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Maple Leaf Rag (ballet)
''Maple Leaf Rag'' is a storyless Martha Graham ballet set to ragtime compositions by Scott Joplin. The work premiered on October 2, 1990 at New York City Center with costumes by Calvin Klein and lighting by David Finley. Chris Landriau arranged the music and played piano at the debut. The dance is a jubilant self-parody and an homage, of sorts, to Graham's mentor and musical director, Louis Horst, who would play the rag for her whenever she fell into a creative slump. Graham was 96 when she created ''Maple Leaf Rag''; it is her last completed dance. In 1991, she began another work, ''The Eyes of the Goddess'', but it was unfinished at the time of her death. Synopsis The curtain rises to reveal a grand piano at the rear of a darkened stage. The only other set element is a joggling board, a long springy plank set on two upright supports with rocker feet. Graham had discovered the rocking chair-bench hybrid when the Martha Graham Dance Company appeared at Spoleto USA in Charlesto ... [...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 i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Waltz
The waltz ( ), meaning "to roll or revolve") is a ballroom and folk dance, normally in triple ( time), performed primarily in closed position. History There are many references to a sliding or gliding dance that would evolve into the waltz that date from 16th-century Europe, including the representations of the printmaker Hans Sebald Beham. The French philosopher Michel de Montaigne wrote of a dance he saw in 1580 in Augsburg, where the dancers held each other so closely that their faces touched. Kunz Haas (of approximately the same period) wrote, "Now they are dancing the godless ''Weller'' or ''Spinner''."Nettl, Paul. "Birth of the Waltz." In ''Dance Index'' vol 5, no. 9. 1946 New York: Dance Index-Ballet Caravan, Inc. pages 208, 211 "The vigorous peasant dancer, following an instinctive knowledge of the weight of fall, uses his surplus energy to press all his strength into the proper beat of the bar, thus intensifying his personal enjoyment in dancing." Around 1750, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kathleen Turner
Mary Kathleen Turner (born June 19, 1954) is an American actress. She has received various accolades, including two Golden Globe Awards, in addition to nominations for an Academy Award, a Grammy Award, and two Tony Awards. Turner became widely known during the 1980s, with roles in '' Body Heat'' (1981), '' The Man with Two Brains'' (1983), '' Crimes of Passion'' (1984), '' Romancing the Stone'' (1984), and '' Prizzi's Honor'' (1985), the latter two earning her a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy, and '' Peggy Sue Got Married'' (1986), for which she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress. In the later 1980s and early 1990s, Turner had roles in '' The Accidental Tourist'' (1988), '' The War of the Roses'' (1989), and '' Serial Mom'' (1994). She later had roles in '' The Virgin Suicides'' (1999), '' Baby Geniuses'' (1999), '' Beautiful'' (2000), and '' Marley & Me'' (2008). On TV she guest-starred on the NBC sitcom '' Friends'' a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Terese Capucilli
Terese Capucilli is an American modern dancer, interpreter of the roles originally performed by Martha Graham. She is one of the last generation of dancers to be coached and directed by Graham herself. A principal dancer with the Martha Graham Dance Company for twenty-six years, she became associate artistic director in 1997 and from 2002 to 2005 served as artistic director, with Christine Dakin, seeing the organization and its dancers through the rebirth of the company. A driving force of Graham's work for nearly three decades, she is now Artistic Director Laureate. Early years Born in Syracuse, New York, the middle child in a family of seven children, Capucilli received her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the State University of New York at Purchase where she studied with such prominent teachers as Kazuko Hirabayashi, Carol Fried, Mel Wong, Jim May, Aaron Osborne, Bill Bales, Rosanna Seravalli, Anne Parsons and Royes Fernandez. There she had the opportunity to delve into the w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
WNET
WNET (channel 13), branded on-air as "Thirteen" (stylized as "THIRTEEN"), is a primary PBS member television station licensed to Newark, New Jersey, United States, serving the New York City area. Owned by The WNET Group (formerly known as the Educational Broadcasting Corporation and later as WNET.org), it is a sister station to the area's secondary PBS member, Garden City, New York–licensed WLIW (channel 21), and two class A stations which share spectrum with WNET: WNDT-CD (channel 14) and WMBQ-CD (channel 46); through an outsourcing agreement, The WNET Group also operates New Jersey's PBS state network NJ PBS and the website NJ Spotlight. WNET and WLIW share studios at One Worldwide Plaza in Midtown Manhattan with an auxiliary street-level studio in the Lincoln Center complex on Manhattan's Upper West Side; WNET's transmitter is located at One World Trade Center. History Independent station (1948–1962) WNET commenced broadcasting on May 15, 1948, from a transm ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Appalachian Spring
''Appalachian Spring'' is a musical composition by Aaron Copland that was premiered in 1944 and has achieved widespread and enduring popularity as an orchestral suite. The music, scored for a thirteen-member chamber orchestra, was created upon commission of the choreographer and dancer Martha Graham with funds from the Coolidge Foundation. It was premiered on Monday, October 30, 1944, at the Library of Congress in Washington D.C., with Martha Graham dancing the lead role. The set was designed by the American sculptor Isamu Noguchi. Copland was awarded the 1945 Pulitzer Prize for Music for his achievement. Music In 1942, Martha Graham and Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge commissioned Copland to write a ballet with "an American theme". Copland did the bulk of the work in 1943–44, and the work was premiered at the Library of Congress on October 30, 1944, with Graham dancing the lead role. In 1945, Copland was commissioned by conductor Artur Rodziński to rearrange the ballet as ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Night Journey (ballet)
