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Every Soul Is A Circus
''Every Soul Is a Circus'' is a comedic ballet choreographed by Martha Graham. The dance premiered on December 27, 1939, at the St. James Theatre in New York City. The original score was composed by Paul Nordoff. Philip Stapp created the set. Edythe Gilfond designed the costumes. The production marked the first appearance of Merce Cunningham with the Martha Graham Dance Company. The troupe still performs the work on occasion. It was last reprised for the 85th anniversary season in 2012. Title and theme The title ''Every Soul Is a Circus'' is borrowed from a Vachel Lindsay poem: Every soul is a circus Every mind is a tent Every heart is a sawdust ring Where the circling race is spent. The ballet's theme is Everywoman's inner desire to be the center of attention and the ridiculous lengths to which she will go to attain that end. As Empress of the Arena, the lead female dancer imagines herself as the star of every act. In a vignette with the Ringmaster and Acrobat, she is the a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Paul Nordoff
Paul Nordoff (June 6, 1909 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania – January 18, 1977 in Herdecke, North Rhine-Westphalia, West Germany) was an American composer and music therapist, anthroposophist and initiator of the Nordoff-Robbins method of music therapy. His music is generally tonal and neo-Romantic in style. Career Born in Philadelphia, he studied the piano at the Philadelphia Conservatory, receiving a B.M. degree in 1927 and an M.M. degree in 1932. He later studied with Rubin Goldmark at the Juilliard School and in 1960 he received a Bachelor of Music Therapy from the Combs College of Music in Philadelphia. He served as head of composition at the Philadelphia Conservatory (1938–1943), a teacher at Michigan State College (1945–1949), and professor of music at Bard College(1948–1959). While still a student he encountered the work of Rudolf Steiner and became a member of the Anthroposophical Society in 1943, visiting its centre in Dornach to lecture at the conferences held ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Martha Graham Dance Company
The Martha Graham Dance Company, founded in 1926, is known for being the oldest American dance company. Founded by Martha Graham as a contemporary dance company, it continued to perform pieces, revive classics, and train dancers even after Graham's death in 1991. The company is critically acclaimed in the artistic world and has been recognized as "one of the great dance companies of the world" by the New York Times and as "one of the seven wonders of the artistic universe" by the Washington Post. Many of the great 20th and 21st century modern dancers and choreographers began at the Martha Graham Dance Company including: Merce Cunningham, Erick Hawkins, Pearl Lang, Pascal Rioult, Miriam Pandor, Anna Sokolow, and Paul Taylor. The repertoire of 181 works also includes guest performances from Mikhail Baryshnikov, Claire Bloom, Margot Fonteyn, Liza Minnelli, Rudolf Nureyev, Maya Plisetskaya, and Kathleen Turner. Her style and technique, the Graham technique, is recognized in 50 countrie ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Modern Dance
Modern dance is a broad genre of western concert or theatrical dance which included dance styles such as ballet, folk, ethnic, religious, and social dancing; and primarily arose out of Europe and the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It was considered to have been developed as a rejection of, or rebellion against, classical ballet, and also a way to express social concerns like socioeconomic and cultural factors. In the late 19th century, modern dance artists such as Isadora Duncan, Maud Allan, and Loie Fuller were pioneering new forms and practices in what is now called aesthetic or free dance. These dancers disregarded ballet's strict movement vocabulary (the particular, limited set of movements that were considered proper to ballet) and stopped wearing corsets and pointe shoes in the search for greater freedom of movement. Throughout the 20th century, sociopolitical concerns, major historical events, and the development of other art forms contributed to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the List of United States cities by population density, most densely populated major city in the United States, and is more than twice as populous as second-place Los Angeles. New York City lies at the southern tip of New York (state), New York State, and constitutes the geographical and demographic center of both the Northeast megalopolis and the New York metropolitan area, the largest metropolitan area in the world by urban area, urban landmass. With over 20.1 million people in its metropolitan statistical area and 23.5 million in its combined statistical area as of 2020, New York is one of the world's most populous Megacity, megacities, and over 58 million people live within of the city. New York City is a global city, global Culture of New ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Merce Cunningham
Mercier Philip "Merce" Cunningham (April 16, 1919 – July 26, 2009) was an American dancer and choreographer who was at the forefront of American modern dance for more than 50 years. He frequently collaborated with artists of other disciplines, including musicians John Cage, David Tudor, Brian Eno, and graphic artists Robert Rauschenberg, Bruce Nauman, Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Frank Stella, and Jasper Johns; and fashion designer Rei Kawakubo. Works that he produced with these artists had a profound impact on avant-garde art beyond the world of dance. As a choreographer, teacher, and leader of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, Cunningham had a profound influence on modern dance. Many dancers who trained with Cunningham formed their own companies. They include Paul Taylor, Remy Charlip, Viola Farber, Charles Moulton, Karole Armitage, Deborah Hay, Robert Kovich, Foofwa d'Imobilité, Kimberly Bartosik, Flo Ankah, Jan Van Dyke, Jonah Bokaer, and Alice Reyes. In 2009 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vachel Lindsay
Nicholas Vachel Lindsay (; November 10, 1879 – December 5, 1931) was an American poet. He is considered a founder of modern ''singing poetry,'' as he referred to it, in which verses are meant to be sung or chanted. Early years Lindsay was born in Springfield, Illinois where his father, Vachel Thomas Lindsay, worked as a medical doctor and had amassed considerable financial resources. The Lindsays lived across the street from the Illinois Executive Mansion, home of the Governor of Illinois. The location of his childhood home influenced Lindsay, and one of his poems, " The Eagle Forgotten", eulogizes Illinois governor John P. Altgeld, whom Lindsay admired for his courage in pardoning the anarchists involved in the Haymarket Affair, despite the strong protests of US President Grover Cleveland. Growing up in Springfield influenced Lindsay in other ways, as evidenced in such poems as "On the Building of Springfield" and culminating in poems praising Springfield's most famous resid ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Louis Horst
Louis Horst (born January 12, 1884, Kansas City, Missouri – died January 23, 1964, New York City) was a composer, and pianist. He helped to define the principles of modern dance choreographic technique, most notably the matching of choreography to pre-existing musical structure and the use of contemporary music for dance scores. Biography and work Horst was the musical director for the Denishawn company (1916-25) before working as musical director and dance composition teacher for Martha Graham's school and dance company (1926-48). One memorable piece of advice that Horst gave dancers in his lessons in the 1930s, at times delivered in a sarcastic tone: "when in doubt, turn." This is a variant of Ted Shawn's famous line "When in doubt, twirl." The Grateful Dead Almanac adopted it as their motto. lonehombr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Erick Hawkins
Frederick "Erick" Hawkins (April 23, 1909November 23, 1994) was an American modern-dance choreographer and dancer. Early life Frederick Hawkins was born in Trinidad, Colorado, on April 23, 1909. He majored in Greek civilization at Harvard University, graduating in 1930. A performance by the German dancers Harald Kreutzberg and Yvonne Georgi so impressed him that he went to Austria to study dance with the former. Later, he studied at the School of American Ballet. Career Soon he was dancing with George Balanchine's American Ballet. In 1937, he choreographed his first dance, ''Show Piece'', which was performed by Ballet Caravan. The next year, Hawkins was the first man to dance with the company of the famous modern dancer and choreographer Martha Graham. In 1939, he officially joined her troupe, dancing male lead in a number of her works, including ''Appalachian Spring'' in 1944. They married in 1948. He left her troupe in 1951 to found his own, and they divorced in 1954. Not lo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jean Erdman
Jean Erdman (February 20, 1916 – May 4, 2020) was an American dancer and choreographer of modern dance as well as an avant-garde theater director. Biography Early years and background Erdman was born in Honolulu. Erdman's father, John Piney Erdman, a doctor of divinity and missionary from New England, settled in Honolulu as a minister at the non-denominational Protestant Church of the Crossroads where he preached, in both English and Japanese, to a multi-ethnic congregation. Her mother, Marion Dillingham Erdman, was a member of one of the founding industrialist families of Hawaii. Erdman's earliest dance experience was the hula. She attended the Punahou School in Honolulu where she learned, as a form of physical education, Isadora Duncan interpretive dance. Reflecting on her early dance training Erdman said these two influences taught her that dancing is an "expression of something meaningful to the dancer, not a mere series of lively steps." From Hawaii, Erdman went to M ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Marjorie Mazia
Marjorie Greenblatt Guthrie (October 6, 1917 – March 13, 1983), who used Marjorie Mazia as her professional name, was a dancer, dance teacher, and health science activist. She was married to folk musician Woody Guthrie. Her children with him include folk musician Arlo Guthrie and Woody Guthrie Publications president Nora Guthrie. She was a principal dancer with the Martha Graham Company. With Graham's permission, she started her own dance studio where she taught Graham methods and style. Due to her husband's affliction with Huntington's disease, she became an activist, founding a predecessor of the Huntington's Disease Society of America. Life and work Marjorie Greenblatt ( yi, חנה גרינבלאַט) was born in Atlantic City, New Jersey, United States, on October 6, 1917 to Aliza Waitzman and Izadore Greenblatt. Her parents were Jewish immigrants. She had three brothers - David, Herbert and Bernard - and one sister, Gertrude. In 1935, after graduation from the Overbroo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
