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Thamara Swirskaya
Thamara de Swirsky (October 17, 1888 — December 24, 1961), sometimes seen as Tamara de Svirsky, Thamara Swirskaya, or Countess de Swirsky, was a Russian-born dancer, known for dancing barefoot. Early life Thamara de Swirsky was born in St. Petersburg into a prosperous Russian family. She studied piano in Paris and Munich, and dance in St. Petersburg. Her claim on the title "Countess" was disputed. Her mother, Zenaide de Podwissotski, may have been a medical doctor in Paris before accompanying Thamara to the United States. Career De Swirsky, publicized in 1911 as having the "most musical body in the world", "created a sensation" in the United States with her barefoot dancing. Reviewers assured (or warned) readers that, while her feet were bare, she did not dance nude. "Her costumes are triumphs of sartorial amplitude," declared one disappointed critic. "They leave everything to the imagination." She also performed a "bat dance" with billowing sheer fabric wings. She was the last ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
American Theatre Wing
The American Theatre Wing (the Wing for short) is a New York City–based non-profit organization "dedicated to supporting excellence and education in theatre", according to its mission statement. Originally known as the Stage Women's War Relief during World War I, it later became a part of the World War II Allied Relief Fund under its current name. The ATW created and sponsors the Tony Awards in theatrical arts. Background Stage Women's War Relief Stage Women's War Relief was founded in 1917 to organize charitable giving in support of the war effort. Its founders, led by playwright and director Rachel Crothers, included the actress and playwright Louise Closser Hale and actresses Dorothy Donnelly, Josephine Hull, Minnie Dupree, Elizabeth Tyree and Louise Drew. The organization established workrooms for sewing uniforms and other garments (with total output totaling 1,863,645 articles), set up clothing and food collection centers, sold Liberty Bonds, and opened a can ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vaudeville Performers
Vaudeville (; ) is a theatrical genre of variety entertainment born in France at the end 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 or ballets. It became popular in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s, but the idea of vaudeville's theatre changed radically from its French antecedent. 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 movies. A vaud ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1961 Deaths
Events January * January 3 ** United States President Dwight D. Eisenhower announces that the United States has severed diplomatic and consular relations with Cuba (Cuba–United States relations are restored in 2015). ** Aero Flight 311 (Koivulahti air disaster): Douglas DC-3C OH-LCC of Finnish airline Aero crashes near Kvevlax (Koivulahti), on approach to Vaasa Airport in Finland, killing all 25 on board, due to pilot error: an investigation finds that the captain and first officer were both exhausted for lack of sleep, and had consumed excessive amounts of alcohol at the time of the crash. It remains the deadliest air disaster to occur in the country. * January 5 ** Italian sculptor Alfredo Fioravanti marches into the U.S. Consulate in Rome, and confesses that he was part of the team that forged the Etruscan terracotta warriors in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. ** After the 1960 military coup, General Cemal Gürsel forms the new government of Turkey (25th government). * ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1888 Births
In Germany, 1888 is known as the Year of the Three Emperors. Currently, it is the year that, when written in Roman numerals, has the most digits (13). The next year that also has 13 digits is the year 2388. The record will be surpassed as late as 2888, which has 14 digits. Events January–March * January 3 – The 91-centimeter telescope at Lick Observatory in California is first used. * January 12 – The Schoolhouse Blizzard hits Dakota Territory, the states of Montana, Minnesota, Nebraska, Kansas, and Texas, leaving 235 dead, many of them children on their way home from school. * January 13 – The National Geographic Society is founded in Washington, D.C. * January 21 – The Amateur Athletic Union is founded by William Buckingham Curtis in the United States. * January 26 – The Lawn Tennis Association is founded in England. * February 6 – Gillis Bildt becomes Prime Minister of Sweden (1888–1889). * February 27 &nda ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
National Portrait Gallery (London)
The National Portrait Gallery (NPG) is an art gallery in London housing a collection of portraits of historically important and famous British people. It was arguably the first national public gallery dedicated to portraits in the world when it opened in 1856. The gallery moved in 1896 to its current site at St Martin's Place, off Trafalgar Square, and adjoining the National Gallery. It has been expanded twice since then. The National Portrait Gallery also has regional outposts at Beningbrough Hall in Yorkshire and Montacute House in Somerset. It is unconnected to the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh, with which its remit overlaps. The gallery is a non-departmental public body sponsored by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. Collection The gallery houses portraits of historically important and famous British people, selected on the basis of the significance of the sitter, not that of the artist. The collection includes photographs and caricatu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bassano Ltd
