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Esther's Follies
Esther's Follies is a modern-day vaudeville theatre located on 6th Street in downtown Austin, Texas. The group is named after actress Esther Williams. Acts incorporate magic, juggling, singing, dancing, and sketches on current events. The show is fast-paced, and most of the acts incorporate a comedic theme. The show lasts about one and a half hours with a short intermission, and runs every evening from Thursday to Saturday. The original Esther's Follies building burned down in 1982; the group traveled to several locations before establishing its current home on 6th Street. 2017 marked Esther's Follies' 40th anniversary of performances. The cast has changed significantly since its inception but still includes the founders, Michael Shelton and Shannon Sedwick, who continue to make appearances during the show. Austin counterculture figure Kerry Awn was a regular performer with Esther's Follies for 30 years until 2011. See also *Music of Austin Music is the arrangement of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vaudeville
Vaudeville (; ) is a theatrical genre of variety entertainment which began in France in the middle of the 19th century. A ''vaudeville'' was originally a comedy without psychological or moral intentions, based on a comical situation: a dramatic composition or light poetry, interspersed with songs and dances. Vaudeville became popular in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s, while changing over time. In some ways analogous to music hall from Victorian Britain, a typical North American vaudeville performance was made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill. Types of acts have included popular and classical musicians, singers, dancers, comedians, trained animals, magicians, ventriloquists, strongmen, female and male impersonators, acrobats, clowns, illustrated songs, jugglers, one-act plays or scenes from plays, athletes, lecturing celebrities, minstrels, and films. A vaudeville performer ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
6th Street (Austin)
Sixth Street is a historic street and entertainment district in Austin, Texas, located within the city's urban core in downtown Austin. Sixth Street was formerly named Pecan Street under Austin's older naming convention, which had east–west streets named after trees and north–south streets named after Texas rivers (the latter convention remains in place). The nine-block area of West Sixth Street roughly between Lavaca Street to the west and Interstate 35 to the east is recognized as the Sixth Street Historic District and was listed in the National Register of Historic Places on December 30, 1975. Developed as one of Austin's trade and commercial districts in the late 1800s, the predominant building style are two- or three-story masonry Victorian commercial architecture. Most structures in the area had already been built by the 1880s, though a few notable exceptions include the Driskill Hotel (1886), the Scarbrough Building (1910), and the Littlefield Building. The area a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Austin, Texas
Austin ( ) is the List of capitals in the United States, capital city of the U.S. state of Texas. It is the county seat and most populous city of Travis County, Texas, Travis County, with portions extending into Hays County, Texas, Hays and Williamson County, Texas, Williamson counties. Incorporated on December 27, 1839, it is the Metropolitan statistical area, 26th-largest metropolitan area in the United States, the List of United States cities by population, 13th-most populous city in the United States, the List of cities in Texas by population, fifth-most populous city in the state after Houston, San Antonio, Dallas, and Fort Worth, and the second-most populous state capital city after Phoenix, Arizona. It has been one of the fastest growing large cities in the United States since 2010. Downtown Austin and Downtown San Antonio are approximately apart, and both fall along the Interstate 35 in Texas, I-35 corridor. This combined metropolitan region of San Antonio–Austin met ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Esther Williams
Esther Jane Williams (August 8, 1921 – June 6, 2013) was an American competitive swimmer and actress. She set regional and national records in her late teens on the Los Angeles Athletic Club swim team. Unable to compete in the 1940 Summer Olympics because of the outbreak of World War II, she joined Billy Rose's Aquacade, where she took on the role vacated by Eleanor Holm after the show's move from New York City to San Francisco. While in the city, she spent five months swimming alongside Olympic gold-medal winner and ''Tarzan'' star Johnny Weissmuller. Williams caught the attention of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer scouts at the Aquacade. After appearing in several small roles, and alongside Mickey Rooney in an Andy Hardy film and future five-time co-star Van Johnson in '' A Guy Named Joe'', Williams made a series of films in the 1940s and early 1950s known as "aquamusicals", which featured elaborate performances with synchronised swimming and diving. Every year from 1945 to 1949, W ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Magic (illusion)
Magic, which encompasses the subgenres of close-up magic, parlor magic, and stage magic, among others, is a performing art in which audiences are entertained by tricks, effects, or illusions of seemingly impossible feats, using natural means. It is to be distinguished from Magic (supernatural), paranormal magic which are effects claimed to be created through supernatural means. It is one of the oldest performing arts in the world. Modern entertainment magic, as pioneered by 19th-century magician Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin, has become a popular theatrical art form. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, magicians such as John Nevil Maskelyne and David Devant, Howard Thurston, Harry Kellar, and Harry Houdini achieved widespread commercial success during what has become known as "the Golden Age of Magic", a period in which performance magic became a staple of Broadway theatre, vaudeville, and music halls. Meanwhile, magicians such as Georges Méliès, Gaston Velle, Walter R. B ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Juggling
