singing handsomely, shrouding his revolutionary sexuality...