Search Results

American Indian Dance Theatre Dance company. It was co-founded in 1987 in Colorado Springs by Kiowa/Delaware playwright, director and educator Hanay Geiogamah and New York concert and theatrical producer Barbara Schwei. The first professional all-Native American company of dancers, singers and musicians, it comprises roughly 20 members drawn from tribes across the United States and Canada. It has presented various styles of Native American and First Nations dancing—including the Zuñi Buffalo Dance, Eagle Dance, and Apache Crown Dance—without altering the

York , July 6, 1930 ). American modern dancer , choreographer , and teacher. Of Jamaican heritage, he grew up in Harlem where he learned all the popular dances of the 1940s and experienced West Indian music and dance on social occasions. Inspired by a performance of African dance by Pearl Primus, he auditioned for and won a scholarship to the New Dance Group in 1947. There he trained in modern dance, ballet, tap, and various ethnic dance traditions, and within a year he had made his professional début and had choreographed his first dance, Saturday’s Child (

performer of the dance. John Durang as Harlequin, watercolor from John Durang’s Memoir of his Life and Travels, c. 1821. From his collaborations with visiting European artists, Durang acquired skills in acrobatics, tightrope walking, classical ballet, clowning, pantomime, choreography, and theater management. In 1794 he appeared in Ann Julia Hatton’s Tammany: The Indian Chief , one of the first operas written in America with an American subject, and soon thereafter danced with Anna Gardie in La Forêt Noire , the first serious ballet given in America. In 1796 he

Music of the American Indians of the Southwest , 1951, FW 4420 Pueblo: Taos, San lIdelfonso, Zuni, Hopi , 1954, Library of Congress AAFS L43 Indian Music of the Southwest , 1957, FW 8850 Pueblo Indian Songs from San Juan , 1969, Can. 6065 Turtle Dance Songs of San Juan Pueblo , 1972, IH 1101 Cloud Dance Songs of San Juan Pueblo , 1972, IH 1102 Oku shareh: Turtle Dance Songs of San Juan Pueblo , 1979, NW 301 Creation’s Journey: Native American Music , 1994, SF 40410 Bibliography E.S. Curtis : The North American Indian (Cambridge, MA

1999. Uday Shankar is remembered for his eclectic approach to dance; he respected and blended together the formalized structures of the various classical dance traditions of India but professed allegiance to none of them. Instead he struck out alone to reinvent the cultural heritage of South Asia by creating a new dance form that sought its inspiration in what he perceived to be the Indian essences of the expression of emotion in movement. Shankar also deserves recognition for having taken numerous Indian musicians to the West; he prepared the way for the internati

Benary, Barbara ( b Bay Shore, NY , April 7, 1946 ). American composer , performer , instrument builder and ethnomusicologist. She received the BA from Sarah Lawrence College, and the MA and PhD from Wesleyan University, where she studied Indonesian and Indian music. She has performed with the ensembles of Philip Glass, Jon Gibson, Alvin Lucier, Philip Corner and Daniel Goode. In 1976 she co-founded, with Corner and Goode, the Gamelan Son of Lion, New York, a new music collective and repertory ensemble under her direction. In addition, she has

ballads and other popular tunes. African American theater also began in New York under the aegis of William Henry Brown (a black West Indian and former ship’s steward), who had opened a Pleasure garden in his backyard in 1821 to offer entertainment to black audiences. He soon built the American Theatre on Mercer Street, and drew curious whites by featuring all-black casts in the same blend of plays and musical acts found in white theaters and nurturing the talents of James Hewlett, the first major black actor in America. In Shakespeare plays presented by both black

Bharata A sage ( muni ) in ancient Indian legend. The Nāṯyaśāstra , a Sanskrit text on drama and its ingredient arts composed or compiled from earlier source probably in the early centuries ce , is ascribed to him. The work was the first comprehensive treatise on the ancient Indian drama, and as music and dance were an important element in the production of such works it contains detailed chapters on the theory and practice of these arts. Like all early Sanskrit technical treatises it was traditionally ascribed to a mythical or legendary sage. There is

Musical Areas in Aboriginal North America (New Haven, CT, 1936) F. Densmore : “Imitative Dances among the American Indians,” Journal of American Folklore , no.235 (1947), 73–8 C. Haywood : A Bibliography of North American Folklore and Folksong , 2 (New York, 1951, 2/1961) W. Rhodes : “North American Indian Music: a Bibliographical Survey of Anthropological Theory,” Notes , 10 (1952–3), 33–45 G.P. Kurath : “Native Choreographic Areas of North America,” American Anthropologist , 55/1 (1953), 60–73 B. Nettl : North American Indian Musical Styles (Philadelphia, 1954)

Eckert), 1985–8 Figaro Gets a Divorce (incid music), 1986 Home (Pt 2) (dance score, choreog. M. Jenkins), tape, 1986 Once it Touches the Rain (dance score, choreog. Jenkins), tape, 1987 Rhythmia (dance score, choreog. S. Mordine), tape, 1987 Shelf Life (dance score, choreog. Jenkins), 1987 Tamina (dance score, choreog. B. Way), tape, 1987 The Tempest (incid music, W. Shakespeare), 1987 Loose the Thread (dance score, choreog. Way), chbr ens, 1988 Power Failure (op, 2, Eckert), 1989