Juggling is a physical skill, performed by a juggler, involving the manipulation of objects for recreation, entertainment, art or sport. The most recognizable form of juggling is toss juggling. Juggling can be the manipulation of one object or many objects at the same time, most often using one or two hands but other body parts as well, like feet or head. Jugglers often refer to the objects they juggle as ''props''. The most common props are balls, clubs, or rings. Some jugglers use more dramatic objects such as knives, fire torches or chainsaws. The term ''juggling'' can also commonly refer to other prop-based manipulation skills, such as diabolo, plate spinning, devil sticks, poi, cigar boxes, contact juggling, hooping, yo-yo, hat manipulation and kick-ups. Etymology The words ''juggling'' and ''juggler'' derive from the Middle English ''jogelen'' ("to entertain by performing tricks"), which in turn is from the Old French '' jangler''. There is also the wi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sketch Comedy
Sketch comedy comprises a series of short, amusing scenes or vignettes, called "sketches" or, "skits", commonly between one and ten minutes long, performed by a group of comic actors or comedians. While the form developed and became popular in music hall in Britain and vaudeville in North America, today it is used widely in variety shows, as well as in late night talk shows and even some sitcoms. While sketch comedy is now associated mostly with adult entertainment, certain children's television series such have used it, too. The sketches may be improvised live by the performers, developed through improvisation before public performance, or scripted and rehearsed in advance like a play. History Sketch comedy has its origins in music hall and vaudeville, where many brief humorous acts were strung together to form a larger programme. In the 1890s, music hall impresario Fred Karno developed a form of sketch comedy without dialogue, and in 1904 he produced a sketch called ' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kerry Awn
Kerry Fitzgerald (born 1949), better known as Kerry Awn, is an American cartoonist, actor, muralist, comedian, musician, iconographer and poster artist. He is best known for his comedy and the iconic 'Austintatious' mural near the University of Texas campus, a landmark he created with two other artists. Born in Houston as Kerry Fitzgerald, Awn became prominent on the Austin countercultural scene in the 1970s as a concert poster artist and as a member of the Uranium Savages. Comedian: stand-up and comedy rock Kerry Awn went to the Houston Comedy Workshop in 1981 and began his career as a comedian. In 1982 he joined Esther's Follies where his outlandish characters drew attention. Awn continued with Esther's Follies as a regular for thirty years until 2011. He has also been a regular at the Velveeta Room, the Austin comedy club named after one of Awn's characters, lounge lizard Ronnie Velveeta. He is the original winner of the Funniest Person in Austin contest in 1986. Ker ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Music Of Austin
Music is the arrangement of sound to create some combination of Musical form, form, harmony, melody, rhythm, or otherwise Musical expression, expressive content. Music is generally agreed to be a cultural universal that is present in all human societies. Definitions of music vary widely in substance and approach. While scholars agree that music is defined by a small number of elements of music, specific elements, there is no consensus as to what these necessary elements are. Music is often characterized as a highly versatile medium for expressing human creativity. Diverse activities are involved in the creation of music, and are often divided into categories of musical composition, composition, musical improvisation, improvisation, and performance. Music may be performed using a wide variety of musical instruments, including the human voice. It can also be composed, sequenced, or otherwise produced to be indirectly played mechanically or electronically, such as via a music box ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1977 Establishments In Texas
Events January * January 8 – Three bombs explode in Moscow within 37 minutes, killing seven. The bombings are attributed to an Armenian separatist group. * January 10 – Mount Nyiragongo erupts in eastern Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo). * January 17 – 49 marines from the and are killed as a result of a collision in Barcelona harbour, Spain. * January 18 ** Scientists identify a previously unknown bacterium as the cause of the mysterious Legionnaires' disease. ** Australia's worst railway disaster at Granville, a suburb of Sydney, leaves 83 people dead. ** SFR Yugoslavia Prime minister Džemal Bijedić, his wife and 6 others are killed in a plane crash in Bosnia and Herzegovina. * January 19 – An Ejército del Aire CASA C-207C Azor (registration T.7-15) plane crashes into the side of a mountain near Chiva, on approach to Valencia Airport in Spain, killing all 11 people on board. * January 23 – Prime Minister Indira Gandhi of India calls for ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Culture Of Austin, Texas
Culture ( ) is a concept that encompasses the social behavior, institutions, and Social norm, norms found in human societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, Social norm, customs, capabilities, Attitude (psychology), attitudes, and habits of the individuals in these groups.Tylor, Edward. (1871). ''Primitive Culture''. Vol 1. New York: J. P. Putnam's Son Culture often originates from or is attributed to a specific region or location. Humans acquire culture through the learning processes of enculturation and socialization, which is shown by the diversity of cultures across societies. A cultural norm codifies acceptable conduct in society; it serves as a guideline for behavior, dress, language, and demeanor in a situation, which serves as a template for expectations in a social group. Accepting only a monoculturalism, monoculture in a social group can bear risks, just as a single species can wither in the face of environmental change, for lack of functional respo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
