Ballet master
Ballet Master is the term used for an employee of a ballet company, responsible for the level of competence of the dancers in their company. In modern times, ballet masters are charged with teaching the daily company ballet class and rehearsing the dancers for both new and established ballets in the company's repertoire; the artistic director of a ballet company, whether a male or female, may be called its ballet master. Historic use of gender marking in job titles in ballet is being supplanted by gender-neutral language job titles regardless of an employee's gender. During the early centuries of ballet troupes and ballet companies from the 18th century until the early 20th century, the position of First Ballet master, referred to traditionally as the Premier Maître de ballet en Chef or more as the Maître de ballet, was the undisputed head of the company who acted as chief choreographer and Artistic Director, his duties included creating ballets, dances in operas, commissioning music, presiding over the teaching of the dancers and style desired.
It was this head ballet master who had the responsibility of the artistic directorship of a particular group of dancers or of a theatre. Before the early 20th century after the disbandment of the original Ballets Russes, the title has been used more to describe the master teachers/assistant directors of a ballet company, with the head of a company being referred to as the Artistic Director. Pierre Beauchamp, First ballet master of the Ballet du Théâtre de l'Académie Royale de Musique in Paris from 1673–1687, he invented the comédie-ballet with Molière and Jean-Baptiste Lully, codified the five positions of the feet and created a system of dance notation. Jean-Baptiste Landé, Ballet master in Russia from 1733–1747, he is known as the parent of the Russian Mariinsky Ballet. Jean-Georges Noverre, Ballet master of the Stuttgart Ballet from 1760–1767, of the Wiener Hofoper in Vienna from 1768–1775 and of the Ballet du Théâtre de l'Académie Royale de Musique from 1776-1781. Between 1758 and 1760 he published his Lettres sur la danse et les ballets.
He is considered the creator of ballet d'action, a precursor of the narrative ballet of the 19th century. Louis Gallodier, Ballet master in Sweden from 1773–1803, he is known as the parent of the Royal Swedish Ballet. Jean Dauberval, Ballet master of the Ballet du Théâtre de l'Académie Royale de Musique from 1781–1783, he is known today as the Father of the Comedic ballet Pierre-Gabriel Gardel Ballet master of the Ballet du Théâtre de l'Académie Royale de Musique from 1787-1820. After Noverre he defended the ballet d'action in the early 19th century. Salvatore Viganò, Ballet master of the Wiener Hofoper from 1799-1803. Ballet master of La Scala Theatre Ballet in Milan from 1811-1821, he is considered the father of a new kind of performance called coreodramma. Filippo Taglioni, Ballet master of the Royal Swedish Ballet in Stockholm from 1803–1804 and 1817-1818. Born and trained as a dancer in his native Italy, he is known today as the Father of Romantic Ballet. A great choreographer and teacher, he was instrumental in the training of his daughter, Marie Taglioni.
Jean Coralli, Ballet master of the Ballet du Théâtre de l'Académie Royale de Musique from 1831-1850, born Jean Coralli Perecini in Paris of Bolognese parents. Carlo Blasis, Ballet master of La Scala Theatre Ballet School in Milan from 1838–1853, he was the first who published a complete analysis on the ballet techniques in 1820, in a work named Traité élémentaire, théorique, et pratique de l'art de la danse. Joseph Mazilier born Giulio Mazarini, Ballet master of the Paris Opera Ballet from 1853-1859. Ballet master of the Théatre Royal de la Monnaie in Brussels from 1866-1867, his creations witnessed the switch of the European center of dance from Paris to Saint Petersburg with the end of the Second Empire. August Bournonville, Ballet master of the Royal Danish Ballet from 1828 to 1879 and the most prolific choreographer Denmark has known. Paul Taglioni, Deuxieme Maître de Ballet of the Ballet of Her Majesty's Theatre from 1847–1848, Maître de Ballet en Chef from 1849-1851. Maître de Ballet en Chef of the Court Opera Ballet in Berlin from 1852-1866.
