Line-up of geniuses: West Side Story’s Broadway creative/production team

Dance · Music · Theater
The West Side Story Broadway production team in 1957: (l. to r.) lyricist Stephen Sondheim, scriptwriter Arthur Laurents, producers Hal Prince and Robert Griffith (seated), composer Leonard Bernstein and choreographer Jerome Robbins. (click for detail) Thank you, songbook1, for posting this photo. Like this? Read more: Not a Jet, but still the swingingest thing: George ...

Headlining at the Rainbow Room: Jack Cole and his Dancers

Dance
Cafe Life in New York Jack Cole and His Dancers Featured in the Rainbow Room’s New Show (by)  Malcolm Johnson The New York Sun, Saturday, May 18, 1942: The Rainbow Room’s new show, introduced this week, is a gay diversion highlighted by the colorful performance of Jack Cole and his Dancers. In fact there is ...

The Agnes & Cecil Show 1

Dance · Film
From Empire of Dreams: The Epic Life of Cecil B. DeMille, by Scott Eyman, published by Simon & Schuster, 2010, page 307-308. Agnes deMille was struggling in London to make ends meet when Cecil hired her for six weeks at $250 a week to create the dances for Cleopatra. It ended badly, but then it ...

Rita’s dad

Dance · Film
Hurricane Irene, heading our direction in New York City, where we are visiting, can prove no match for Hurricane Rita. Lovely Rita’s dancing father, Eduardo Cansino, tangoes here, courtesy of the digital photo collection of the New York Public Library. I spent the last two days in the glorious Performing Arts Library at Lincoln Center, ...

Still the swingingest thing: West Side Story’s George Chakiris

Dance · Film
A lot of ladies — and quite a few gents including American Ballet Theatre principal dancer Marcelo Gomes and the just-retired Jose Manuel Carreno — gawked as West Side Story star George Chakiris entered the Founder’s Room of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion at the Los Angeles Music Center. It was the opening night reception following ...

Music and dance contribute to early Disney animation

Dance · Film
In this clip from a talk at Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival last summer, the amazing Marge Champion, 91, chats with the Pillow’s Director of Preservation, Norton Owen, about her participation in Walt Disney’s Snow White (1937). The occasion was the publishing of Mindy Aloff’s super book, “Hippo in a Tutu: Dancing in Disney Animation.” Mindy, ...