Vaslav Nijinsky

Vaslav (or Vatslav) Nijinsky (; ; , ; 12 March 1889/18908 April 1950) was a ballet dancer and choreographer cited as the greatest male dancer of the early 20th century. Born in Kiev to Polish parents, Nijinsky grew up in Imperial Russia but considered himself to be Polish. He was celebrated for his virtuosity and for the depth and intensity of his characterizations. He could dance "en pointe", a rare skill among male dancers at the time, and was admired for his seemingly gravity-defying leaps.
Nijinsky was introduced to dance by his parents, who were senior dancers with the travelling Setov opera company, and his early childhood was spent touring with the company. His elder brother Stanislav and younger sister Bronislava "Bronia" Nijinska also became dancers; Bronia also became a choreographer, working closely with him for much of his career.
At age nine Nijinsky was accepted at the Imperial Ballet School in St. Petersburg, the pre-eminent ballet school in the world. In 1907 he graduated and became a member of the Imperial Ballet, starting in the rank of coryphée instead of in the corps de ballet, and already taking starring roles.
In 1909 he joined the Ballets Russes, a new ballet company started by Sergei Diaghilev. The impresario took the Russian ballets to Paris, where high-quality productions such as those of the Imperial Ballet were not known. Nijinsky became the company's star male dancer, causing an enormous stir amongst audiences whenever he performed. In ordinary life he appeared unremarkable and was withdrawn in conversation. Diaghilev and Nijinsky became lovers; the Ballets Russes gave Nijinsky the chance to expand his art and experiment with dance and choreography; he created new directions for male dancers while becoming internationally famous.
In 1912 Nijinsky began choreographing original ballets, including "L'après-midi d'un faune" (1912) to music by Claude Debussy, "Le Sacre du Printemps" (1913) to music by Igor Stravinsky, "Jeux" (1913), and "Till Eulenspiegel" (1916). "Faune," considered one of the first modern ballets, caused controversy because of its sexually suggestive final scene. At the premiere of "Le Sacre du Printemps" fights broke out in the audience between those who loved and hated this startling new style of ballet and music. Nijinsky originally conceived "Jeux" as a flirtatious interaction among three males, although Diaghilev insisted it be danced by one male and two females.
In 1913, Nijinsky married Hungarian Romola de Pulszky while on tour with the company in South America. The marriage caused a break with Diaghilev, who soon dismissed Nijinsky from the company. The couple had two daughters together, Kyra and Tamara Nijinska.
With no alternative employer available, Nijinsky tried to form his own company, but this was not a success. He was interned in Budapest, Hungary, during World War I, under house arrest until 1916. After intervention by Diaghilev and several international leaders, he was allowed to go to New York for an American tour with the Ballets Russes. Nijinsky became increasingly mentally unstable with the stresses of having to manage tours himself and deprived of opportunities to dance. After a tour of South America in 1917, and due to travel difficulties imposed by the war, the family settled in St. Moritz, Switzerland. His mental condition deteriorated; he was diagnosed with schizophrenia in 1919 and committed to a mental asylum. For the next 30 years he was in and out of institutions, never dancing in public again.
Biography.
Vaslav Nijinsky was born in 1889 or 1890 in Kiev, Russian Empire (now Ukraine), as Wacław Niżyński, to ethnic Polish parents, touring dancers Tomasz Niżyński (b. 7 March 1862) and Eleonora Bereda (b. 28 December 1856). Nijinsky was christened in Warsaw. He identified himself as Polish although he grew up in the interior of Russia with his parents and he had difficulty speaking Polish.
Eleanora, along with her two brothers and two sisters, was orphaned while still a child. She started to earn a living as an extra in Warsaw's Grand Theatre Ballet (Polish: "Teatr Wielki"), becoming a full member of the company at age thirteen. In 1868 her talent was spotted and she moved to Kiev as a solo dancer. Tomasz Niżyński also attended the Wielki Theatre school, becoming a soloist there. At age 18 he accepted a soloist contract with the Odessa Theatre. The two met, married in May 1884 and settled into a career with the traveling Setov opera company. Tomasz was "premier danseur", and Eleanora a soloist. Eleanora continued to tour and dance while having three children, sons Stanislav (b. 29 December 1886 in Tiflis) and Vaslav; and daughter Bronislava ('Bronia', b. 8 January 1891 in Minsk). She suffered from depression, which may have been a genetic vulnerability shared in a different form by her son Vaslav. Both boys received training from their father and appeared in an amateur "Hopak" production in Odessa in 1894.
After Josef Setov died about 1894, the company disbanded. Thomas attempted to run his own company, but was not successful. He and his family became itinerant dancers, the children appearing in the Christmas show at Nizhny Novgorod. In 1897 Thomas and Eleanora separated after Thomas had fallen in love with another dancer, Rumiantseva, while touring in Finland. Eleanora moved to 20 Mokhovaya Street in St Petersburg with her children. She persuaded a friend from the Wielki Theatre, Victor Stanislas Gillert, who was at the time teaching at the Imperial Ballet School, to help get Vaslav into the school. He arranged for the noted teacher Enrico Cecchetti to sponsor the application. Bronia entered the school two years after Vaslav. Their elder brother Stanislav had suffered a fall from a window when young and seemed to have suffered some brain damage. Vaslav and Bronia, just two years apart, became very close as they grew. As he got older, Stanislav became increasingly mentally unstable and would have fierce tantrums. He was admitted to an asylum for the insane in 1902.
Imperial Ballet School.
In 1900, Nijinsky joined the Imperial Ballet School, where he initially studied dance under Sergei Legat and his brother Nikolai. He studied mime under Pavel Gerdt; all three men were principal dancers at the Imperial Russian Ballet. At the end of the one year probationary period, his teachers agreed upon Nijinsky's exceptional dancing ability and he was confirmed as a boarder at the school. He appeared in supporting parts in classical ballets such as "Faust", as a mouse in "The Nutcracker", a page in "Sleeping Beauty" and "Swan Lake", and won the Didelot scholarship. During his first year, his academic studies had covered work he had already done, so his relatively poor results had not been so much noted. He did well in subjects which interested him, but not otherwise.
In 1902 he was warned that only the excellence of his dancing had prevented his expulsion from the school for poor results. This laxity was compounded through his school years by Nijinsky's frequently being chosen as an extra in various productions, forcing him to be away from classrooms for rehearsals and to spend nights at performances. He was teased for being Polish, and nicknamed "Japonczek" for his faintly Japanese looks at a time Russia was at war with Japan. Some classmates were envious and resented his outstanding dancing ability. In 1901 one of the class deliberately caused him to fall, leading to his suffering a concussion and being in a coma for four days.
Mikhail Oboukhov became his teacher in 1902, and awarded him the highest grade he had ever given to a student. He was given student parts in command performances in front of the Tsar of "Paquita", "The Nutcracker" and "The Little Humpbacked Horse". In music he studied piano, flute, balalaika and accordion, receiving good marks. He had a good ability to hear and play music on the piano, though his sight reading was relatively poor. Against this, his behaviour was sometimes boisterous and wild, resulting in his expulsion from the school in 1903 for an incident involving students shooting at the hats of passers-by with catapults while being driven to the Mariinsky Theatre in carriages. He was readmitted to the school as a non-resident after a sound beating and restored to his previous position after a month's probation.
In 1904, at the age of 14, Nijinsky was selected by the great choreographer Marius Petipa to dance a principal role in what proved to be the choreographer's last ballet, "La Romance d'un Bouton de rose et d'un Papillon." The work was never performed due to the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War.
On Sunday, 9 January 1905, Nijinsky was caught in the Bloody Sunday massacre in St. Petersburg, where a group of petitioners led by Father Gapon attempted to present their petition to the Czar. Soldiers fired upon the crowd, leading to an estimated 1000 casualties. Nijinsky was caught in the crowd on Nevsky Prospect and propelled toward the Winter Palace. Imperial cavalry troops charged the crowd, leaving him with a head wound. The following day, he returned to the scene with a friend whose sister was missing. She was never found.
Nijinsky became calmer and more serious as he grew older, but continued to make few friends, which continued through his life. His reserve and apparent dullness made him unappealing to others except when he danced.
The 1905 annual student show included a pas de deux from "The Persian Market", danced by Nijinsky and Sofia Fedorova. Oboukhov amended the dance to show off Nijinsky's abilities, drawing gasps and then spontaneous applause in the middle of the performance with his first jump.
In 1906, he danced in the Mariinsky production of Mozart's "Don Giovanni", in a ballet sequence choreographed by Michel Fokine. He was congratulated by the director of the Imperial Ballet and offered a place in the company although he was a year from graduation. Nijinsky chose to continue his studies. He tried his hand at choreography, with a children's opera, "Cinderella", with music by another student, Boris Asafyev. At Christmas, he played the King of the Mice in "The Nutcracker". At his graduation performance in April 1907, he partnered Elizaveta Gerdt, in a pas de deux choreographed by Fokine. He was congratulated by "prima ballerina" Mathilde Kschessinska of the Imperial Ballet, who invited him to partner her. His future career with the Imperial Ballet was guaranteed to begin at the mid-rank level of coryphée, rather than in the corps de ballet. He graduated second in his class, with top marks in dancing, art and music.
Early career.
Nijinsky spent his summer after graduation rehearsing and then performing at Krasnoe Selo in a makeshift theatre with an audience mainly of army officers. These performances frequently included members of the Imperial family and other nobility, whose support and interest were essential to a career. Each dancer who performed before the Tsar received a gold watch inscribed with the Imperial Eagle. Buoyed by Nijinsky's salary, his new earnings from giving dance classes, and his sister Bronia's employment with the ballet company, the family moved to a larger flat on Torgovaya Ulitsa. The new season at the Mariinsky theatre began in September 1907, with Nijinsky employed as coryphée on a salary of 780 roubles per year.
He appeared with Sedova, Lydia Kyasht and Karsavina. Kchessinska partnered him in "La Fille Mal Gardée", where he succeeded in an atypical role for him involving humour and flirtation. Designer Alexandre Benois proposed a ballet based upon "Le Pavillon d'Armide", choreographed by Fokine to music by Nikolai Tcherepnin. Nijinsky had a minor role, but it allowed him to show off his technical abilities with leaps and pirouettes. The partnership of Fokine, Benois and Nijinsky was repeated throughout his career. Shortly after, he upstaged his own performance, appearing in the "Bluebird" pas de deux from the "Sleeping Beauty", partnering Lydia Kyasht. The Mariinsky audience was deeply familiar with the piece, but exploded with enthusiasm for his performance and his appearing to fly, an effect he continued to have on audiences with the piece during his career.
In subsequent years, Nijinsky was given several soloist roles at the Mariinsky. In 1910, Mathilde Kschessinska selected Nijinsky to dance in a revival of Petipa's "Le Talisman." Nijinsky created a sensation in the role of the Wind God Vayou.
Ballets Russes.
A turning point for Nijinsky was his meeting the Russian Sergei Diaghilev, a celebrated and highly innovative producer of ballet and opera, as well as art exhibitions. He concentrated on promoting Russian visual and musical art abroad, particularly in Paris. The 1908 season of colorful Russian ballets and operas, works mostly new to the West, was a great success, leading him to plan a new tour for 1909 with a new name for his company, the now famous Ballets Russes. He worked closely with choreographer Michel Fokine and artist Léon Bakst, and later with other contemporary artists and composers. Nijinsky and Diaghilev became lovers for a time, and Diaghilev was deeply involved in directing and managing Nijinsky's career.
1909 opening season.
During the winter of 1908/9, Diaghilev started planning for the 1909 Paris tour of opera and ballet. He collected a team including designers Alexandre Benois and Léon Bakst, painters Nicholas Roerich and Konstantin Korovin, composers Alexander Glazunov and Nikolai Tcherepnin, regisseurs Vsevolod Meyerhold and Alexander Sanine and other ballet enthusiasts. As a friend and as a leading dancer, Nijinsky was part of the group. His sister wrote that he felt intimidated by the illustrious and aristocratic company. Fokine was asked to start rehearsals for the existing "Le Pavillon d'Armide" and for "Les Sylphides", an expanded version of his "Chopiniana". Fokine favoured expanding the existing "Une Nuit d'Egypte" for a ballet.
Diaghilev accepted the idea of an Egyptian theme, but he required a comprehensive rewrite based on new music, by which Fokine created a new ballet "Cléopâtre". To round out the program, they needed another ballet. Without sufficient time to compose a new work, they decided on a suite of popular dances, to be called "Le Festin". Anna Pavlova, Karsavina and Nijinsky were chosen as principal dancers. Fokine insisted that Ida Rubenstein would appear as Cleopatra, and Nijinsky insisted that his sister should have a part. Fokine noted Nijinsky's great ability at learning a dance and precisely what a choreographer wanted. Diaghilev departed for Paris in early 1909 to make arrangements, which were immediately complicated on the day of his return, 22 February 1909, by the death of Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovitch, who had sponsored an application by Diaghilev for an imperial subsidy of 100,000 roubles for the tour.
Rehearsals started on 2 April at the Hermitage Theatre, which the company had been granted special permission to use, along with loans of scenery. No sooner had rehearsals started that the permission was withdrawn, disappearing as had the imperial subsidy. Diaghilev managed to raise some money in Russia, but he had to rely significantly on Gabriel Astruc, who had been arranging theatres and publicity on behalf of the company in France, to also provide finance. Plans to include Opera had to be dropped because of the lack of finances, and logistical difficulties in obtaining necessary scenery at short notice and for free.
Diaghilev and Nijinsky travelled to Paris ahead of the rest of the company. Initially Nijinsky stayed at the Hôtel Daunou. He moved to the Hôtel de Hollande together with Diaghilev and his secretary, Alexis Mavrine, before the arrival of the others. Members of the company had noticed Diaghilev keeping a particularly proprietorial eye on Nijinsky during rehearsals in Russia. They took the travel arrangements and accommodation as confirmation of a relationship. Prince Lvov had visited Nijinsky's mother in St Petersburg, telling her tearfully that he would no longer be taking a special interest in her son, but he advanced a significant sum to Diaghilev towards the tour's expenses. Mavrine was known to have been Diaghilev's lover, but left the tour together with Olga Pedorova shortly after it had begun.
The season of colorful Russian ballets and operas, works mostly new to the West, was a great success. The Paris seasons of the Ballets Russes were an artistic and social sensation; setting trends in art, dance, music and fashion for the next decade. Nijinsky's unique talent showed in Fokine's pieces such as "Le Pavillon d'Armide" (music by Nikolai Tcherepnin); "Cleopatra" (music by Anton Arensky and other Russian composers) and a divertissement "La Fête". His expressive execution of a pas de deux from "The Sleeping Beauty" (Tchaikovsky) was a tremendous success.
Later seasons.
In 1910, he performed in "Giselle", and Fokine's ballets "Carnaval" and "Scheherazade" (based on the orchestral suite by Rimsky-Korsakov). His portrayal of "Petrushka," the puppet with a soul, was a remarkable display of his expressive ability to portray characters. His partnership with Tamara Karsavina, also of the Mariinsky Theatre, was legendary, and they have been called the "most exemplary artists of the time".
In January 1911 he danced in "Giselle" at the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg for the Imperial Ballet, with the Tsarina Maria Feodorovna in attendance. His costume, which had been designed by Benois and used in Paris before, caused a scandal, as he danced in tights without the then-common trousers. He refused to apologize and was dismissed from the Imperial Ballet. It is possible that he was not altogether unhappy about this development, as he was now free to concentrate on the Ballet Russes.
Ballets choreographed by Nijinsky.
Nijinsky took the creative reins and choreographed ballets which pushed boundaries and stirred controversy. His ballets were "L'après-midi d'un faune" ("The Afternoon of a Faun", based on Claude Debussy's "Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune") (1912); "Jeux" (1913); and "Till Eulenspiegel" (1916). These introduced his audiences to the new direction of modern dance. As the title character in "L'après-midi d'un faune", in the final tableau, he mimed masturbation with the scarf of a nymph, causing a scandal; he was defended by such artists as Auguste Rodin, Odilon Redon and Marcel Proust. Nijinsky's new trends in dance caused a riotous reaction at the Théâtre de Champs-Élysées when they premiered in Paris.
In "The Rite of Spring" ("Le Sacre du Printemps"), with music by Igor Stravinsky (1913), Nijinsky created choreography that exceeded the limits of traditional ballet and propriety. The radically angular movements expressed the heart of Stravinsky's radically modern score. Violence broke out in the audience as "The Rite of Spring" premiered. The theme of the ballet, based on pagan myths, was a young maiden who sacrificed herself by dancing until she died. The theme, the difficult and challenging music of Stravinsky, and Nijinsky's choreography, led to a violent uproar; Diaghilev was pleased with the notoriety.
Marriage.
Nijinsky's work in choreographing ballets had proved controversial. They were time-consuming to rehearse and badly received by critics. Diaghilev asked him to begin preparing a new ballet, "La Légende de Joseph," based on the Bible. Aside from Nijinsky's difficulties, Diaghilev came under pressure from financial backers and theatre owners who wanted productions more in the style of previous successful work. Although Diaghilev had become unhappy with Fokine's work, thinking he had lost his originality, he returned to him for two new ballets, including "Joseph". Relations between Diaghilev and Nijinsky had deteriorated under the stress of Nijinsky's becoming principal choreographer and his pivotal role in the company's financial success. Diaghilev could not face Nijinsky to tell him personally that he would no longer be choreographing the ballet "Joseph", but instead asked his sister Bronia Nijinska to deliver the bad news.
The company was to embark on a tour of South America in August 1913. Nijinska, who had always worked closely with her brother and supported him, could not accompany the tour because she had married in July 1912 and become pregnant. In October 1912 their father had died while on tour with his dance company, causing another stress for the siblings. Diaghilev did not accompany the South American tour, claiming he had been told that he would die on the ocean. Others have suggested the reason had more to do with wanting to spend time away from Nijinsky and enjoy a holiday in Venice, "where perhaps adventures with pretty dark-eyed boys awaited him". Nijinsky set sail on a 21-day sea voyage in a state of turmoil and without the people who had been his closest advisers in recent years.
The tour party included Romola de Pulszky, whose father Count Charles Pulszky was a Hungarian politician, and mother Emilia Márkus was a noted actress. In March 1912 the recently engaged Romola was taken to see the Ballets Russes in Budapest by her prospective mother-in-law and was greatly impressed. Nijinsky had not been performing, but she returned the following day and saw him: "An electric shock passed through the entire audience. Intoxicated, entranced, gasping for breath, we followed this superhuman being... the power, the featherweight lightness, the steel-like strength, the suppleness of his movements.." Romola broke off her engagement and began following the Ballets Russes across Europe, attending every performance she could. Nijinsky was difficult to approach, being always accompanied by a 'minder'. However, Romola befriended Adolf Bolm, who had previously visited her mother, thereby gaining access to the company and backstage. She and Nijinsky shared no common language; she spoke French but he knew only a little, so many of their early conversations involved an interpreter. When first introduced to her, he gained the impression she was a Hungarian prima ballerina and was friendly. Discovering his mistake, he ignored her thereafter.
Romola did not give up. She persuaded Diaghilev that her amorous interests lay with Bolm, that she was rich and interested in supporting ballet. He allowed her to take ballet lessons with Enrico Cecchetti, who accompanied the troupe coaching the dancers. Nijinsky objected to her taking class with the professionals. Cechetti warned her against becoming involved with Nijinsky (describing him as "like a sun that pours forth light but never warms"), but Diaghilev's endorsement meant that Nijinsky paid her some attention. Romola took every opportunity to be near Nijinsky, booking train compartments or cabins close to his. She was likely warned that he was homosexual by Marie Rambert, whom Romola befriended and who was also in love with Nijinsky. As a devout Catholic, she prayed for his conversion to heterosexuality. She referred to him as "Le Petit", and wanted to have his child.
On board ship, Romola had a cabin in first class, which allowed her to keep a watch on Nijinsky's door, while most of the company were exiled to second class. She befriended his masseur and was rewarded with a rundown on his musculature. Determined to take every opportunity, she succeeded in spending more and more time in his company. The unexpected friendliness was noticed by Baron de Gunsbourg, an investor in the Ballets Russes, who had been tasked with keeping an eye on the company. Instead of reporting to Diaghilev on what was occurring, Gunsbourg agreed to act on Nijinsky's behalf in presenting a proposal of marriage to Romola. Romola thought a cruel joke was being played on her, and ran off to her cabin crying. However, Nijinsky asked her again, in broken French and mime, and she accepted. Although Gunsbourg had a financial interest in Ballets Russes, he was also interested in forming his own company, and a split between Diaghilev and his star dancer might have presented him with an opportunity.
When the ship stopped at Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, the couple went straight to buy wedding rings. Adolph Bolm warned Romola against proceeding, saying "It will ruin your life". Gunsbourg hurried to arrange the marriage, getting permission by telegram from Romola's mother. A quick wedding could take place once the ship arrived at Buenos Aires, Argentina; the couple were married on 10 September 1913 and the event was announced to the world's press. Back in Europe, Diaghilev "gave himself to a wild orgy of dissipation...Sobbing shamelessly in Russian despair, he bellowed accusations and recriminations; he cursed Nijinsky's ingratitude, Romola's treachery, and his own stupidity".
As the company was due to start performing immediately, the couple had no honeymoon. A few days after the marriage, Nijinsky tried to teach Romola some ballet, but she was not interested. "I asked her to learn dancing because for me dancing was the highest thing in the world", "I realized that I had made a mistake, but the mistake was irreparable. I had put myself in the hands of someone who did not love me." Romola and Nijinsky did not share accommodations until after the season was safely underway, when she was eventually invited to join him in separate bedrooms in his hotel suite. She "almost cried with thankfulness" that he showed no interest in making love on their wedding night.
Dismissal from Ballets Russes.
On returning to Paris, Nijinsky anticipated returning to work on new ballets, but Diaghilev did not meet him. Eventually he sent a telegram to Nijinsky informing him that he was no longer employed by the Ballets Russes. Nijinsky had missed a performance in Rio when Romola was ill, and only in the case of a dancer's own illness, certified by a doctor, was the dancer allowed to miss a performance. Diaghilev also usually dismissed dancers who married. This was perhaps beside the point, since Nijinsky had never had a contract, nor wages, all his expenses having been paid by Diaghilev. His mother also received an allowance of 500 francs per month (other senior dancers had received 200,000 francs for a six-month season). Fokine was re-employed by Diaghilev as choreographer and premier danseur, accepting on the condition that none of Nijinsky's ballets would be performed. Leonide Massine joined the company as the new attractive young lead for "Joseph".
The Ballets Russes had lost its most famous and crowd-pulling dancer, but Nijinsky's position was even more difficult. He appears not to have appreciated that his marriage would result in a break with Diaghilev's company, although many others immediately expected this would be the result. The Ballets Russes and the Imperial Russian ballet were the pre-eminent ballet companies in the world and uniquely had permanent companies of dancers staging full-scale new productions. Nijinsky now was "an experimental artist. He needed roles that would extend his gifts, and above all, he needed to choreograph. For these things he did need the Ballets Russes, which at that time was the only forward-thinking ballet company in the world."
Not only had Nijinsky previously left the Imperial ballet on doubtful terms, but he had not been granted exemption from compulsory military service in Russia, something that was normally given to its dancers. He could find only two offers, one a position with the Paris Opera, which would not start for more than a year; the other to take a ballet company to London for eight weeks to perform as part of a mixed bill at the Palace Theatre. Anna Pavlova sent him a caustic telegram, reminding him that he had disapproved some years before when she had appeared there in vaudeville. On another occasion, he had told a reporter, "One thing I am determined not to do, and that is to go on the music-hall stage".
Bronia was still in St Petersburg following the birth of her child, and Nijinsky asked her to be part of his new company. She was glad to do so, being concerned at how well he could cope without his customary supporters. When she arrived, there was friction between her and Romola: Bronia was critical that the new central figure in her brother's life showed so little organisational ability; Romola resented the closeness between brother and sister both in their shared language and in ability to work together in dance. The final company had only three experienced dancers: Nijinsky and Bronia plus her husband. Scenery was late, Fokine refused to allow the use of his ballets, there was inadequate time to rehearse, and Nijinsky became "more and more nervous and distraught". Diaghilev came to the opening night in March 1914.
The audience divided between those who had never seen ballet, who objected to the delays necessary for scene changes, and those who had seen Nijinsky before, who generally felt something was lacking ("He no longer danced like a god"). On another night, when the orchestra played music during the scene change so as to calm the audience, Nijinsky, having expressly banned this, flew into a rage and was discovered half dressed and screaming in his dressing room. He had to be calmed down enough to perform. He jumped on a stagehand who had flirted with Romola ("I had never seen Vaslav like that"). A new program was to be performed for the third week, but a packed house had to be told that Nijinsky was ill with a high temperature and could not perform. He missed three days, and the management had had enough. The show was cancelled, and Nijinsky was left with a considerable financial loss. Newspapers reported a nervous breakdown. His physical vulnerability had been aggravated by the great stress.
Later life.
Romola was pregnant, so the couple returned to Budapest, Austro-Hungary, to his mother-in-law Emilia Markus' house. Their daughter Kyra was born on 19 June 1914. With the start of the Great War (World War I), Nijinsky was classified as an enemy Russian citizen. He was confined to house arrest in Budapest and could not leave the country. The war made problems for the Ballets Russes too; the company had difficulty recruiting dancers and Fokine returned to Russia.
Diaghilev started negotiations in October 1914 for Nijinsky to work again for the company, but could not obtain release of the dancer until 1916. The complex negotiations included a prisoner exchange with the United States, and agreement that Nijinsky would dance and choreograph for the Ballets Russes' tour. King Alfonso XIII of Spain, Queen Alexandra of Denmark, Dowager Russian Empress Marie Feodorovna, Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria, Pope Benedict XV and President Wilson at the urging of Otto Kahn all interceded on his behalf.
Nijinsky arrived in New York on 4 April 1916. The tour had already started in January with a number of problems: "Faun" was considered too sexually explicit and had to be amended; "Scheherazade", including an orgy between blacks and whites, did not appeal to Americans; and ballet aficionados were calling for Nijinsky. Romola took over negotiations, demanding that Diaghilev pay Nijinsky for the years he had been unpaid by the Ballets Russes before he would dance in New York. This was settled after another week's delay by a downpayment of $13,000 against the $90,000 claimed, plus a fee of $1000 for each performance in America.
Negotiations with Otto Kahn of the New York Metropolitan Opera led to an additional tour of the US being agreed to for the autumn. Kahn did not get on with Diaghilev and insisted Nijinsky should manage the tour. Massine and Diaghilev returned to Europe, leaving Nijinsky to dance and manage a company of more than 100 for a salary of $60,000. Nijinsky was also to prepare two new ballets. Rehearsals for "Till Eulenspiegel" did not go well; Nijinsky's poor communication skills meant that he could not explain to dancers what he wanted. He would explode into rages. Pierre Monteux, the conductor, refused to take part in performances because he did not want to be associated with failure. Nijinsky twisted his ankle, postponing the season's opening for a week and his own appearance by two weeks. Rehearsals for "Eulenspiegel" had not been completed, and it had to be improvised during its first performance. It was still well received, and Nijinsky's performance in "Faun " was considered better than Massine's. As the tour progressed, Nijinsky's performances received steady acclaim, although his management was haphazard and contributed to the tour's loss of $250,000.
His last public performance was during a South American tour, with pianist Arthur Rubinstein in a benefit in Montevideo for the Red Cross on 30 September 1917, at age twenty-eight. Rubinstein wept when he saw Nijinsky's confusion that night. It was around this time that signs of his schizophrenia had become apparent to members of the company, including Bourman. Nijinsky and his wife moved to St. Moritz, Switzerland, where he tried to recover from the stresses of the tour. Also in 1917, Bronia and Vaslav lost their older brother Stanislav, who died in a hospital in Petrograd. Accounts vary as to the cause of death. He had been institutionalized for many years.
Nijinsky's diary, which he wrote from January to early March 1919, expressed his great fear of hospitalization and confinement. He filled it with drawings of eyes, as he felt himself under scrutiny, by his wife, a young doctor Frenkel, and others. Finally, Romola arranged a consultation in Zurich with the psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler in 1919, asking her mother and stepfather for help in getting Nijinsky there. His fears were realized; he was diagnosed with schizophrenia and committed to Burghölzli. After a few days, he was transferred to the Bellevue Sanatorium, "a luxurious and humane establishment directed at that time by Ludwig Binswanger." In 1920, Nijinsky's second daughter Tamara was born. She never saw him dance in public.
For the next 30 years, Nijinsky was in and out of psychiatric hospitals and asylums. During 1945, after the end of the war, after Romola had moved with him to Vienna, he encountered a group of Russian soldiers in an encampment, playing traditional folk tunes on a balalaika and other instruments. Inspired by the music and hearing a language from his youth, he started dancing, astounding the men with his skills. Drinking and laughing with them helped him start to speak again. He had maintained long periods of almost absolute silence during his years of illness. His wife Romola had protected them by staying for a time at the border of Hungary and Austria, trying to keep out of major areas of fighting.
From 1947, Nijinsky lived in Virginia Water, Surrey, England with his wife. He died from kidney failure at a clinic in London on 8 April 1950 and was buried in London. In 1953 his body was moved to Montmartre Cemetery in Paris and reinterred beside the graves of Gaétan Vestris, Théophile Gautier, and Emma Livry.
Legacy.
Nijinsky's daughter Kyra married the Ukrainian conductor Igor Markevitch, and they had a son named Vaslav. The marriage ended in divorce.
His second daughter Tamara Nijinsky grew up with her maternal grandmother, never getting to see her father dance. Later she served as Executive Director of the Vaslav & Romola Nijinsky Foundation, founded by her mother, to preserve art and writing associated with her parents, and her father's dances.
Nijinsky's "Diary" was written during the six weeks in 1919 he spent in Switzerland before being committed to the asylum to Zurich. It reflected the decline of his household into chaos. He elevated feeling and action in his writing. It combined elements of autobiography with appeals for compassion toward the less fortunate.
Discovering the three notebooks of the diary years later, plus another with letters to a variety of people, his wife published a bowdlerized version of the diary in 1936, translated into English by Jennifer Mattingly. She deleted about 40 per cent of the diary, especially references to bodily functions, sex, and homosexuality, recasting Nijinsky as an "involuntary homosexual." She also removed some of his more unflattering references to her and others close to their household. She moved sections around, obscuring the "march of events" obvious in the original version and toning down some of the odder portions, including trying to distinguish between sections in which he writes as God and others as himself (in the original all such sections are written the same.)
In 1995, the first unexpurgated edition of "The Diary of Vaslav Nijinsky" was published, edited by "New Yorker" dance critic Joan Acocella and translated by Kyril FitzLyon. Acocella notes that the diary displays three elements common to schizophrenia: "delusions, disorganized language, and disorganized behavior." It also demonstrates that Nijinsky's thought was suffering from a "breakdown in selective attention;" his associations would connect in ever-widening circles. A "New York Times" review said, "How ironic that in erasing the real ugliness of his insanity, the old version silenced not only Nijinsky's true voice but the magnificently gifted body from which it came. And how fortunate we are to have them both restored."
Nijinsky is immortalized in numerous still photographs, many of them by E. O. Hoppé, who photographed the Ballets Russes seasons in London extensively between 1909 and 1921. No film exists of Nijinsky dancing; Diaghilev never allowed the Ballets Russes to be filmed because he felt that the quality of film at the time could never capture the artistry of his dancers. He believed that the reputation of the company would suffer if people saw their performance only in the short jerky films of the period.
Cultural depictions.
In fine arts.
On 11 June 2011, Poland’s first sculpture of the Polish/Russian dancers, Vaslav Nijinsky and his sister Bronislava Nijinska, was unveiled in the Teatr Wielki’s foyer. It portrays them in their roles as the Faun and the Nymph from the ballet "L’après-midi d’un faune." Commissioned by the Polish National Ballet, the sculpture was made in bronze by the well-known Ukrainian sculptor Giennadij Jerszow. Nijinsky was also portrayed by Auguste Rodin. It was cast posthumously in 1912.


Harald Scharff

Harald Scharff (20 February 1836 – 3 January 1912) was a danseur associated with the Royal Danish Theatre in the mid-19th century who succeeded August Bournonville as the Danish ballet's principal male dancer upon the latter's retirement from the stage. Scharff's physical handsomeness and his flamboyant dance style brought him great acclaim, and his performances in Bournonville's "Flower Festival in Genzano" and "Napoli" were triumphs.
Scharff was an intimate friend (possibly a lover in the early 1860s) of the poet and author Hans Christian Andersen. Andersen's "The Snowman" is believed to have been inspired by their relationship. Scharff first met Andersen when the latter was in his fifties. The two were, at the very least, close friends for a time and Andersen was clearly infatuated. It is hard to tell if their relationship was truly sexual, though Andersen's journals imply that it was so. Scharff had various dinners alone with Andersen and his gift of a silver toothbrush to the poet on his fifty-seventh birthday marked their relationship as incredibly close.
Their relationship eventually cooled and Scharff became engaged to Camilla Petersen, a fellow dancer, but married Elvida Møller in 1874. Scharff's career came to a sudden halt in 1871 when he chipped a kneecap during rehearsal. He turned to acting without extraordinary success and died in 1912.
Scharff and Andersen.
In 1857, the 21-year-old Scharff was on holiday in Paris with his 28-year-old Copenhagen housemate, the actor Lauritz Eckardt when he first met fellow Dane Hans Christian Andersen. The poet was returning to Copenhagen via Paris following a visit to Charles Dickens in England. Scharff and Andersen toured Notre-Dame de Paris together. Scharff was a highly regarded artist in Denmark, having succeeded August Bournonville as principal male dancer at the Royal Ballet. Following his retirement, Bournonville described Scharff as “full of life and imagination... he is undoubtedly the finest lover we have had since I left!" Scharff and his housemate were members of a circle of young, unmarried men associated with the Royal Theatre—a circle which Jonas Collin, the grandson of Andersen's first benefactor in Copenhagen despised, expressing his loathing and disgust in letters to Andersen in the early 1860s.
In early July 1860, Scharff and Eckardt met Andersen by accident in Bavaria. The three kept constant company for a week, and it is probable that Andersen fell in love with Scharff at this time. Scharff and Eckardt departed for Salzburg, and Andersen, according to his diary, did not "feel at all well" when the two young men departed. A liaison with a celebrated and distinguished man such as Andersen must have held some attraction for the young Scharff, and a correspondence between the two began. Andersen sent Scharff his photograph.
Following the departure of Scharff and Eckardt for Salzburg, Andersen traveled to Switzerland but grew despondent and returned to Copenhagen. He spent the Christmas holidays at the estate of an aristocratic friend. His spirits lifted with the festivities and "The Snowman” was composed on New Year’s Eve 1860–61. Andersen determined to fully open his heart to Scharff. He sent the young dancer a photograph of himself in a languid and seductive pose with a salutation using the intimate “Du” form: "Dear Scharf, here you have again Hans Christian Andersen." The two men exchanged birthday gifts in the early months of 1861: Andersen gave Scharff a five-volume collection of his tales, and Scharff gave Andersen a reproduction of Danish sculptor Herman Bissen's "Minerva". Copenhagen left Andersen restlessness and ill-tempered, however, and he left for Rome on 4 April 1861.
When Andersen returned to Copenhagen at the start of the new year 1862, Scharff was waiting for him. In his diary entry for 2 January 1862, Andersen noted that Scharff "bounded up to me; threw himself round my neck and kissed me!" In other entries for January 1862, he described Scharff as "deeply devoted… very intimate… ardent and loving". In February, the poet observed that Scharff was "intimate and communicative" and in March he noted "a visit from Scharff... exchanged with him all the little secrets of the heart; I long for him daily." Later in March he wrote, "Scharff very loving... I gave him my picture." Scharff gave a silver toothbrush engraved with his name and the date to Andersen on his 57th birthday. In the winter of 1861–62, the two men entered a full-blown love affair that brought Andersen "joy, some kind of sexual fulfillment and a temporary end to loneliness." He was not discreet in his conduct with Scharff, and displayed his feelings much too openly. Onlookers regarded the relationship as improper and ridiculous. In his diary for March 1862, Andersen referred to this time in his life as his "erotic period".
The affair eventually came to an end. Scharff withdrew gradually from the relationship as he focused on his friendship with the now married Eckardt. On 27 August 1863, Andersen noted in his diary that Scharff’s passion had cooled and the dancer (whom he at one time described as a "butterfly who flits around sympathetically") was flirting with others.
On 13 November 1863, Andersen wrote, "Scharff has not visited me in eight days; with him it is over." In December, he read fairy tales at Eckhardt's house where Scharff and a dancer named Camilla Petersen were present; the two would become engaged though they would never marry. Like the other young men with whom Andersen was involved at various points in his lifetime, Scharff would move from homosexual to heterosexual relationships. The passionate relationship was over between the two men although Andersen would try unsuccessfully several times to lure Scharff into another relationship without success. When they were forced to stay overnight in a hotel in Helsingør the summer of 1864 while touring, for example, Andersen reserved a double room for the two of them, but Scharff insisted on having his own room.


Betty Knox

Betty Knox (10 May 1906 – 25 January 1963) was an American dancer and journalist. Her early career was in American vaudeville and British variety as the original ‘Betty’ (1928–1941) of Wilson, Keppel and Betty – a dance trio who performed slick comedy routines in Egyptian dress, including the Sand Dance and the Dance of the Seven Veils. When she retired from dancing she became a journalist for the "London Evening Standard" and was subsequently a war correspondent in Normandy and a reporter at the Nuremberg trials.
Early life.
Knox was born Alice Elizabeth Peden in Salina, Kansas, on 10 May 1906, the daughter of Charley E. Peden and Elizabeth Jane (née Anderson). As a teenager she ran away from home twice. Aged 16 she fled to Louisiana, fearing arrest after a joyriding incident with a borrowed car. Less than a year later she eloped with boyfriend Donald Knox to obtain a marriage licence in Omaha, Nebraska. Their daughter Patsy was born in December 1923, though the marriage (if it ever happened) was short-lived.
Dancing career.
After several years working as a chorus girl in vaudeville, Knox met Liverpudlian Jack Wilson and Irishman Joe Keppel, a clog dancing double act. She joined the act in 1928 and the trio became known as Wilson, Keppel and Betty. Over the next couple of years they tried out various new routines, before coming up with the idea of wearing Egyptian costumes and performing eccentric dancing in a comic imitation of hieroglyphic wall paintings. This rapidly propelled them to the top of their profession and the trio moved to the UK in 1932, making their British début at the London Palladium.
Knox left her daughter Patsy behind in America, finally bringing her to the UK in late 1937, in Knox's own words, 'so that she could see the war.' In addition to helping to devise new routines for Wilson, Keppel and Betty, Knox also scripted sketches and lyrics for several other variety acts, particularly Tessie O'Shea, for whom she wrote one of her most successful wartime songs, "International Rhythm".
Journalism.
In 1941 Knox retired from the act and became a journalist on the "London Evening Standard". Although she was totally untrained in the profession, editor Frank Owen was impressed by her extensive knowledge of Britain and the British, gained by her natural curiosity and her non-stop touring lifestyle. Her daughter Patsy subsequently became the new 'Betty' in the dance trio.
In 1943 Michael Foot (Frank's successor as "Evening Standard" editor, and future leader of the Labour Party) gave Knox her own thrice-weekly column which she entitled "Over Here", celebrating the contrasting cultures of the British and the increasingly prevalent American GI (The title was a reference to the popular description of American servicemen – 'overpaid, oversexed and over here'). Her first column featured an interview with novelist John Steinbeck, who had recently returned from Capri where he was war correspondent with the United States Navy. Her columns were peppered with humorous anecdotes and American slang, and frequently poked fun at the inability of the British to make a proper cup of coffee.
Second World War and Nuremberg trials.
In July 1944 Knox filed her first story from Normandy, as a US war correspondent working for the "London Evening Standard". In common with most female war correspondents she was expected to cover the war from a woman’s angle – with on-the-spot reports from military hospitals and articles on food shortages. However, she often bent the rules, and on one occasion hitched a ride with the French Resistance and went Nazi hunting. During this period she worked closely with fellow war correspondent Erika Mann (the eldest child of novelist Thomas Mann) and the couple were briefly romantically involved.
After the war Knox stayed in Germany reporting from the Nuremberg trials. In 1935, with Wilson and Keppel, she had danced at the Berlin Wintergarten theatre before an audience that included Hermann Göring, commander of the Luftwaffe. The act was condemned by Joseph Goebbels as indecent. As a journalist in Nuremberg she covered Göring’s trial, but her reputation suffered after she chose to ignore a tip-off that Göring had committed suicide in his cell. The following year, in July 1947, an article Knox wrote for the "London Evening Standard", claiming that escaped Nazi war criminal Martin Bormann was alive and living in Russia, provoked interest from MI5. Freda Utley’s book "The High Cost of Vengeance" (1948) was highly critical of the conduct of the Nuremberg trials, especially the subsequent trials of those further down the chain of command. Utley spoke to Knox, who had transcribed the last words of three prisoners and (together with fellow journalist Josie Thompson) witnessed their executions. According to Utley, neither Knox nor Thompson "were ever likely to forget their terrible experience".
Later years.
By the early 1950s Knox was running the Press Villa Club, an international press club in Bonn. She later wrote articles for various Canadian newspapers. In her final years she lived in Düsseldorf with her mother Lizzie and her daughter Patsy. She died in hospital in Düsseldorf on 25 January 1963, aged 56, from emphysema, carcinoma and pulmonary trouble.


Midnight Ballad for Ghost Theater

Midnight Ballad for Ghost Theater (; lit. "Three-way Intersection Theater"; aka The Ghost Theater) is a 2006 South Korean musical fantasy comedy horror film written and directed by Jeon Kye-soo.
Plot.
The plot follows a young girl, Seong So-dan as she searches for her grandmother, who disappears at the beginning of the film after announcing that she wanted to go and see "her film". So-dan goes to the movie theatre to look for her and stops the suicidal manager from hanging himself, he gives her a job working in the box office so she can wait and see if her grandmother will show up. One night, while she is working late at the theater, four ghosts appear to her; Wanda, a bulimic ex-kisaeng who obsessively counts her own hair; Elisa, a Joseon Dynasty princess; Ijawa Hiroshi, a Japanese soldier stationed in Korea and Mosquito. Each of the ghosts is identical to a member of the theater staff working during the day.
So-dan overcomes her fear of the ghosts and joins them as they perform in the theatre at night. She eventually discovers that they were part of an acting troupe, which also included her grandmother and the manager. The four of them were killed at the premier of their debut film "Minosoo: The Bull-headed Man" and have decided to haunt the theatre until the film is shown again.
Reception.
Although the film performed only moderately at the box office and had only a limited DVD release, it is gaining reputation as a cult film and has been compared to the work of Tim Burton and to "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" thanks to its surreal edge.


Joe Langworth

Joe Langworth (born July 19, 1966) is an American theater director, choreographer, casting director, singer and dancer.
Career.
From 1990 – 2005, Langworth appeared in a number of major Broadway musicals, including the closing company of the original production of "A Chorus Line", the Tony Award-winning production of "Ragtime" with Audra McDonald, Marin Mazzie and Brian Stokes Mitchell, and the 2001 revival of Stephen Sondheim's "Follies". He was also assistant dance captain of the national tour of the Tony Award-winning musical "Thoroughly Modern Millie". During that time, he also performed in Las Vegas with Ann-Margret and on European tours of "West Side Story".
In 2006, Langworth left performing to join the New York-based casting agency, Bernard Telsey Casting, Inc. During this time, the Telsey agency supplied casts for Broadway productions like "Rent", "The Color Purple", "Wicked", "Legally Blonde" and "The Drowsy Chaperone". In a February 26, 2006 article in the "New York Times" entitled "Far From the Spotlight, the True Powers of Broadway," Jesse McKinley named it one of the premier casting agencies in New York. At Telsey, Langworth was responsible for casting Broadway musicals, most notably the first Broadway revival of "South Pacific" opening at the Lincoln Center Theater in April 2008 and starring Kelli O'Hara, Paulo Szot and Loretta Ables Sayre. Langworth also served as associate choreographer for this production which was awarded seven Tony Awards in 2008 and as dance captain for the national touring company.
In 2009 – 2010, he was associate director to Sheryl Kaller on the off-Broadway and Broadway productions of Geoffrey Nauffts' play "Next Fall". The play was nominated for Best Director and Best Play in the 2010 Tony Awards. In 2012, Langworth directed the cabaret performances of Broadway couple Jenny Powers and Matt Cavenaugh, as well as the cabaret debut of Laura Osnes at the Cafe Carlyle in New York City. In the "New York Times", Stephen Holden said Langworth's direction "had the fit of a carefully tailored gown for a star stepping onto the red carpet for the first time."
In 2013, Langworth directed Paulo Szot's solo show at the Spoleto festival in Italy and at the nightclub 54 Below.
He has also directed well-received revivals of "South Pacific", "West Side Story" and "Carousel" at Musical Theater West. Broadway World called his production of Rodgers and Hammerstein's "Carousel" "quintessential." For his work on "West Side Story", Langworth was awarded the SAGE Award for Best Direction in 2016 by LA theater critics. In addition, Langworth directed the regional premiere of "Companion Piece" by playwright Kevin Armento in the inaugural season of Denizen Theater in New Paltz, New York. Broadway World opined "The success of this production also is attributable to the uniformly excellent cast, tightly directed by Joe Langworth."
Personal life.
Langworth grew up in Port Chester, NY, attended Port Chester High School and graduated from the State University of New York at Geneseo, where he studied communications. He returned to his alma mater to be an associate professor of Dance. Langworth also taught at the State University of New York at New Paltz where he choreographed productions of "The Producers" and "Rent (musical)", and directed "25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee" and "Oklahoma (musical)".
His husband is James Matthew Jones, a leading global public health consultant who served as press secretary to Senator John Kerry (D-MA) and as executive vice president of The Vaccine Fund, a multibillion-dollar charity founded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. They married in October 2016 in West Park, Town of Esopus, New York.


Douglas Wright (dancer)

Douglas James Wright (14 October 1956 – 14 November 2018) was a New Zealand dancer and choreographer in the New Zealand arts establishment from 1980 until his death in 2018. Although he announced his retirement from dance in 2008, on the occasion of the publication of his first book of poetry, "Laughing Mirror" he subsequently continued to make dance works, including touring "The Kiss Inside" during April 2015.
Biography.
Wright was born in Tuakau, South Auckland, in 1956. From 1980 to 1983 he danced with the Limbs Dance Company and choreographed a number of works on the company before travelling to New York where he danced with the Paul Taylor Company, 1983–1987 and London with DV8 Physical Theatre, 1988. Returning to New Zealand in 1989, he formed the "Douglas Wright Dance Company", with which he created more than 30 major works, touring New Zealand, Australia and Europe.
In the 1998 Queen's Birthday Honours, Wright was appointed a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit, for services to dance.
In 2000 Wright received one of five inaugural Arts Laureate awards from the Arts Foundation of New Zealand and in 2003 he was the subject of an award-winning feature-length documentary film, "Haunting Douglas", directed by Leanne Pooley for Spacific Films.
With the launch of "Laughing Mirror", Wright announced his retirement from dance. Subsequently, however, during 2010 he workshopped material towards a new major group work commissioned for Auckland Festival 2011, which premiered on 16 March 2011 at The Civic Theatre as "rapt", and at the Hague, in the Netherlands during 2013. During 2014 and 2015, he workshopped and developed material towards "The Kiss Inside" a further major group work commissioned for the New Zealand Festival, which premiered on 16 April 2015 at SkyCity Theatre, Auckland before touring to Wanaka, Dunedin, and Nelson after which touring followed on the North Island of New Zealand during March 2016. During 2018, he choreographed a solo "M_nod" on dancer Sean MacDonald, which had its premiere in the Grey Lynn Public Library hall to an invited audience during July, and was publicly presented in Q Theatre's Vault during Tempo Dance Festival 2018. The work was commissioned by Auckland Art Gallery director Michael Lett, and a film was made of the work.
Wright died 14 November 2018, aged 62, from cancer.
Published works.
He wrote two volumes of semi-fiction/semi-autobiography, "Ghost Dance" (Penguin, 2004 – Montana Awards Best First Book of Non-Fiction, 2004) and "Terra Incognito" (2006), and also hosted an inaugural one-man exhibition of his paintings and multimedia sculptures. In October 2007 a poetry collection, "Laughing Mirror" was published by Steele Roberts. A second collection of his poems, "cactusfear" was published by Steele Roberts in October 2011, and a retrospective exhibition of his work as a choreographer, based on photographs, films and writing, was held at The University of Auckland's Gus Fisher Gallery in 2012.


Leonard MacClain

Leonard MacClain (September 8, 1899, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania – September 1967, Devault, Pennsylvania) was an American keyboardist and composer who was prominent as an organist in the Philadelphia area. He gained international exposure through his recordings for Epic Records.
Biography.
MacClain's career as a theatre organist for silent movies started at the Jefferson Theatre, when the regular organist there could not appear on account of inclement weather. In 1919 he began playing at the Fifty-Sixth Street Theater. He became the premiere theatre organist in the Philadelphia area for decades, earning the nickname “Melody Mac”.
MacClain was also popular on radio, where he had his own show. In 1935 he debuted an instrument called the “Photona” on the CBS Radio network. The instrument was of two manuals, each manual including six octaves, and had foot controls for volume and tremolo.
By 1950 he was recording for Musicart Records. The late 1950s and early 1960s were the peak of MacClain’s exposure, as he signed a recording contract with Epic Records, where he recorded the Wurlitzer organ in the Tower Theatre located in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania. During this time, he made numerous concert appearances, often in conjunction with the American Association of Theater Organ Enthusiasts. Highlights included being named convention organist for the Forty-Seventh Annual Rotary Convention in 1956, and as guest soloist with the Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Eugene Ormandy playing “The Stars and Stripes Forever.” During this time he lived in Ocean City, New Jersey, with his wife, Dorothy. In 1963, McClain traveled to Baltimore, Buffalo, Rochester and Philadelphia to record organs in four theatres scheduled for demolition and to California to record at the Lorin Whitney Studios in Glendale. These sessions were released on the Ralbar Records label. By 1966 health issues forced him to cancel appearances. He died in 1967.
Playing style and legacy.
His playing was described as “forthright” and “sensible”, yet he was also noted for his improvisational skills. He was said to be able to play any song he had heard from memory, making up the chords and accompaniment as he went along. On his radio show, he offered a prize to any listener who could stump him with a song, but was rarely bested. He was reviewed by Billboard as “outstanding.”
MacClain was sought after as a teacher of his instrument. Students included Dennis James, who at the age of 16 was sent by MacClain to replace him in a Detroit concert when the organist suffered a heart attack, Dick Smith, Shirley Hannum Keither, and Barbara Fesmire.
Partial list of compositions.
“Days Without You are Endless”
“Smile Darn Ya Smile”
“Where You Are Concerned”


I think we all need a pep talk


Up to Our Necks

Up to our Necks is an unauthorized documentary film on the American metal band Slipknot. The unrated biography shows never-before-seen interviews with the band members, but does not have live footage nor music by the band.


May Watkis

May Gowen Watkis ("née" Hilda May Gowen; 22 August 1879 – 6 December 1940) was a Canadian government film agency director, producer, and projectionist. She was a pioneer for women in the Canadian film industry, earning high-ranking positions behind the scenes during a time when women did not have the right to vote. She became the first-ever "directress" for the B.C. Patriotic and Educational Picture Service.
Career.
British Columbia was the first province to establish a film censorship office, bringing with it career opportunities. Watkis was determined to become join the film industry, but did not believe she would make it as an actress. In 1913, Watkis applied to become a film censor, however, the attorney-general of the time rejected her application and gave the position to a man. Undeterred, Watkis offered her services to the new censor as his assistant, and he hired her as his projectionist. Although Watkis knew nothing about projecting films, she agreed.
The British Columbia projectionists' union refused to teach her, as projection was considered to be a man's profession. Across the border in Washington state, she again faced an all-male union that refused to teach her. Instead, Watkis convinced a friend who worked at a local theatre to explain the techniques for projecting films without explaining why she wanted to know, and alongside him projected several shows.
Impressed by Watkis's determination, the new censor officially hired her as his assistant. In response to this, the projectionists' union unsuccessfully protested for a month.
After a while, her duties bored Watkis, and she became an inspector for the BC Theatres Branch. Her job was to check for breaches of the Amusement Tax Act. Following this, Watkis worked in California in the scenario departments for Hollywood production companies. In 1919, Watkis returned to British Columbia when the new B.C. Patriotic and Educational Picture Service was established and became the organization's first "directress". This government film organization was the first of its kind to hire a woman as its head.
After spending years working behind the scenes, Watkis seized the opportunity to be directly involved in film production when she became a producer on the 1920 film "Beautiful Ocean Falls", directed by R.J. Errington. The film was produced under the British Columbia Patriotic and Educational Picture Service, and is the only one to credit Watkis directly.
Watkis' time as "directress" for the British Columbia Patriotic and Educational Picture Service was short, as all film activities became regulated under the Provincial Censor's Department in 1921. Watkis' Vancouver office was closed following that decision.
Filmography.
The British Columbia Patriotic and Educational Picture Service had more than 100 films in circulation during the time it was active, but "Beautiful Ocean Falls" is the only film to have survived. Some of those films may have credited Watkis.


Refudiate


ATFQ


Andreas K. W. Meyer

Andreas K. W. Meyer (born 2 June 1958) is a German dramaturge and journalist.
Life.
Meyer was born in Bielefeld. After his Abitur passed at the in his native city and private composition studies with Rudolf Mors, he studied musicology from 1981 (with Klaus Hortschansky, among others), art history and German studies at the University of Münster. In 1987, he began working as a freelance critic, among others for the "Frankfurter Rundschau" and various radio stations, primarily for the WDR and the Bayerischer Rundfunk. In radio features, he dealt in particular with the work of Carl Orff and Allan Pettersson, but also wrote in this field about, for example, Gottfried von Einem and Jón Leifs.
From 1993 to 2003 he worked as music dramaturge at the Opernhaus Kiel, initially under the direction of general director Peter Dannenberg, from 1995 as chief music dramaturge, and from 2002 as chief music dramaturge and deputy opera director under opera director Kirsten Harms. From September 2004 to June 2012, he was chief dramaturge at the Deutsche Oper Berlin. At the start of the 2013/2014 season, he took over as opera director at the Theater Bonn.
His particular focus as a dramaturge is the revival of unjustly forgotten works of opera literature, primarily from the early 20th century, which helped the opera Kiel gain considerable national interest during Kirsten Harms' directorship. A cycle of lesser-known works by Franz Schreker and the reinterpretation of Gian Francesco Malipiero's "I capricci di Callot", Franco Alfano's "Cyrano de Bergerac" or Richard Strauss' "Die Liebe der Danae" are exemplary. - His discoveries for the Deutsche Oper Berlin (Alberto Franchetti's "Germania" and Alexander von Zemlinsky's "Der Traumgörge") initially met with less unanimous approval, with the start of the 2007/2008 season, in which "Cassandra" by Vittorio Gnecchi and Walter Braunfels' "Szenen aus dem Leben der Heiligen Johanna" (as a scenic premiere) were put up for discussion, appreciation has increased among audiences and press alike. The "Szenen aus dem Leben der Heiligen Johanna" was named "Rediscovery of the Year" in the critics' poll of the magazine "Opernwelt" in 2008.
In addition to Kirsten Harms, with whom Meyer worked on a large number of productions, Katja Czellnik, Marco Arturo Marelli and Johannes Schaaf should be mentioned as important directors in his work since 1995.
In 2000, he presented his first production on an opera stage (with stage design by Anna Kirschstein) with the linking of Frederick Delius' "Fennimore and Gerda" and Béla Bartók's "Bluebeard's Castle".
For Wilfried Hiller, he wrote the libretto of the opera "The Rider on the White Horse" after Theodor Storm.
Publications.
Essays in various publications, including:
Several contributions to the Bayerische Staatsoper yearbook, the Allan Pettersson yearbook and the Bertelsmann Concert Guide.


SPYFN


CMIIW


Antony Tudor

Antony Tudor (born William Cook; 4 April 1908 – 19 April 1987) was an English ballet choreographer, teacher and dancer.
Life and career.
Tudor was born William Cook in London. He discovered dance accidentally. Tudor's first exposure to professional ballet was in his late teens when he first saw Diaghilev's Ballet Russes. He witnessed the dancer Serge Lifar of the Diaghilev Ballet in Balanchine's "Apollon Musagète" in 1928. Later, the Ballet Russes would introduce him to Anna Pavlova, whom further inspired his journey into the world of dance. Tudor reached out to Cyril W. Beaumont, the owner of a ballet book shop in the Charing Cross Road district in London, to seek advice regarding training and was instructed to study with Marie Rambert, a former Diaghilev Ballet dancer who taught the Cecchetti method.
He began dancing professionally with Marie Rambert in 1928, becoming general assistant for her Ballet Club the next year. A precocious choreographer, at age twenty-three he created for her dancers "Cross Garter'd", then "Lysistrata", "The Planets" and other works at the little Mercury Theatre, Notting Hill Gate, and his two most revolutionary, "Jardin aux lilas" ("Lilac Garden") and "Dark Elegies", before the age of thirty, himself dancing the main roles.
In 1938, he founded the London Ballet with Rambert members, including his future life partner, Hugh Laing, Andrée Howard, Agnes de Mille, Peggy van Praagh, Maude Lloyd and Walter Gore. With the onset of World War II, in 1940 he was invited with them to New York, joining Richard Pleasant's and Lucia Chase's reorganized Ballet Theater. Chase's company was later to become the American Ballet Theatre, with which Tudor was closely associated for the rest of his life.
He was a resident choreographer with Ballet Theater for ten years, restaging some of his earlier works but also creating new works, his great "Pillar of Fire" (1942), "Romeo and Juliet", "Dim Lustre" and "Undertow", on that company by the end of the war. Retiring from dancing in 1950, he headed the faculty of the Metropolitan Opera Ballet School, taught at the Juilliard School recurrently from 1950 onwards, and was artistic director for the Royal Swedish Ballet from 1963 to 1964. He choreographed three works for the New York City Ballet. Tudor continued his teaching career as Professor of Ballet Technique at the Department of Dance, University of California, Irvine from 1973 (work curtailed by a serious heart condition), while rejoining American Ballet Theatre in 1974 as associate artistic director, creating "The Leaves Are Fading" and "Tiller in the Fields", his last major work, in 1978. With Laing, he continued seasonal residence in Laguna Beach, California.
Muses for whom specific ballets where created include Maude Lloyd, Hugh Laing and Nora Kaye. While specific ballets were not created for them, Diana Adams and Sallie Wilson can also be considered as muses of Tudor.
As a teacher, Tudor was known for focusing on physical and psychological details to strip away the ego allowing the dancer to be pushed outside their comfort zone and extend their potential. In an interview with Dick Cavett, Tudor said, "You’ve got to get rid of the personal mannerisms to get to the character in the ballet and dancers don't want to let go. Breaking down a person isn't hard. But you cannot break them down unless you are willing to pick up the ashes right away and turn them into the Phoenix. That's the tough thing. You're terribly tempted to lay them flat and walk on them."
Tudor was awarded a creative arts medal by Brandeis University, the "Dance Magazine" and Capezio awards, New York City's Handel Medallion, and both Kennedy Center and Dance/USA National Honors. Tudor was inducted into the Mr. & Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney Hall of Fame at the National Museum of Dance in 1988.
Legacy and trust.
Tudor is generally accepted as one of the great originals of modern dance forms. Along with George Balanchine, he is seen as a principal transformer of ballet into a modern art, but of a genius that uses, rather than proceeds from, ballet forms. His work is usually considered as modern "psychological" expression, but – like their creator – of austerity, elegance and nobility, remarkably primarily using only classical forms. Mikhail Baryshnikov said, "We do Tudor's ballets because we must. Tudor's work is our conscience."
A disciplined Zen Buddhist, Tudor died on Easter Sunday in his residence at the First Zen Institute of America, aged 79.
Thirty of Tudor's dances have been documented in Labanotation by the Dance Notation Bureau. The scores' introductory material contains history of the dances, cast lists, stylistic notes, background on Tudor, and information needed to stage the works (costumes, sets, lighting, music).
The Antony Tudor Ballet Trust was established to continue staging Tudor's works. His will appointed Sally Brayley Bliss as the sole trustee of his ballets upon his will submission to the Surrogate's Court of the State of New York in 1987.
The trust includes the following répétiteurs: Diana Byer, John Gardner, Airi Hymninen, James Jordan, Donald Mahler, Amanda McKerrow, Christopher Newton, Kirk Peterson, David Richardson, Willy Shives, Lance Westwood, Celia Franca (in memoriam) and Sallie Wilson (in memoriam). Tara McBride is the administrator for the trust.


Hollywood Story

Hollywood Story is a 1951 American film noir crime film directed by William Castle and starring Richard Conte and Julie Adams.
The film was an attempt by Universal Pictures to take advantage of the success of Paramount's "Sunset Boulevard" which was released the previous year. The plot is based on the notorious murder of silent movie director William Desmond Taylor. While "Hollywood Story" reaches a fictional conclusion, it follows the circumstances of the real-life event closely.
Upon the release of the film, Universal promoted the appearance of several once famous silent screen celebrities. It came to light that the ones with speaking parts had received just $55 per day of shooting for their roles. Others, like Elmo Lincoln, the first screen Tarzan, were used as non-speaking extras and received only $15 per day.
Plot.
New York theatrical producer Larry O'Brien (Conte) plans to found a motion picture company in Hollywood. He buys an old studio which was unused since the days of silent movies. There he's shown the office where a famous director was murdered twenty years earlier. Although there were many suspects the case hasn't been solved. O'Brian becomes fascinated by the subject and decides to make a film based on the case. To this end he begins interviewing the surviving participants and soon gets into danger himself.
Production.
It was the last film Castle made under his three year contract with Universal. He shot many scenes at the old Charlie Chaplin studio to ensure it had the feel of old Hollywood. The movie led to Castle being offered a contract to return to Columbia.
Reception.
Critical response.
Film critic Bosley Crowther panned the film and he blamed the script. He wrote, "It is easy to see, now, why some pictures which sound promising at the start, on the strength of the ideas behind them, turn out to be dismal flops. "Hollywood Story" demonstrates it ... scriptwriters Frederick Kohner and Fred Brady have cooked up in the way of a plot—is a pretty routine assembly of simple who-dunnit cliches into a silly and not very startling disclosure of a motive for a crime. The police must have been awfully lazy back in 1929."
Film critic Dennis Schwartz generally liked the production and wrote about what may have motivated the studio executives to produce the film. He wrote, "A fairly absorbing crime thriller whose plot involves a look at Hollywood's silent stars. The film tries to capitalize on the success of the similar themed silent film modern day venture "Sunset Boulevard" which was released in 1950 ... The climax makes for a hard to guess whodunit and a nice peek into the silent film era and at some silent stars who make a cameo appearance and speak a few lines, like Helen Gibson and Francis X. Bushman ... The only thing that failed to work smoothly into the twisty script by Fred Kohner and Fred Brady and the confident direction of William Castle, was the romance between Adams and Conte. They end up getting married at the film's conclusion in a vain attempt to make this dark story seem lighter."