Jules Perrot, Maître de Ballet en Chef of the Ballet of Her Majesty's Theatre from 1843-1848. Maître de Ballet en Chef to the St. Petersburg Imperial Theatres from 1849 to 1859. Christian Johansson, Coaching ballet master/master teacher for the Russian Imperial Ballet 1880 to 1900 of the male students. Marius Petipa, Maître de Ballet of the St. Petersburg Imperial Theatres from 1871 to 1903, Deuxieme Maître de Ballet from 1862-1871; the Father of Classical Ballet. Arthur Saint-Léon born Arthur Michel, a Frenchman, ballet master of the Paris Opera Ballet from 1850–1853 Maître de Ballet en Chef of the St. Petersburg Imperial Theatres from 1859 until 1869. Lev Ivanov, Deuxieme Maître de Ballet of the St. Petersburg Imperial Theatres from 1885 to 1901. Enrico Cecchetti, Ballet master for the celebrated Ballets Russes 1910. Nicolai Legat, Ballet master in Russia, Agrippina Vaganova, Ballet master of the Kirov Ballet from 1931-1937 was an outstanding pedagogue who developed t
University of Iowa
The University of Iowa is a public research university in Iowa City, Iowa. Founded in 1847, it is the second largest university in the state; the University of Iowa is organized into 11 colleges offering more than 200 areas of study and seven professional degrees. Located on an urban 1,880 acre campus on the banks of the Iowa River, the University of Iowa is classified among "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity." The university is best known for its programs in health care and the fine arts, with programs ranking among the top 25 nationally in those areas. The University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics and the Stead Family Children's Hospital are ranked nationally by U. S. News and World Report in eleven specialties; the university was the original developer of the Master of Fine Arts degree and it operates the Iowa Writer's Workshop, which has produced 17 of the university's 46 Pulitzer Prize winners. Iowa is a member of the Association of American Universities, the Universities Research Association, the Big Ten Academic Alliance.
Among American universities, the University of Iowa was the first public university to open as coeducational, opened the first coeducational medical school, opened the first Department of Religious Studies at a public university. The University of Iowa's 33,000 students take part in nearly 500 student organizations. Iowa's 22 varsity athletic teams, the Iowa Hawkeyes, compete in Division I of the NCAA and are members of the Big Ten Conference; the University of Iowa alumni network exceeds 250,000 graduates located around the globe. The University of Iowa was founded on February 25, 1847, just 59 days after Iowa was admitted to the Union; the Constitution of the State of Iowa refers to a State University to be established in Iowa City "without branches at any other place." The legal name of the university is the State University of Iowa, but the Board of Regents approved using "The University of Iowa" for everyday usage in October 1964. The first faculty offered instruction at the university beginning in March 1855 to students in the Old Mechanics Building, located where Seashore Hall is now.
In September 1855, there were 124 students. The 1856–57 catalogue listed nine departments offering ancient languages, modern languages, intellectual philosophy, moral philosophy, natural history, natural philosophy, chemistry; the first president of the university was Amos Dean. The original campus consisted of the Iowa Old Capitol Building and the 10 acres of land on which it stood. Following the placing of the cornerstone July 4, 1840, the building housed the Fifth Legislative Assembly of the Territory of Iowa and became the first capitol building of the State of Iowa on December 28, 1846; until that date, it had been the third capitol of the Territory of Iowa. When the capitol of Iowa was moved to Des Moines in 1857, the Old Capitol became the first permanent "home" of the University. In 1855, The university became the first public university in the United States to admit men and women on an equal basis. In addition, Iowa was the world's first university to accept creative work in theater, writing and art on an equal basis with academic research.
The university was one of the first institutions in America to grant a law degree to a woman, to grant a law degree to an African American, to put an African American on a varsity athletic squad. The university offered its first doctorate in 1898; the university was the first state university to recognize the Gay, Bisexual and Allied Union. The University of Iowa established the first law school west of the Mississippi River, it was the first university to use television in education, in 1932, it pioneered in the field of standardized testing. The University of Iowa was the first Big Ten institution to promote an African American to the position of administrative vice president. A shooting took place on campus on November 1, 1991. Six people died in the shooting, including the perpetrator, one other person was wounded; this was the fifth-deadliest university shooting in United States history, tied with a shooting at Northern Illinois University. In the summer of 2008, flood waters breached the Coralville Reservoir spillway, damaging more than 20 major campus buildings.
