The Car Man
Matthew Bourne's ''The Car Man'' is a dance production by British choreographer Matthew Bourne. It previewed for the first time on Tuesday, May 16, 2000 at the Theatre Royal in Plymouth, England, and was subsequently staged at the Old Vic in London in September of that year. The music for the production is based on Russian composer Rodion Shchedrin's Bolshoi Ballet version of Georges Bizet's opera ''Carmen'' (1875), with additional music by composer Terry Davies. However, the story differs completely from the plot of the opera. Instead, it is loosely based on James M. Cain's novel '' The Postman Always Rings Twice'' (1934), and the 1946 and 1981 films of the same name. The ballet is notable for its frank depictions of violence and sex, including homoeroticism. Synopsis The action takes place in the 1960s over a period of nine months in a small Italian American community in the fictional mid-western town of Harmony, USA.. The following is an unofficial interpretation of ''The ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Midwestern United States
The Midwestern United States, also referred to as the Midwest or the American Midwest, is one of four census regions of the United States Census Bureau (also known as "Region 2"). It occupies the northern central part of the United States. It was officially named the North Central Region by the Census Bureau until 1984. It is between the Northeastern United States and the Western United States, with Canada to the north and the Southern United States to the south. The Census Bureau's definition consists of 12 states in the north central United States: Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, and Wisconsin. The region generally lies on the broad Interior Plain between the states occupying the Appalachian Mountain range and the states occupying the Rocky Mountain range. Major rivers in the region include, from east to west, the Ohio River, the Upper Mississippi River, and the Missouri River. ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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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 ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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José Limón
José Arcadio Limón (January 12, 1908 – December 2, 1972) was a dancer and choreographer from Mexico and who developed what is now known as 'Limón technique'. In the 1940s, he founded the José Limón Dance Company (now the Limón Dance Company), and in 1968 he created the José Limón Foundation to carry on his work. In his choreography, Limón spoke to the complexities of human life as experienced through the body. His dances feature large, visceral gestures — reaching, bending, pulling, grasping — to communicate emotion. Inspired in part by his teacher Doris Humphrey's and Charles Weidman's theories about the importance of body weight and dynamics, his own Limón technique emphasizes the rhythms of falling and recovering balance and the importance of good breathing to maintaining flow in a dance. He also utilized the dance vocabulary developed by both Doris Humphrey and Charles Weidman, which aimed at demonstrating emotion through dance in a way that was much le ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Cabaret
Cabaret is a form of theatrical entertainment featuring music, song, dance, recitation, or drama. The performance venue might be a pub, a casino, a hotel, a restaurant, or a nightclub with a stage for performances. The audience, often dining or drinking, does not typically dance but usually sits at tables. Performances are usually introduced by a master of ceremonies or MC. The entertainment, as done by an ensemble of actors and according to its European origins, is often (but not always) oriented towards adult audiences and of a clearly underground nature. In the United States, striptease, burlesque, drag shows, or a solo vocalist with a pianist, as well as the venues which offer this entertainment, are often advertised as cabarets. Etymology The term originally came from Picard language or Walloon language words ''camberete'' or ''cambret'' for a small room (12th century). The first printed use of the word ''kaberet'' is found in a document from 1275 in Tournai. The term was ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Beret
A beret ( or ; ; eu, txapela, ) is a soft, round, flat-crowned cap, usually of woven, hand-knitted wool, crocheted cotton, wool felt, or acrylic fibre. Mass production of berets began in 19th century France and Spain, and the beret remains associated with these countries. Berets are worn as part of the uniform of many military and police units worldwide, as well as by other organizations. History Archaeology and art history indicate that headgear similar to the modern beret has been worn since the Bronze Age across Northern Europe and as far south as ancient Crete and Italy, where it was worn by the Minoans, Etruscans and Romans. Such headgear has been popular among the nobility and artists across Europe throughout modern history. The Basque-style beret was the traditional headgear of Aragonese and Navarrian shepherds from the Ansó and Roncal valleys of the Pyrenees, a mountain range that divides southern France from northern Spain. The commercial production of Basque ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Beatnik