Delhi and as director of European music at the Calcutta Broadcasting Station. In 1948 he was appointed lecturer (later reader) in Sanskrit and Indian music at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London; he also gave many lectures and recitals (accompanied by his wife) in Europe, India and North America. During his final visit to the Indian subcontinent ( 1955–6 ) he again collected invaluable material on music and dance, primarily from Nepal. In the summer of 1958 he and his wife were involved in a street accident in Leiden, from which he never fully recovered

reflect her intensive study of Indian classical music and dance, especially Bharata Natyam dance–drama. During this time she studied and worked with Swati Bhise’s dance company, performing as Nattuvanar (vocalist/rhythmic reciter). These idioms imaginatively enrich Shield’s large-scale vocal works. Apocalypse ( 1994 ), an electronic opera for live and recorded singers, is unique for its combination of standard operatic dramaturgy with a multilingual libretto, electronic “chorus” and accompaniment, and Indian rhythmic structures. Indian ragas are juxtaposed with Nancy

performed, and standard works. By the early 2010s more than 1,600 performances of nearly 140 different operas had been given. The original theater, seating 480 patrons and situated on a mesa north of the city, was the only outdoor theater in America exclusively designed for opera. It has been rebuilt twice on the same site, with the audience facing west toward glorious sunsets and occasional thunderstorms. In the early 2010s the theater seated 2128, with a roof over the entire structure and the sides and back of the stage open to the elements. Crosby was artistic director

caricatures of crap-shooting, razor-wielding African Americans. Of the few piano solos he published, Johnson was proudest of African Drum Dance no.1 ( 1928 , later scored for orchestra). He created piano and vocal arrangements for more than 150 spirituals, which were published in The Book of American Negro Spirituals ( 1925 ) and The Second Book of American Negro Spirituals ( 1926 ), compiled with his brother, and subsequently in Shout Songs ( 1936 ), Rolling Along in Song: a Chronological Survey of American Negro Music ( 1937 ), Sixteen New Negro Spirituals

inspire compositions in the late 20th century both by Native American composers (e.g. Brent Michael Davids ) and non-Indians (e.g. James DeMars). DeMars has partnered with the Indian flutist r. carlos Nakai to produce compositions and recordings in a pseudo jazz-native-classical-new-age style. Native musical instruments were supplemented by those of European origin that had been used by early missionaries to teach Indians the music of the church and other “civilized” song and dance forms. Especially prominent were the violin, guitar, and harp. Several cultures combined

Cambridge, MA, American Repertory Theater (ART), 24 May 2003 Waiting for the Barbarians (op, 2, Hampton, after the novel by J. M. Coetzee), 2005 Erfurt, Germany, Erfurt Theater, 10 Sept 2005 Appomattox (op, C. Hampton), 2007 San Francisco, War Memorial Opera House, 5 Oct 2007 Kepler (op, M. Winkel), 2009 Linz, Austria, Landestheater Linz, 20 Sept 2009 Dance Dance Nos. 1–5 (multimedia perf., choreog. Childs), 1979 Amsterdam, 19 Oct 1979 Mad Rush (dance piece, choreog

1979) J. Baron : Piano Music from New Orleans 1851–1898 (New York, 1980) K. Demetz : ‘Minstrel Dancing in New Orleans’ Nineteenth Century Theaters’, Southern Quarterly , 20/2 (1982), 28–39 F. Turner : Remembering Song: Encounters with the New Orleans Jazz Tradition (New York, 1982) J. Berry , J. Foose and T. Jones : Up from the Cradle of Jazz: New Orleans Music since World War II (Athens, GA, 1986) J. Baron : ‘Music in New Orleans, 1718–1792’, American Music , 5/3 (1987), 282–90 J. Hassinger : ‘Close Harmony: Early Jazz Styles in the Music of the

s between two phenomena that have both been called jazz dance. The term has been so successfully expropriated by the musical theater that, in her book Steppin’ on the Blues ( 1996 ), Jacqui Malone regularly uses the phrases “African American Vernacular Dance” or “classic jazz dance” to identify her subject. Malone has followed Marshall and Jean Stearns in using the term “modern jazz dance” to describe the Broadway/Hollywood tradition. Regardless of what we may choose to call jazz dance, the role of dance within the history of jazz should not be overlooked. Major’s

(known as primerita and segundita in the Andean region of South America). The original ensemble for the chilena was apparently a violin, jarana and harp, a fourth musician frequently adding a percussive accompaniment on a wooden box or the soundboard of the harp with his hands. The harp is now rare, and the violin and jarana occur only is local Indian groups. When singing chilenas as serenades, mestizos employ a guitar and a requinto (a smaller guitar tuned a 4th higher). When it is danced, the chilena is usually accompanied by an ensemble consisting mainly

are used to accompany the setdansi (creolized versions of European ballroom and salon dances such as the kadriri or quadrille and the lanciers or lancers dance), and for various festive occasions in Paramaribo. In the second half of the 20th century, after being strongly influenced by North American jazz, kaseko absorbed many elements from foreign dance musics such as Guyanese badji , Trinidadian calypso and soca, Latin American salsa, Jamaican reggae and North American funk. Today it is played primarily by urban ensembles (featuring electric guitars, keyboards