''Night Journey'' is a Martha Graham ballet performed to music by William Schuman with costumes designed by Graham and a set by Isamu Noguchi. Commissioned by the Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Foundation of the Library of Congress, the work premiered on May 3, 1947, at Cambridge High School in Boston, Massachusetts. ''Night Journey'' is the third of Graham's dances derived from Greek mythology, following '' Cave of the Heart'' and ''Errand into the Maze''. Theme, synopsis and original cast Graham based the 30-minute-long ballet on a fragment of Sophocles' Oedipus Rex. Original program notes explain "the action takes place in Jocasta's heart at the instant when she recognizes the ultimate terms of her destiny." The original cast members were Graham in the role of Queen Jocasta and Erick Hawkins as King Oedipus. Mark Ryder as the blind Seer ( Tiresias) was accompanied by the Daughters of the Night ( Furies), a chorus of six women: Pearl Lang, Yuriko, Ethel Winter, Helen McG ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Errand Into The Maze
''Errand into the Maze'' is a Martha Graham ballet based on a poem by Ben Belitt set to music by Gian Carlo Menotti. The surrealistic set was designed by Isamu Noguchi, the costumes by Graham herself. The dance uses the Greek myth of Ariadne and the Minotaur to explore the theme of conquering one’s inner demons, more specifically the fear of sexual intimacy. The piece premiered at the Ziegfeld Theatre on February 28, 1947, with Graham as the protagonist, a sort of female Theseus, and Mark Ryder as the Minotaur-like character. ''Errand into the Maze'' is one of the choreographer's best-known and most popular ballets. It remains in the Martha Graham Dance Company repertory. Plot The original program notes describe the action as “that errand-journey into the maze of the heart to face and do battle with the Creature of Fear.” Barely fifteen minutes in length, Errand into the Maze is designed almost as a solo work, with the bull-horned, staff (bone)-carrying Creature of Fear se ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Elite Syncopations
"Elite Syncopations" is a 1902 ragtime piano composition by American composer Scott Joplin, originally published in 1903 by John Stark & Son."Elite Syncopations, by S. Joplin (1868–1917)" ''''. Retrieved May 7, 2017."Elite syncopations" (sheet music). ''''. Retrieved May 7, 2017. The cover of the original sheet music prominently features a well-dress ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bethena
"Bethena, A Concert Waltz" (copyright registered March 6, 1905) is a composition by Scott Joplin. It was the first Joplin work since his wife Freddie's death on September 10, 1904, of pneumonia, ten weeks after their wedding. At the time the composer had significant financial problems; the work did not sell successfully at the time of publication and was soon neglected and forgotten. It was rediscovered as a result of the Joplin revival in the 1970s and has received acclaim from Joplin's biographers and other critics. The piece combines two different styles of music, the classical waltz and the rag, and has been seen as demonstrating Joplin's excellence as a classical composer. The work has been described as "an enchantingly beautiful piece that is among the greatest of Ragtime Waltzes", a "masterpiece", and "Joplin's finest waltz". Background and composition Joplin's principal claim to fame was the publication in 1899 of the Maple Leaf Rag, which became a best-selling instrumen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Maple Leaf Rag
The "Maple Leaf Rag" (copyright registered on September 18, 1899) is an early ragtime musical composition for piano composed by Scott Joplin. It was one of Joplin's early works, and became the model for ragtime compositions by subsequent composers. It is one of the most famous of all ragtime pieces. As a result, Joplin became dubbed the "King of Ragtime" by his contemporaries. The piece gave Joplin a steady if unspectacular income for the rest of his life. Despite ragtime's decline after Joplin's death in 1917, the "Maple Leaf Rag" continued to be recorded by many well-known artists. The ragtime revival of the 1970s brought it back to mainstream public notice once again. Background The "Maple Leaf Rag" is associated with the city of Sedalia, Missouri, although there is no record of Joplin having a permanent residence there before 1904. Joplin arrived in Sedalia in 1894 as a touring musician and stayed with the family of Arthur Marshall, who later became one of Joplin's studen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ragtime
Ragtime, also spelled rag-time or rag time, is a musical style that flourished from the 1890s to 1910s. Its cardinal trait is its syncopated or "ragged" rhythm. Ragtime was popularized during the early 20th century by composers such as Scott Joplin, James Scott and Joseph Lamb. Ragtime pieces (often called "rags") are typically composed for and performed on piano, though the genre has been adapted for a variety of instruments and styles. " Maple Leaf Rag", "The Entertainer", "Fig Leaf Rag", " Frog Legs Rag", and " Sensation Rag" are among the most popular songs of the genre. The genre emerged from African American communities in the Southern and Midwestern United States, evolving from folk and minstrel styles and popular dances such as the cakewalk and combining with elements of classical and march music. Ragtime significantly influenced the development of jazz. In the 1960's, the genre had began to be revived with the publication '' The All Played Ragtime'' and artist ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