Several weeks after the flood waters receded university officials placed a preliminary estimate on flood damage at $231.75 million. The university estimated that repairs would cost about $743 million. In 2008, UNESCO designated Iowa City the world's third City of Literature, making it part of the UNESCO Creative Cities Network. In 2014, the Iowa Board of Regents proposed tying state funding to undergraduate resident enrollment, which would have shifted millions of dollars away from the UI to Iowa State University and the University of Northern Iowa. Iowa legislators did not support the plan. In 2015, the Iowa Board of Regents selected Bruce Harreld, a business consultant with limited experience in academic administration, to succeed Sally Mason as president; the regents' choice of Harreld provoked criticism and controversy on the UI campus due to his corporate background, lack of history in leading an institution of higher education, the circumstances related to the search process. The regents said they had based their decision on the belief that Harreld could limit costs and find new sources of revenue beyond tuition in an age of declining state support for universities.
In July 2016, the university took over the former AIB College of Business in Des Moines, wher
The Nutcracker
The Nutcracker is a two-act ballet choreographed by Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov with a score by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. The libretto is adapted from E. T. A. Hoffmann's story "The Nutcracker and the Mouse King". Although the original production was not a success, the 20-minute suite that Tchaikovsky extracted from the ballet was. However, the complete Nutcracker has enjoyed enormous popularity since the late 1960s and is now performed by countless ballet companies during the Christmas season in North America. Major American ballet companies generate around 40% of their annual ticket revenues from performances of The Nutcracker; the ballet's score has been used in several film adaptations of Hoffmann's story. Tchaikovsky's score has become one of his most famous compositions. Among other things, the score is noted for its use of the celesta, an instrument that the composer had employed in his much lesser known symphonic ballad The Voyevoda. After the success of The Sleeping Beauty in 1890, Ivan Vsevolozhsky, the director of the Imperial Theatres, commissioned Tchaikovsky to compose a double-bill program featuring both an opera and a ballet.
The opera would be Iolanta. For the ballet, Tchaikovsky would again join forces with Marius Petipa, with whom he had collaborated on The Sleeping Beauty; the material Petipa chose was an adaptation of E. T. A. Hoffmann's story "The Nutcracker and the Mouse King", by Alexandre Dumas called "The Story of a Nutcracker"; the plot of Hoffmann's story was simplified for the two-act ballet. Hoffmann's tale contains a long flashback story within its main plot titled "The Tale of the Hard Nut", which explains how the Prince was turned into the Nutcracker; this had to be excised for the ballet. Petipa gave Tchaikovsky detailed instructions for the composition of each number, down to the tempo and number of bars; the completion of the work was interrupted for a short time when Tchaikovsky visited the United States for twenty-five days to conduct concerts for the opening of Carnegie Hall. Tchaikovsky composed parts of The Nutcracker in Rouen, France; the first performance of the ballet was held as a double premiere together with Tchaikovsky's last opera, Iolanta, on 18 December 1892, at the Imperial Mariinsky Theatre in Saint Petersburg, Russia.
Although the libretto was by Marius Petipa, who choreographed the first production has been debated. Petipa began work on the choreography in August 1892. Although Ivanov is credited as the choreographer, some contemporary accounts credit Petipa; the performance was conducted by Riccardo Drigo, with Antonietta Dell'Era as the Sugar Plum Fairy, Pavel Gerdt as Prince Coqueluche, Stanislava Belinskaya as Clara, Sergei Legat as the Nutcracker-Prince, Timofey Stukolkin as Drosselmeyer. Unlike in many productions, the children's roles were performed by real children – students of the Imperial Ballet School in Saint Petersburg, with Belinskaya as Clara, Vassily Stukolkin as Fritz – rather than adults; the first performance of The Nutcracker was not deemed a success. The reaction to the dancers themselves was ambivalent. While some critics praised Dell'Era on her pointework as the Sugar Plum Fairy, one critic called her "corpulent" and "podgy". Olga Preobrajenskaya as the Columbine doll was panned by one critic as "completely insipid" and praised as "charming" by another.