Beatniks were members of a social movement in the 1950s that subscribed to an anti-materialistic lifestyle. History In 1948, Jack Kerouac introduced the phrase "Beat Generation", generalizing from his social circle to characterize the underground, anticonformist youth gathering in New York City, New York at that time. The name came up in conversation with John Clellon Holmes, who published an early Beat Generation novel titled ''Go (Holmes novel), Go'' (1952), along with the manifesto ''This Is the Beat Generation'' in ''The New York Times Magazine''. In 1954, Nolan Miller (author), Nolan Miller published his third novel ''Why I Am So Beat'' (Putnam), detailing the weekend parties of four students. "Beat" came from underworld slang—the world of hustlers, drug addicts, and petty thieves, where Allen Ginsberg and Kerouac sought inspiration. "Beat" was slang for "beaten down" or downtrodden, but to Kerouac and Ginsberg, it also had a spiritual connotation as in "beatitude". Oth ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Hoedown
A hoedown is a type of American folk dance or square dance in duple meter, and also the musical form associated with it. Overview The most popular sense of the term is associated with Americans in rural or southeastern parts of the country, particularly Appalachia. It is a dance in quick movement most likely related to the jig, reel or clog dance. In contest fiddling, a hoedown is a tune in fast 2/4 time. In many contests, fiddlers are required to play a waltz, a hoedown, and a "tune of choice," which must not be a waltz or a hoedown (typically it is a jig or a schottische). In modern western square dance, a hoedown is a piece of music used for a patter call (a call that is spoken or chanted, rather than sung to the tune of a popular song), or the recording that contains this piece of music. In the early days of the Western square dance revival (the 1940s and early 1950s), most hoedowns were traditional fiddle tunes; since the late 1950s, recordings of simple chord progressio ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Jessica Lange
Jessica Phyllis Lange (; born April 20, 1949) is an American actress. She is the 13th actress to achieve the Triple Crown of Acting, having won two Academy Awards, three Primetime Emmy Awards, and a Tony Award, along with a Screen Actors Guild Award and five Golden Globe Awards. Additionally, she is the second actress to win the Academy Award for Best Actress after winning the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, the third actress and first performer since 1943 to receive two Oscar nominations in the same year, the fifth actress and ninth performer to win Oscars in both the lead and supporting acting categories, and tied for the sixth most Oscar-nominated actress. Lange holds the record for most nominations for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Miniseries or Television Film. She is the only performer ever to win Primetime Emmy Awards in both the Outstanding Supporting Actress and Outstanding Lead Actress categories for the same miniseries. Lange has ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Jack Nicholson
John Joseph Nicholson (born April 22, 1937) is an American retired actor and filmmaker. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest actors of all time. In many of his films, he played rebels against the social structure. He received numerous accolades throughout his career which spanned over five decades, including three Academy Awards. His most known and celebrated films include '' Chinatown'' (1974), '' One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest'' (1975), '' The Shining'' (1980), and ''The Departed'' (2006). He has also directed three films, including ''The Two Jakes'' (1990), a sequel to ''Chinatown''. His twelve Academy Award nominations make Nicholson the most nominated male actor in the Academy's history. He has won the Academy Award for Best Actor twice, once for ''One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest'' (1975) and once for ''As Good as It Gets'' (1997); he also won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for ''Terms of Endearment'' (1983). He is one of only three male actors ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Habanera (aria)
Habanera (" usic or danceof Havana") is the popular name for "" (; "Love is a rebellious bird"), an aria from Georges Bizet's 1875 opéra comique '' Carmen''. It is the entrance aria of the title character, a mezzo-soprano role, in scene 5 of the first act. Background The score of the aria was adapted from the habanera "El Arreglito ou la Promesse de mariage", by the Spanish musician Sebastián Iradier, first published in 1863, which Bizet thought to be a folk song. When others told him he had used something written by a composer who had died ten years earlier,''Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians'', 5th ed. 1954 he added a note about its derivation in the first edition of the vocal score which he himself prepared. Although the French libretto of the complete opéra comique was written by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy, the words of the habanera originated from Bizet. The Habanera was first performed by Galli-Marié at the Opéra-Comique on 3 March 1875. Bizet, ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |