Download or read book Shall We Dance The True Story of the Couple Who Taught The World to Dance written by Douglas Thompson and published by Metro Publishing. This book was released on 2014-10-12 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On the eve of the Great War, they had the world at - and watching - their feet. If God is in the details, they were divine.Vernon and Irene Castle were the world's first true celebrity couple. He, an Englishman, was tall and slim, as poised as an elegant evening out, a template for the Hollywood idols who would follow. In a staid age, she, a New Yorker, was a glorious, modern beauty, with her haired cropped into a 'shock', a disdain for crippling corsets, a love of a martini and a good time.Together, they beat the censors and made their vibrant dancing acceptable for all. In the fashionable quarters of New York they opened a dance school and night clubs to which Society flocked. They broke the rules by touring with black musicians, and led the way forward to the Charleston-galloping Gatsby Generation. They enlightened and enchanted from London to Paris to New York, spreading a breathless joy, as though their music had one note, and their dances one step, too many. Launching one racy dance craze after another, they taught the world to dance - and often dress - the way we do today. Adored and acclaimed, they were stars long before the celebrity constellations grew crowded.Yet the whirlwind story of perhaps the most influential dance team ever is also one of tragedy. Their timing, so perfect in everything else, saw Vernon Castle, at the height of their fame, return to England to enlist in the Royal Flying Corps; he saw action as a pilot on the Western Front, winning the Croix de Guerre, while his wife made special appearances to support the Allied war effort. And then, in February 1918, he was killed in a flying accident in Texas, while training American pilots for war. Irene received a last note from him: 'When you receive this letter I shall be gone out of your sweet life. You may be sure that I died with your sweet name on my lips... be brave and don't cry, my angel.'She and many others did cry, for as far as the world was concerned Vernon and Irene Castle could have danced all night, and for ever.'The afternoon was already planned; they were going dancing - for those were the great days: Maurice was tangoing in "Over the River", the Castles were doing a stiffed-leg walk in the third act of the 'Sunshine Girl' - a walk that gave the modern dance a social position and brought the nice girl into the café, thus beginning a profound revolution in American life. The great rich empire was feeling its oats and was out for some not too plebeian, yet not too artistic fun.' - F. Scott Fitzgerald, 'The Perfect Life', one of the Basil and Josephine Stories, first published in the Saturday Evening Post, 5 January 1929.
Download or read book Ballroom written by Hilary French and published by Reaktion Books. This book was released on 2022-08-04 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A tune-filled, light-footed people’s history of ballroom dancing, from Vernon and Irene Castle and Arthur Murray to Dancing with the Stars. In the early twentieth century, American ragtime and the Parisian Tango fueled a dancing craze in Britain. Public ballrooms—which had never been seen before—were built throughout the country, providing a glamorous setting for all classes to dance. The new styles of dance being defined and taught in the 1920s, as well as the films of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in the 1930s, ensured that ballroom dancing continued to be the most popular pastime until the 1960s, rivaled only by the cinema. This book explores the vibrant history of Ballroom and Latin: the dances, the lavish venues, competitions, and influential instructors. It also traces the decline of competitive dancing and its resurgence in recent years with the hugely popular TV shows Strictly Come Dancing and Dancing with the Stars.
Download or read book Popular Fads and Crazes through American History 2 volumes written by Nancy Hendricks and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2018-08-17 with total page 897 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This informative two-volume set provides readers with an understanding of the fads and crazes that have taken America by storm from colonial times to the present. Entries cover a range of topics, including food, entertainment, fashion, music, and language. Why could hula hoops and TV westerns only have been found in every household in the 1950s? What murdered Russian princess can be seen in one of the first documented selfies, taken in 1914? This book answers those questions and more in its documentation of all of the most captivating trends that have defined American popular culture since before the country began. Entries are well-researched and alphabetized by decade. At the start of every section is an insightful historical overview of the decade, and the set uniquely illustrates what today's readers have in common with the past. It also contains a Glossary of Slang for each decade as well as a bibliography, plus suggestions for further reading for each entry. Students and readers interested in history will enjoy discovering trends through the years in such areas as fashion, movies, music, and sports.
Download or read book Here at the End of the World We Learn to Dance written by Lloyd Jones and published by Vintage Canada. This book was released on 2010-10-29 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Available in Canada for the first time from the author of Mister Pip The two intertwined love stories in this brilliant novel take the reader from New Zealand to Buenos Aires to Sydney, from the final days of WWI, to the present moment, and back again. Drawing on the intimate rhythms of the tango to find its shape, Jones has written a thrilling and sensuous essay on how we can fall in love, while brilliantly evoking the spare and windswept landscapes of New Zealand’s South Island and the stately sensuous contours of one of the world’s most famous dances.
Download or read book She Reads Truth written by Raechel Myers and published by B&H Publishing Group. This book was released on 2016-10-04 with total page 186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Born out of the experiences of hundreds of thousands of women who Raechel and Amanda have walked alongside as they walk with the Lord, She Reads Truth is the message that will help you understand the place of God's Word in your life.
Download or read book Dancer from the Dance written by Andrew Holleran and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2023-12-05 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “An astonishingly beautiful book. The best gay novel written by anyone of our generation.”—Harper’s “Through the sweat and haze of longing come piercing insights – about the closeness of gay male friendship, about the vanity and imperfections of men. The more one reads the novel, we realise that what Holleran has given us is our very own queer (queerer?) Great Gatsby: its decadence, its fear, its violence, its ecstasy, its transience.”—The Guardian Andrew Holleran’s landmark novel of a young man's search for love and companionship in New York’s emerging gay world in the 1970s, with a new introduction by Garth Greenwell. Young, astonishingly beautiful, and tired of living a lie, Anthony Malone trades life as a seemingly straight small-town lawyer for the decadence of New York’s emerging gay scene—an odyssey that takes him from Manhattan’s Everard baths and after hour discos, to lavish orgies on Fire Island and parks after dark. Rescuing Malone from a possessive lover and shepherding him through his immersion in this life of fierce joys and cheap truths is the flamboyant Sutherland, a high-camp quintessential queen. But for Malone, the endless city nights and Fire Island days are close to burning out, and despite Sutherland’s abundant attentiveness and glittering world-weary wisdom, Malone soon realizes what he is truly looking for may not be found in these beautiful places, where life is crowded, and people are forever outrunning their own desires and death.
Download or read book Dancing in the Dark A Cultural History of the Great Depression written by Morris Dickstein and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2010-09-06 with total page 625 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A cultural history of the 1930s explores the anxiety, despair, and optimism of the period, exploring how the period culture provided a dynamic lift to the country's morale.
Download or read book Reading Dance written by Robert Gottlieb and published by Pantheon. This book was released on 2008-11-04 with total page 1362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Robert Gottlieb’s immense sampling of the dance literature–by far the largest such project ever attempted–is both inclusive, to the extent that inclusivity is possible when dealing with so vast a field, and personal: the result of decades of reading. It limits itself of material within the experience of today’s general readers, avoiding, for instance, academic historical writing and treatises on technique, its earliest subjects are those nineteenth-century works and choreographers that still resonate with dance lovers today: Giselle, The Sleeping Beauty, Swan Lake; Bournonville and Petipa. And, as Gottlieb writes in his introduction, “The twentieth century focuses to a large extent on the achievements and personalities that dominated it–from Pavlova and Nijinsky and Diaghilev to Isadora Duncan and Martha Graham, from Ashton and Balanchine and Robbins to Merce Cunningham and Paul Taylor and Twyla Tharp, from Fonteyn and Farrell and Gelsey Kirkland (“the Judy Garland of Ballet”) to Nureyev and Baryshnikov and Astaire–as well as the critical and reportorial voices, past and present, that carry the most conviction.” In structuring his anthology, Gottlieb explains, he has “tried to help the reader along by arranging its two hundred-plus entries into a coherent groups.” Apart from the sections on major personalities and important critics, there are sections devoted to interviews (Tamara Toumanova, Antoinette Sibley, Mark Morris); profiles (Lincoln Kirstein, Bob Fosse, Olga Spessivtseva); teachers; accounts of the birth of important works from Petrouchka to Apollo to Push Comes to Shove; and the movies (from Arlene Croce and Alastair Macauley on Fred Astaire to director Michael Powell on the making of The Red Shoes). Here are the voices of Cecil Beaton and Irene Castle, Ninette de Valois and Bronislava Nijinska, Maya Plisetskaya and Allegra Kent, Serge Lifar and José Limón, Alicia Markova and Natalia Makarova, Ruth St. Denis and Michel Fokine, Susan Sontag and Jean Renoir. Plus a group of obscure, even eccentric extras, including an account of Pavlova going shopping in London and recipes from Tanaquil LeClerq’s cookbook.” With its huge range of content accompanied by the anthologist’s incisive running commentary, Reading Dance will be a source of pleasure and instruction for anyone who loves dance.
Download or read book Dancing with the Sphinx Foxtrot written by Jonathan Edward Feinstein and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2015-06-11 with total page 147 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The local zoning board is blocking Wade's Lizzie's attempt to open a dance studio when a pair of water spirits from Japan request Wade's and Lizzie's aide in dealing with a problem among the kitsune. Can they possibly fight city hall from thousands of miles away?
Download or read book Great Movie Dance Couples Paper Dolls written by Tom Tierney and published by Courier Corporation. This book was released on 2004-02-01 with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, Gene Kelly and Leslie Caron, Marge and Gower Champion, and Judy Garland, Rita Hayworth, Cyd Charisse, and Vera-Ellen are the dancers depicted in memorable moments from Top Hat, The Band Wagon, Three Little Words, and 15 other films. 6 dolls, 4 additional faces, and 32 costumes.
Download or read book TLA Film Video and DVD Guide 2002 2003 written by David Bleiler and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2001-11-03 with total page 785 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A film, video, and DVD guide for the true lover of the cinema, this volume focuses on independent and international films as well as the best of the mainstream. 450 photos throughout.
Download or read book Indian Dances of North America written by Reginald Laubin and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 1989 with total page 584 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Descriptions of the dances, costumes, body decorations, and musical accompaniment supplement information on the cultural background of Indian dancing
Download or read book Astaire by Numbers written by Todd Decker and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2022-11-11 with total page 457 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Astaire by Numbers looks at every second of dancing Fred Astaire committed to film in the studio era--all six hours, thirty-four minutes, and fifty seconds. Using a quantitative digital humanities approach, as well as previously untapped production records, author Todd Decker takes the reader onto the set and into the rehearsal halls and editing rooms where Astaire created his seemingly perfect film dances. Watching closely in this way reveals how Astaire used the technically sophisticated resources of the Hollywood film making machine to craft a singular career in mass entertainment as a straight white man who danced. Decker dissects Astaire's work at the level of the shot, the cut, and the dance step to reveal the aesthetic and practical choices that yielded Astaire's dancing figure on screen. He offers new insights into how Astaire secured his masculinity and his heterosexuality, along with a new understanding of Astaire's whiteness, which emerges in both the sheer extent of his work and the larger implications of his famous "full figure" framing of his dancing body. Astaire by Numbers rethinks this towering straight white male figure from the ground up by digging deeply into questions of race, gender, and sexuality, ultimately offering a complete re-assessment of a twentieth-century icon of American popular culture.
Download or read book The London Literary Gazette and Journal of Belles Lettres Arts Sciences Etc written by and published by . This book was released on 1831 with total page 868 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book TLA Video DVD Guide 2005 written by David Bleiler and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2004-10 with total page 817 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This 2005 edition of the annual critical guide that focuses on independent and international films as well as the best in the mainstream contains reviews for more than 10,000 films, more than 300 photos, a comprehensive selection of cinema from more than 50 countries, and much more.
Download or read book Last Lecture written by Perfection Learning Corporation and published by Turtleback. This book was released on 2019 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Ziegfeld and His Follies written by Cynthia Brideson and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2015-06-23 with total page 576 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The name Florenz Ziegfeld Jr. (1867–1932) is synonymous with the decadent revues that the legendary impresario produced at the turn of the twentieth century. These extravagant performances were filled with catchy tunes, high-kicking chorus girls, striking costumes, and talented stars such as Eddie Cantor, Fanny Brice, Marilyn Miller, W. C. Fields, and Will Rogers. After the success of his Follies, Ziegfeld revolutionized theater performance with the musical Show Boat (1927) and continued making Broadway hits—including Sally (1920), Rio Rita (1927), and The Three Musketeers (1928)—several of which were adapted for the silver screen. In this definitive biography, authors Cynthia Brideson and Sara Brideson offer a comprehensive look at both the life and legacy of the famous producer. Drawing on a wide range of sources—including Ziegfield's previously unpublished letters to his second wife, Billie Burke (who later played Glinda the Good Witch in The Wizard of Oz), and to his daughter Patricia—the Bridesons shed new light on this enigmatic man. They provide a lively and well-rounded account of Ziegfeld as a father, a husband, a son, a friend, a lover, and an alternately ruthless and benevolent employer. Lavishly illustrated with over seventy-five images, this meticulously researched book presents an intimate and in-depth portrait of a figure who profoundly changed American entertainment.