Preved

Preved () is a term used in the Padonkaffsky jargon, a meme in the Russian-speaking Internet which developed out of a heavily circulated picture, and consists of choosing alternative spellings for words for comic effect. The picture, a modified version of John Lurie's watercolor "Bear Surprise", whose popularity was stoked by emails and blogs, features a man and a woman having sex in the clearing of a forest, being surprised by a bear calling "Surprise!" with its paws raised. In later Russian adaptations, the bear shouts "Preved!" (a deliberate misspelling of "privet", – "hi!"). In keeping with a popular trend of image manipulation, the iconic bear — dubbed ("Medved"), a misspelling of ("bear") — has been inserted into many other pictures where his appearance adds a new dimension to the joke.
The word and the bear image have found their way into the mainstream mass media, such as a poster for the Russian edition of "Newsweek". On July 6, 2006 there was an online conference with Vladimir Putin, prior to which the question "PREVED", Vladimir Vladimirovich! How do you regard "MEDVED?" became the most popular, with 28,424 votes. No answer was given, but the Associated Press, informing on the questions collection process, reportedly interpreted it as a reference to then-vice-prime-minister Dmitry Medvedev. (The third most popular question was "How does one patch KDE2 under FreeBSD?".)
Eventually, it has become known that the author of the altered picture with the word "preved" was user Lobzz from site Dirty.ru, real name Roman Yatsenko. The authorship of the word itself is still unclear, although the "unfinished" version, "prevet" was traced to 2003.
"Preved" is identified by a specific pattern of alternative spelling which emerged from the word. In this pattern, voiceless consonants are replaced with their voiced counterparts, and unstressed vowels are interchanged pair-wise – "a" and "o" stand in for each other, as do "e" and "i". The words ("uchasneg") (a misspelling of ("uchastnik"), "user" or "participant"), "preved" itself, and ("kagdila") (a misspelling of ("kak dela"), "how are you") illustrate this pattern.
The larger trend of alternative spellings, called "olbansky yazyk" ("Olbanian language", misspelled "Albanian") developed from the padonki movement which originated on sites such as udaff.com. That trend uses the opposite conversion from the Preved trend – voiced consonants are replaced with their voiceless counterparts (which are sometimes doubled). For vowels, "o" is replaced with "a" and "e" with "i". For example, ("ávtor", "author") would be spelled ("áfftar") or ("áftar"). The latter exhibits a sort of eye dialect.


Illth

Illth, coined by John Ruskin, is the reverse of wealth in the sense of "ill" being the opposite of "well".
In Ruskin's view:
Various other writers have used the term, and continue to do so. A notable example is George Bernard Shaw, who used illth as a subheading in an 1889 essay.
In the context of modern economic theory and practice, the term has been central to the work of Herman Daly and his advocacy for a Steady-state economy.


Davenport Family (band)

Davenport, or The Davenport Family, was a musical collective from Madison, Wisconsin. The project was initiated by Clay Ruby in 2002. Their musical style, difficult to categorize, owes more to freeform jazz, psychedelic rock, and experimental avant-garde music than to traditional folk music, and may be loosely attributed to such genres as free folk, psychedelic folk, freak folk or New Weird America. The Davenport Family name existed actively until 2005. Presently, all original members participate in a similar band, which operates under the name Second Family Band.
The recordings and performances typically include varying combinations of drums and other percussion, guitars, vocals, synthesizers, piano, organs, violins, flutes, electronics, sound sculpture, field recordings, more synths, sitar, sticks, rocks, and stones. Their music is almost always improvised, with a rare exception of overdubbing and other studio composed manipulations, especially in the early days of the group. The group is noted for usually shunning the recording studio, preferring field recording in locations such as barns, caves, or pastures. Consequently, environmental sounds such as dogs barking, birds singing, and other ambient noise may be heard on record.
History.
The group was unusually prolific in terms of number of titles released in the first years of their career, but most (though not all) of their records were pressed in small runs of limited availability on CDR's lathe cut records and cassettes. Many of these titles were recordings of live actions or intimate recordings of family rituals. In 2005 "Free Country" CD was released by Last Visible Dog marking their first official studio album.
"Free Country" was soon followed by the self-titled Davenport Family LP on Not Not Fun Records, which featured half studio and half live workings. After gaining some notoriety as a free-wheeling Wisconsin folk collective, and just preceding the release of "Free Country", Clay Ruby made the decision to release a solo recording experiment under the Davenport name. Taking a cue from groups like This Heat, he employed the use of a handheld cassette recorder with a removed erase-head, to compose the entire album. With this technique, Ruby could overdub continuously onto what he had previously recorded though he was unable to monitor anything while actually recording. This resulting cassette, filled with fractured folk songs and environmental psychedelia became the "Rabbits Foot Propellor" CD on Three Lobed Recordings. Their very last jam under the name "Davenport" was performed on Walpurgis 2005, Clay Ruby's birthday, and released by Meudiademorte in October 2006 on a one sided C70 cassette called "At The Foot Of Zodiac Mountain". Between 2005 and 2007 many of the members formed different side projects, including Zodiac Mountain, All Do Gather, Orthodox Blood Orchestra.
Many of the original members have regrouped since 2007 (along with an ever-revolving cast of new members) and the band has been releasing all their music under the name Second Family Band. They still continue to document the improvised musical rituals of their loose-knit community and have released dozens more albums, many of which do not feature Clay Ruby as a member. Ruby is present on all of the Davenport Family recordings but since reforming under the name Second Family Band, the band is operating regardless of line-up. No single member's presence is required for any Second Family jam session. Over the years, Davenport/Second Family has included Billy Lee (aka Lliam Ian, Crystal Dragon, Wormsblood), T Endless (Pan to Scratch, Drunjus, Craig Microcassette System), Nico Kain (Apaculus, Wormsblood), Clay Ruby (Jex Thoth, Burial Hex, Wormsblood, Hintergedanken), Dan Woodman ([Drunjus]), Theresa Behnen, Tyler Olsen, Jonathan Matthews, Clay Kolbinger (Maths Balance Volumes), Lyx Ish, db Pedersen, DMS (Craig Microcassette System), Nic Stage (Wormsblood), Karen Eliot (The Mumber Toes, Hintergedanken, Dragon Faggot), John Gould, Justin May, Jon Stage, Jerod Annoye, Beau Devereaux (Anvil Dome), Andy Knackert, Jessica Non Popa, Aaron Laurant (Cult of Hypnos), Corey Bushcott, Azrael Zanon-Stage, Jenny Hoffman (Telesmatic Images), David Libert, JoAnne Powers, Sven Bolan, Smith Baker, Ivan Calderon, Daeve Ross, Richard Remington, Cyrus Andreas, Jacob Tibbs, Nick Johnson, Kelly Shippey, Dave 3000, Ivan Mairesse, Max Elliott (Absinthe Minds), Mike Schultz, Johnny Danielson (Jex Thoth), Nathaniel Ritter, Troy Schafer, as well as collaborations with friendly outsiders such as: Peaking Lights, Spiral Joy Band, The Skaters, Tomutonttu, Jooklo Duo, Glenn Donaldson, Lau Nau, Maths Balance Volumes, Hush Arbors, Absinthe Minds, Relentless Corpse, Plastic Boner Band, Islaja, Wooden Wand and the Vanishing Voice, Mumber Toes, Nautical Almanac (band), Anla Courtis, Cult of Hypnos and Takuri Tali.
Discography.
Davenport / The Davenport Family.
"(Earliest to most recent)"
Ψ = later reissued on cassette


Small Fry (book)

Small Fry: A Memoir is a 2018 memoir by Lisa Brennan-Jobs, daughter of Steve Jobs.
Synopsis.
A "New York Times" review says that "Brennan-Jobs herself never addresses the question of his legacy; her book is written from the perspective of a child longing for a father." It covers her childhood in Palo Alto with her mother, and her father's estrangement. It details emotional abuse, with Jobs even failing to name her as one of his children in later years.
Reception.
The review aggregator website, Book Marks, rated the memoir "Rave" based on 18 critic reviews. The "New York Times" gave it a positive review, calling it an "entrancing memoir" from a "deeply gifted writer" with a "singular sensibility". It concludes that "in the fallen world of kiss-and-tell celebrity memoirs, this may be the most beautiful, literary and devastating one ever written."


Upright Citizens Brigade (TV series)

Upright Citizens Brigade is an American sketch comedy television series that premiered on August 19, 1998 on Comedy Central. The show aired for three seasons with each season consisting of ten episodes. The series featured four members of Upright Citizens Brigade, an improvisational sketch comedy group. The cast included Matt Besser, Amy Poehler, Ian Roberts, and Matt Walsh. The cast would later reunite for another series of a similar format that premiered in 2016 on Seeso.