Alexandre Benois described the choreography of the battle scene as confusing: "One can not understand anything. Disorderly pushing about from corner to corner and running backwards and forwards – quite amateurish."The libretto was criticized as "lopsided" and for not being faithful to the Hoffmann tale. Much of the criticism focused on the featuring of children so prominently in the ballet, many bemoaned the fact that the ballerina did not dance until the Grand Pas de Deux near the end of the second act; some found the transition between the mundane world of the first scene and the fantasy world of the second act too abrupt. Reception was better for Tchaikovsky's score; some critics called it "astonishingly rich in detailed inspiration" and "from beginning to end, melodious and characteristic". But this was not unanimous as some critics found the party scene "ponderous" and the Grand Pas de Deux "insipid". In 1919, choreographer Alexander Gorsky staged a production which eliminated the Sugar Plum Fairy and her Cavalier and gave their dances to Clara and the Nutcracker Prince, who were played by adults instead of children.
This was the first production to do so. An abridged version of the ballet was first performed outside Russia in Budapest in 1927, with choreography by Ede Brada. In 1934, choreographer Vasili Vainonen staged a version of the work that addressed many of the criticisms of the original 1892 production by casting adult dancers in the roles of Clara and the Prince, as Gorsky had; the Vainonen version influenced several productions. The first complete performance outside Russia took place in England in 1934, staged by Nicholas Sergeyev after Petipa's original choreography. Annual performances of the ballet have been staged there since 1952. Another abridged version of the ballet, performed by the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, was staged in New York City in 1940, Alexandra Fedorova – again, after Petipa's version; the ballet's first complete United States performance was on 24 December 1944, by the San Francisco Ballet, staged by its
Ballet
Ballet is a type of performance dance that originated during the Italian Renaissance in the fifteenth century and developed into a concert dance form in France and Russia. It has since become a widespread technical form of dance with its own vocabulary based on French terminology, it has been globally influential and has defined the foundational techniques used in many other dance genres and cultures. Ballet has been taught in various schools around the world, which have incorporated their own cultures and as a result, the art has evolved in a number of distinct ways. See glossary of ballet. A ballet, a work, consists of the music for a ballet production. Ballets are performed by trained ballet dancers. Traditional classical ballets are performed with classical music accompaniment and use elaborate costumes and staging, whereas modern ballets, such as the neoclassical works of American choreographer George Balanchine are performed in simple costumes and without the use of elaborate sets or scenery.
Ballet is a French word which had its origin in Italian balletto, a diminutive of ballo which comes from Latin ballo, meaning "to dance", which in turn comes from the Greek "βαλλίζω", "to dance, to jump about". The word came into English usage from the French around 1630. Ballet originated in the Italian Renaissance courts of the sixteenth centuries. Under Catherine de' Medici's influence as Queen, it spread to France, where it developed further; the dancers in these early court ballets were noble amateurs. Ornamented costumes were meant to impress viewers, but they restricted performers' freedom of movement; the ballets were performed in large chambers with viewers on three sides. The implementation of the proscenium arch from 1618 on distanced performers from audience members, who could better view and appreciate the technical feats of the professional dancers in the productions. French court ballet reached its height under the reign of King Louis XIV. Louis founded the Académie Royale de Danse in 1661 to establish standards and certify dance instructors.
In 1672, Louis XIV made Jean-Baptiste Lully the director of the Académie Royale de Musique from which the first professional ballet company, the Paris Opera Ballet, arose. Pierre Beauchamp served as Lully's ballet-master. Together their partnership would drastically influence the development of ballet, as evidenced by the credit given to them for the creation of the five major positions of the feet. By 1681, the first "ballerinas" took the stage following years of training at the Académie. Ballet started to decline in France after 1830, but it continued to develop in Denmark and Russia; the arrival in Europe of the Ballets Russes led by Sergei Diaghilev on the eve of the First World War revived interest in the ballet and started the modern era. In the twentieth century, ballet had a wide influence on other dance genres, Also in the twentieth century, ballet took a turn dividing it from classical ballet to the introduction of modern dance, leading to modernist movements in several countries. Famous dancers of the twentieth century include Anna Pavlova, Galina Ulanova, Rudolf Nureyev, Maya Plisetskaya, Margot Fonteyn, Rosella Hightower, Maria Tall Chief, Erik Bruhn, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Suzanne Farrell, Gelsey Kirkland, Natalia Makarova, Arthur Mitchell.
