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American Document
''American Document'' is a modern dance work choreographed by Martha Graham in response to rising Fascism in 1930s Europe. The piece premiered on August 6, 1938 at the Vermont State Armory in Bennington, Vermont. The ballet features spoken word excerpts from the United States Declaration of Independence, Declaration of Independence and Emancipation Proclamation, among other texts. The set was created by Arch Lauterer; the costumes were designed by Edythe Gilfond. The original music was written by Ray Green. Graham extensively reworked the choreography in 1989. John Corigliano's Oboe Concerto replaced Green's music for the revised version. Theme and characters The idea for the ballet came to Graham as she listened to the Axis powers, Axis nations' "vicious and terrifying" propaganda on the radio. It occurred to her that American democracy had a repository of words with "the power to hearten men and move them to action." The original program notes state," Our documents are our leg ...
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Martha Graham
Martha Graham (May 11, 1894 – April 1, 1991) was an American modern dancer and choreographer. Her style, the Graham technique, reshaped American dance and is still taught worldwide. Graham danced and taught for over seventy years. She was the first dancer to perform at the White House, travel abroad as a cultural ambassador, and receive the highest civilian award of the US: the Presidential Medal of Freedom with Distinction. In her lifetime she received honors ranging from the Key to the City of Paris to Japan's Imperial Order of the Precious Crown. She said, in the 1994 documentary ''The Dancer Revealed'': "I have spent all my life with dance and being a dancer. It's permitting life to use you in a very intense way. Sometimes it is not pleasant. Sometimes it is fearful. But nevertheless it is inevitable." Founded in 1926 (the same year as Graham's professional dance company), the Martha Graham School is the oldest school of dance in the United States. First located in a ...
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Interlocutor (music)
The minstrel show, also called minstrelsy, was an American form of racist theatrical entertainment developed in the early 19th century. Each show consisted of comic skits, variety acts, dancing, and music performances that depicted people specifically of African descent. The shows were performed by mostly white people wearing blackface make-up for the purpose of playing the role of black people. There were also some African-American performers and black-only minstrel groups that formed and toured. Minstrel shows caricatured black people as dim-witted, lazy, buffoonish, superstitious, and happy-go-lucky.The Coon Character
, Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia, Ferris State University. Retrieved 29 January 2016.
John Kenrick
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SITI Company
The Saratoga International Theater Institute (also known as SITI) was an ensemble-based theater company based in New York City and Saratoga Springs, New York. SITI was founded in 1992 by American director Anne Bogart and Japanese director Tadashi Suzuki on the campus of Skidmore College to redefine and revitalize contemporary theater in the United States. Originally envisioned as a summer institute in Saratoga Springs, New York, SITI has expanded to encompass a year-round program based in New York City, with a summer season in Saratoga. The company believed that contemporary American theater must incorporate artists from around the world and learn from a cross-cultural exchange of dance, music, art, and performance experiences. SITI is noted for combining the Viewpoints process of Anne Bogart with the Suzuki Method of Actor Training of Tadashi Suzuki. Both techniques are alternatives to the Stanislavski Konstantin Sergeyevich Stanislavski ( Alekseyev; russian: Конс ...
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Charles L
Charles is a masculine given name predominantly found in English language, English and French language, French speaking countries. It is from the French form ''Charles'' of the Proto-Germanic, Proto-Germanic name (in runic alphabet) or ''*karilaz'' (in Latin alphabet), whose meaning was "free man". The Old English descendant of this word was ''Churl, Ċearl'' or ''Ċeorl'', as the name of King Cearl of Mercia, that disappeared after the Norman conquest of England. The name was notably borne by Charlemagne (Charles the Great), and was at the time Latinisation of names, Latinized as ''Karolus'' (as in ''Vita Karoli Magni''), later also as ''Carolus (other), Carolus''. Some Germanic languages, for example Dutch language, Dutch and German language, German, have retained the word in two separate senses. In the particular case of Dutch, ''Karel'' refers to the given name, whereas the noun ''kerel'' means "a bloke, fellow, man". Etymology The name's etymology is a Common ...
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Anne Bogart
Anne Bogart (born September 25, 1951) is an American theatre and opera director. She is currently one of the Artistic Directors of SITI Company, which she founded with Japanese director Tadashi Suzuki in 1992. She is a professor at Columbia University where she runs the Graduate Directing Concentration and is the author of four books of essays on theater making: ''A Director Prepares''; ''And Then, You Act''; ''What's the Story''; and ''The Art of Resonance''. She is a co-author, with Tina Landau of ''The Viewpoints Book'', a "practical guide" to Viewpoints training and devising techniques. ''Conversations with Anne'', a collection of interviews she has conducted with various notable artists was published in March 2012. Bogart's influence is felt throughout the contemporary theatre: through the widespread adoption of SITI's training methods of Viewpoints and Suzuki, her oeuvre of groundbreaking productions, and her guidance at SITI and including at Columbia University of such di ...
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John F
John is a common English name and surname: * John (given name) * John (surname) John may also refer to: New Testament Works * Gospel of John, a title often shortened to John * First Epistle of John, often shortened to 1 John * Second Epistle of John, often shortened to 2 John * Third Epistle of John, often shortened to 3 John People * John the Baptist (died c. AD 30), regarded as a prophet and the forerunner of Jesus Christ * John the Apostle (lived c. AD 30), one of the twelve apostles of Jesus * John the Evangelist, assigned author of the Fourth Gospel, once identified with the Apostle * John of Patmos, also known as John the Divine or John the Revelator, the author of the Book of Revelation, once identified with the Apostle * John the Presbyter, a figure either identified with or distinguished from the Apostle, the Evangelist and John of Patmos Other people with the given name Religious figures * John, father of Andrew the Apostle and Saint Peter * Pope Jo ...