Club MTV

Club MTV was a half hour television show modeled after "American Bandstand" that aired on MTV from August 31, 1987 to June 26, 1992. "Club MTV" was part of MTV's second generation of programming, as the channel was phasing out its original 5 VJs and introducing new ones.
Overview.
Background and format.
Hosted by Downtown Julie Brown (Kevin Seal hosted the pilot) at The Palladium, a large dance club in New York City, the show cut back and forth between teenagers dancing to a hit dance song and the video of that hit. In later shows they would dance exclusively to freestyle music. Often there were musical guests who performed their new singles; such guests included Paula Abdul, Exposé, Jody Watley, Debbie Harry, New Kids on the Block, Vanessa L. Williams, Sheena Easton, Debbie Gibson, Salt-n-Pepa, MC Hammer, Taylor Dayne, Deee-lite, Pet Shop Boys, E.U., Vanilla Ice, Samantha Fox, Soul II Soul, Black Box, Company B, and Siouxsie and the Banshees. Also some rock groups like The Ramones, Mr. Mister, and INXS also appeared live on the show. The show was taped in a private home once in 1988 with former Go-Go's frontwoman Belinda Carlisle as a musical guest, when a full 24 hours of MTV were broadcast from the home of the "MTV At My House" contest winner. Other shows featured were "Remote Control" and "The Week In Rock".
With the rise in popularity of Freestyle music, "Club MTV" began using the music nearly exclusively with a few house and hip hop songs thrown in. In 1989, MTV introduced a companion show for Friday nights called "Street Party" that aired the complete videos of songs used on "Club MTV".
Though molded after "American Bandstand", the show had a more sophisticated, nightclub look. The women especially, many of them aspiring models, dressed in provocative clubwear—skintight dresses, Spandex pants, miniskirts, fishnet stockings—and the show became known for its sexual allure. In an MTV special broadcast in the fall of 1999 on some of the network's more scandalous moments, Rob Fox, casting director for "Club MTV" during its first year, argued that ""Club MTV" was supposed to be a teen dance show, but in a channel run by men it turned into a show that was pretty much 'Table-dance Afternoon.'"
The Club MTV Tour.
Late in 1989, MTV launched their first Club MTV Tour featuring Was (Not Was), Information Society, Paula Abdul, Milli Vanilli and Tone Loc. But the tour was marred with troubles. On the first tour, singer Cathy Dennis who was booked for six weeks suddenly dropped out after three days, publicly accusing one of the members of Milli Vanilli, the tour's headline act, of sexual harassment. In addition Milli Vanilli was permitted by tour promoters to lip sync to pre-recorded tracks. One night a track began to skip midway through the song "Girl You Know It's True" while the show was being taped for broadcast. Later that year when it was revealed that neither Fab Morvan nor Rob Pilatus had performed on their album but the vocals had been recorded by other various studio singers, MTV was suspected of knowing that Milli Vanilli was a fraud all along. Tour promoters countered that lip-syncing was a common practice because of the exhausting dance routines artists did while performing.
During the 1992 tour, several acts dropped out midway through their bookings, forcing MTV to book new acts at the last minute. With most of the Freestyle acts no longer interested in the tour, MTV wound up booking hip hop and rap acts to replace them.
Legacy.
On March 20, 2005, VH1 Classic aired a marathon of old "Club MTV" episodes.
On April 25, 2020, MTV bought "Club MTV" back for a special, titled "Club MTV: Dance Together" hosted by D-Nice and Keke Palmer. The one night only event served as a fund raising benefit to help music programs during the coronavirus pandemic.


Txirrita

Jose Manuel Lujanbio Retegi (also known as Txirrita), born on Hernani in 1860 and died in Altza in 1936, was a Basque composer of verse, known as bertsolaris.
Life.
He was born in the Ereñozu neighborhood of Hernani and when he was still a child, his family moved to a baserri in Errenteria named "Txirrita", from whence he acquired his nickname. In his last years he lived in the "Gazteluene" baserri in Altza.
Due to an accident he suffered in Goizueta in May 1936, on June 3 of the same year he died in the "Gazteluene" baserri, in Altza.
Txirrita the bertsolari.
Although he was heir to the baserri, he left the farm and started working as bricklayer. He began his career as a bertsolari aged 14, being in the company of bertsolaris much older than himself. He stood out by his sharp wit and agile tongue, and his witticisms left a lasting memory.
Many of his bertsos deal with social issues, and the thoughts and feelings of the lower classes. As Antonio Zavala was told, many people sought out Txirrita to ask him to compose a bertso against other people. The subject of many of these bertsos was that of unrequited love. Txirrita composed his bertsos on the subject required and his nephew would write them down, later putting them into print, and after selling them on the fairs.
Thanks to collective memory and collectors of bertso-papers like Antonio Zavala, many of these bertsos were recorded. Txirrita became the prototypical bertsolari - an old bachelor, reveller and rogue. Although he was a skillful bricklayer, he didn't enjoy work, and at every opportunity he would seek out a tavern to drink, sing bertsos or bet. Txirrita was unschooled and although he could read, he could not write, and he would dictate bertsos to his nephew.
In 1935 he was the runner-up in the first bertsolari championship of the Basque Country, and the year after won the championship.
Legacy.
In Bilbao, Hernani and Altza three streets bear his name. In Errenteria there is an industrial park called Txirrita-Maleo, named after its location between the farmhouses of Txirrita and Maleo.


We Bring Good Things to Life

"We Bring Good Things to Life" was an advertising slogan used by General Electric between 1979 and 2003. It was designed by the advertising firm BBDO led by project manager Richard Costello, who would later go on to become head of advertising at General Electric. The slogan was designed to highlight the diversity of the products and services the company offered. The slogan, after its many appearances in GE advertising, was responsible for increased popularity and a new image for the company.
Overview.
For many, the name General Electric brings to mind the company's famous slogan “We Bring Good Things to Life.” The slogan is a reflection of the company that has moved far beyond its origins as an electric generating company and maker of electrical appliances. By the 1990s, GE had become a highly diversified worldwide conglomerate that continued to sell lighting products and appliances; but also dealt in aircraft engines, capital services, industrial systems, information services, medical systems, plastics, power systems, and transportation systems. GE's 1986 acquisition of RCA, which included the NBC network, signaled a gradual shift in company emphasis to service and technology industries. GE was the only company that had remained on the Dow Jones Industrial Average Index since 1896. Its “We Bring Good Things to Life” advertising campaign focused on GE's message and helped it bring all of the company's interests to the public's attention under one umbrella theme.
Historical context.
General Electric was created in 1892 when Thomas Edison’s Edison Electric Company merged with Thomson-Houston. GE was heavily involved in the electrification of railways in the late 1880s and by the turn of the century was manufacturing everything related to electrification from industrial electric motors to light bulbs and locomotives. In 1896, GE and the Westinghouse Company entered into a patent pool, effectively eliminating competition in the electrification industry in an era when the United States was entering the electric age.
From its beginnings, GE emphasized research to create many products and product improvements. The company has been awarded more patents than almost any other company in the United States. GE began creating consumer products in the early 20th century, beginning with a line of toasters. After GE merged with other companies, more and more consumer appliances such as irons and refrigerators began to be sold under the GE or Hotpoint brand names.
By the 1970s, GE had shifted once again to a focus to the service and high-tech fields. In this increasingly diversified market, the company saw that a more comprehensive advertising strategy was needed. Prior to 1979, GE’s image was primarily that of an appliance company. Each one of the company’s products and services used its own advertising theme, not an overall company slogan. To remedy the situation, the advertising agency BBDO began to develop the “We Bring Good Things to Life” campaign to create a unified brand image.
A far more likely source of the campaign idea may come more directly from the words of one of General Electric's most famous employees Charles Proteus Steinmetz (1865-1923) who is quoted as saying of his work: "Some day we make the good things of life for everybody."
Target market.
Market research done by BBDO showed that in the 1970s, GE was still seen as a dependable and trusted American company, but a typical GE customer was perceived to be older, low-income, blue-collar, and unsophisticated, and GE products to be somewhat old fashioned and below standard. As a result, except in the area of lighting products, brand commitment to GE lagged behind its competitors. GE saw the need to change the company's brand recognition and to create an updated, single message that could translate across many product lines and services. GE's stated objective for the new campaign was to increase customer awareness of GE products and to foster more product loyalty. Additionally, GE sought to increase employee morale and heighten its image in the financial world, in government, in the retail business sector, and in public consciousness. GE also tried to stimulate a more upscale consumer base, made up of adults between the ages of 25 and 54. The new campaign was more appropriate to the information age, in which consumers were constantly bombarded with advertising images from a variety of media.
Marketing strategy.
When GE advertising was consolidated in 1979 with BBDO, the “Good Things” slogan was not only incorporated into media ads but also induced on all packaging, spec sheets and brochures, and service trucks. When GE sponsored a television program, the ad agency used a number of “We Bring Good Things to Life” commercials, each telling the GE story in a different way. Aside from promoting products and services, GE commercials and print ads began to project a new corporate image, stressing how the company's products and services had enhanced people's lives. Since GE had previously been identified with consumer products, this shift in emphasis was significant. The advertising budget on this campaign was approximately $100 million.
Outcome.
“We Bring Good Things to Life” was extremely successful and became the longest running corporate advertising campaign. It did not take long for consumers to see GE as more than a producer of electrical household products. By the early 1990s, GE was among the most recognized brands in the United States along with Coca-Cola and IBM. According to research by BBDO, consumers were also beginning to see GE as a more competitive, energetic, and approachable company than ever before, and the consumer base was becoming younger and more affluent. The company also ranked high in customer satisfaction after the release of this advertising campaign.


The Love Lottery

The Love Lottery is a 1954 Ealing Studios comedy film, directed by Charles Crichton and starring David Niven. The film examines celebrity and fan worship with an international setting including Lake Como, ambitious dream sequences, and an uncredited cameo appearance at the end by Humphrey Bogart as himself.
Plot.
A celluloid heart-throb, who is haunted by dreams and hounded by fans, is manipulated by a gambling syndicate into being the prize in a lottery to find him a wife. But things get complicated when he falls in love before the lottery is drawn.
Release.
The film was first shown at the Regent Theatre in Christchurch, New Zealand on 21 January 1954, as a royal performance during the New Zealand visit by Queen Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh. The UK premiere was at the Gaumont Haymarket in London on 28 January 1954.
Critical reception.
The reviewer for "The Times" expressed mixed views after the UK premiere: "The construction of "The Love Lottery" is deplorably weak ... and Mr. Charles Crichton, who directs the film for Ealing Studios, is left to make what he can of an idea which could branch out in a number of directions. ... Yet, even if catches are dropped, there is much in "The Love Lottery" which beguiles and entertains, The satire at the expense on film publicity methods and of the mentality of the film-fan is, in the Ealing tradition, so mild that a writer such as Mr. Clifford Odets would not recognize that it was there, but it is there, nevertheless, and it scores some palpable, if gentle, hits."
Michael Balcoln called it one of the worst movies made at Ealing.
Many years later, the US edition of the "TV Guide" gave the film two out of four stars, calling it a "clever British satire on the Hollywood star system."


ZOMG