Alexander Bassano (10 May 1829 – 21 October 1913) was an English photographer who was a leading royal and high society portrait photographer in Victorian London. He is known for his photo of the Earl Kitchener in the ''Lord Kitchener Wants You'' army recruitment poster during the First World War and his photographs of Queen Victoria. Biography Alessandro Bassano was the second youngest child of Italian Clemente Bassano, originally a fishmonger of Cranbourne Street, later an oilman and warehouseman of Jermyn Street, London, and his English wife, Elizabeth Browne. He later anglicised his first name to Alexander. Bassano received early artistic training with artists Augustus Egg and William Beverley. He opened his first studio in 1850 in Regent Street. The studio then moved to Piccadilly 1859–1863, to Pall Mall and then to 25 Old Bond Street in 1877. There was also a Bassano branch studio at 132 King's Road, Brighton from 1893 to 1899. The Old Bond Street studio was dec ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Getty Museum
The J. Paul Getty Museum, commonly referred to as the Getty, is an art museum in Los Angeles, California housed on two campuses: the Getty Center and Getty Villa. The Getty Center is located in the Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles and features pre-20th-century European paintings, drawings, illuminated manuscripts, sculpture, decorative arts, and photographs from the inception of photography through present day from all over the world. The original Getty museum, the Getty Villa, is located in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles and displays art from Ancient Greece, Rome, and Etruria. History In 1974, J. Paul Getty opened a museum in a re-creation of the Villa of the Papyri at Herculaneum on his property in Malibu, California. In 1982, the museum became the richest in the world when it inherited US$1.2 billion. In 1983, after an economic downturn in what was then West Germany, the Getty Museum acquired 144 illuminated medieval manuscripts from ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Paolo Troubetzkoy
Prince Paolo Petrovich Troubetzkoy (also known as Pavel or Paul; russian: Павел Петрович Трубецкой, translit=Pavel Petrovich Trubetskoy; Intra, Italy, 15 February 1866 — Pallanza, 12 February 1938) was an artist and a sculptor who was described by George Bernard Shaw as "the most astonishing sculptor of modern times".G.B. Shaw, Preface to the catalogue of an exhibition of sculpture by Troubetzkoy at the P. & D. Colnaghi Galleries, London, 1931, i''The Complete Prefaces: 1930-1950''(Allen Lane, 1997), pp. 97-98. By birth, he was a member of the ancient House of Trubetskoy. Life He was the son of Russian diplomat, Prince Peter Petrovich Troubetzkoy and his second wife, lyric singer Ada Winans (1831-1917). His paternal grandmother was Princess Emilie zu Sayn-Wittgenstein-Sayn (1801-1869), which makes him great-grandson of famous Marshal Prince Peter zu Sayn-Wittgenstein-Berleburg-Ludwigsburg. He worked in Russia, the United States, England and Italy. He was ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Newport, Rhode Island
Newport is an American seaside city on Aquidneck Island in Newport County, Rhode Island. It is located in Narragansett Bay, approximately southeast of Providence, south of Fall River, Massachusetts, south of Boston, and northeast of New York City. It is known as a New England summer resort and is famous for its historic mansions and its rich sailing history. It was the location of the first U.S. Open tournaments in both tennis and golf, as well as every challenge to the America's Cup between 1930 and 1983. It is also the home of Salve Regina University and Naval Station Newport, which houses the United States Naval War College, the Naval Undersea Warfare Center, and an important Navy training center. It was a major 18th-century port city and boasts many buildings from the Colonial era. The city is the county seat of Newport County, which has no governmental functions other than court administrative and sheriff corrections boundaries. It was known for being the lo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Jacob Astor
John Jacob Astor (born Johann Jakob Astor; July 17, 1763 – March 29, 1848) was a German-American businessman, merchant, real estate mogul, and investor who made his fortune mainly in a fur trade monopoly, by smuggling opium into China, and by investing in real estate in or around New York City. He was the first prominent member of the Astor family and the first multi- millionaire in the United States. Born in Germany, Astor emigrated to England as a teenager and worked as a musical instrument manufacturer. He moved to the United States after the American Revolutionary War. Seeing the expansion of population to the west, he entered the fur trade and built a monopoly, managing a business empire that extended to the Great Lakes region and Canada, and later expanded into the American West and Pacific coast. Seeing a decline in demand due to changing European tastes, he got out of the fur trade in 1830, diversifying by investing in New York City real estate. Astor was highly wea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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