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Martin Luther King Jr
Martin Luther King Jr. (born Michael King Jr.; January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) was an American Baptist minister and activist, one of the most prominent leaders in the civil rights movement from 1955 until his assassination in 1968. An African American church leader and the son of early civil rights activist and minister Martin Luther King Sr., King advanced civil rights for people of color in the United States through nonviolence and civil disobedience. Inspired by his Christian beliefs and the nonviolent activism of Mahatma Gandhi, he led targeted, nonviolent resistance against Jim Crow laws and other forms of discrimination. King participated in and led marches for the right to vote, desegregation, labor rights, and other civil rights. He oversaw the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott and later became the first president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). As president of the SCLC, he led the unsuccessful Albany Movement in Albany, ...
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Cecilia Peck
Cecilia Peck (born May 1, 1958) is an American film producer, director and actress. She is the only daughter of actor Gregory Peck and his second wife Veronique Passani. Career As an actress, Peck was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for ''The Portrait'', in which she played the daughter of her father's character. She played the leading role in ''Torn Apart'', and appeared in '' My Best Friend Is a Vampire''. Peck produced '' A Conversation with Gregory Peck'', about her father, which premiered as a Special Selection in the 2000 Cannes Film Festival, and aired on TCM and PBS American Masters. She directed and produced the documentary short ''Justice For All'', an examination of capital punishment, which was awarded the Silver Gavel Award. She was an associate producer on ''Defending Our Daughters'', a non-fiction film about women's human rights for Lifetime Television, which was awarded the Voices of Courage Award by the Women's Refugee Committee. Since 2008, Peck and her ...
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Mikhail Baryshnikov
Mikhail Nikolayevich Baryshnikov ( rus, Михаил Николаевич Барышников, p=mʲɪxɐˈil bɐ'rɨʂnʲɪkəf; lv, Mihails Barišņikovs; born January 28, 1948) is a Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic, Soviet Latvian-born Russian-American dancer, choreographer, and actor. He was the preeminent male classical ballet, classical dancer of the 1970s and 1980s. He subsequently became a noted dance director. Born in Riga, Latvian SSR, Baryshnikov had a promising start in the Mariinsky Ballet, Kirov Ballet in Saint Petersburg, Leningrad before defecting to Canada in 1974 for more opportunities in Western dance. After dancing with American Ballet Theatre, he joined the New York City Ballet as a principal dancer for one season to learn George Balanchine's neoclassical Russian style of movement. He then returned to the American Ballet Theatre, where he later became artistic director. Baryshnikov has spearheaded many of his own artistic projects and has been associated ...
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Native Americans In The United States
Native Americans, also known as American Indians, First Americans, Indigenous Americans, and other terms, are the Indigenous peoples of the mainland United States ( Indigenous peoples of Hawaii, Alaska and territories of the United States are generally known by other terms). There are 574 federally recognized tribes living within the US, about half of which are associated with Indian reservations. As defined by the United States Census, "Native Americans" are Indigenous tribes that are originally from the contiguous United States, along with Alaska Natives. Indigenous peoples of the United States who are not listed as American Indian or Alaska Native include Native Hawaiians, Samoan Americans, and the Chamorro people. The US Census groups these peoples as " Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islanders". European colonization of the Americas, which began in 1492, resulted in a precipitous decline in Native American population because of new diseases, wars, ethni ...
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Cakewalk
The cakewalk was a dance developed from the "prize walks" (dance contests with a cake awarded as the prize) held in the mid-19th century, generally at get-togethers on Black Slavery in the United States, slave plantations before and after End of slavery in the United States of America, emancipation in the Southern United States. Alternative names for the original form of the dance were "chalkline-walk", and the "walk-around". It was originally a processional partner dance danced with comical formality, and may have developed as a subtle mockery of the mannered dances of white slaveholders. Following an exhibition of the cakewalk at the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, the cakewalk was adopted by performers in minstrel shows, where it was danced exclusively by men until the 1890s. At that point, Broadway shows featuring women began to include cakewalks, and grotesque dances became very popular across the country.. The fluid and graceful steps of the dance may have g ...
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Sophie Maslow
Sophie Maslow (March 22, 1911 – June 25, 2006) was an American choreographer, modern dancer and teacher, and founding member of New Dance Group. She was a first cousin of the American sculptor Leonard Baskin. Born in New York City in 1911 by Russian American parents, Sophie Maslow began her dance training with Blanche Talmud at the Neighborhood Playhouse School. Her teachers there included Martha Graham and Louis Horst. She became a member of Martha Graham's Company in 1931, performing many solo roles, until 1943. She created her own dance troupe, The Sophie Maslow Dance Company and, with Jane Dudley and William Bales, established the Dudley-Maslow-Bales Trio in 1942. Ms. Maslow helped to define and establish New Dance Group as a performance entity dedicated to using dance to make social and political statements. In 1948, she performed and was a faculty member at the first American Dance Festival held at Connecticut College. Maslow's choreography includes: "Dust Bowl Ballad ...
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