Stylistic variations and subgenres have evolved over time. Early, classical variations are associated with geographic origin. Examples of this are Russian ballet, French ballet, Italian ballet. Variations, such as contemporary ballet and neoclassical ballet, incorporate both classical ballet and non-traditional technique and movement; the most known and performed ballet style is late Romantic ballet. Classical ballet is based on vocabulary. Different styles have emerged in different countries, such as French ballet, Italian ballet, English ballet, Russian ballet. Several of the classical ballet styles are associated with specific training methods named after their creators; the Royal Academy of Dance method is a ballet technique and training system, founded by a diverse group of ballet dancers. They merged their respective dance methods to create a new style of ballet, unique to the organization and is recognized internationally as the English style of ballet; some examples of classical ballet productions are: the Nutcracker.
Romantic ballet was an artistic movement of classical ballet and several productions remain in the classical repertoire today. The Romantic era was marked by the emergence of pointe work, the dominance of female dancers, longer, flowy tutus that attempt to exemplify softness and a delicate aura; this movement occurred during the early to mid-nineteenth century and featured themes that emphasized intense emotion as a source of aesthetic experience. The plots of many romantic ballets revolved around spirit women who enslaved the hearts and senses of mortal men; the 1827 ballet La Sylphide is considered to be the first, the 1870 ballet Coppélia is considered to be the last. Famous ballet dancers of the Romantic era include Marie Taglioni, Fanny Elssler, Jules Perrot. Jules Perrot is known for his choreography that of Giselle considered to be the most celebrated romantic ballet. Neoclassical ballet is abstract, with no clear plot, costumes or scenery. Music choice can be diverse and will include music, neoclassical.
Tim Schol
Rudolf Nureyev
Rudolf Khametovich Nureyev was a Soviet ballet and contemporary dancer and choreographer. Named Lord of the Dance, Nureyev is regarded as the greatest male ballet dancer of his generation. Nureyev was born on a Trans-Siberian train near Irkutsk, Soviet Union to a Tatar Muslim family. Nureyev began his early career with the Mariinsky Ballet in St. Petersburg, he defected from the Soviet Union despite KGB efforts to stop him. This was the first defection of a Soviet artist during the Cold War and it created an international sensation, he went on to dance with The Royal Ballet in London and from 1983 to 1989 served as director of the Paris Opera Ballet. In addition to his technical prowess, Rudolf Nureyev was an accomplished choreographer serving as the chief choreographer of the Paris Opera Ballet, he produced his own interpretations of numerous classical works, including Swan Lake, La Bayadère. Rudolf Nureyev was born on a Trans-Siberian train near Irkutsk, Soviet Union, while his mother, was travelling to Vladivostok, where his father Khamet, a Red Army political commissar, was stationed.
He was raised as the only son with three older sisters in a Tatar Muslim family. When his mother took Nureyev and his sisters into a performance of the ballet Song of the Cranes, he fell in love with dance; as a child he was encouraged to dance in Bashkir folk performances and his precocity was soon noticed by teachers who encouraged him to train in Saint Petersburg. On a tour stop in Moscow with a local ballet company, Nureyev auditioned for the Bolshoi ballet company and was accepted. However, he felt that the Mariinsky Ballet school was the best, so he left the local touring company and bought a ticket to St. Petersburg. Owing to the disruption of Soviet cultural life caused by World War II, Nureyev was unable to enroll in a major ballet school until 1955, aged 17, when he was accepted by the Vaganova Academy of Russian Ballet of Saint Petersburg, the associate school of the Mariinsky Ballet; the ballet master Alexander Ivanovich Pushkin took an interest in him professionally and allowed Nureyev to live with him and his wife.
Upon his graduation in 1958, Nureyev joined the Kirov Ballet. He moved beyond the corps level, was given solo roles as a principal dancer from the outset. Rudolf Nureyev partnered Dudinskaya, the company's senior ballerina and the wife of its director, Konstantin Sergeyev. Natalia Dudinskaya, 26 years his senior, chose him as her partner in the ballet Laurencia. Before long Rudolf Nureyev became one of the Soviet Union's best-known dancers. From 1958 to 1961, in his three years with the Mariinsky, he danced 15 roles opposite his partner, Ninel Kurgapkina, with whom he was well paired, although she was a decade older than he was. Nureyev and Kurgapkina were invited to dance at a gathering at Khrushchev's dacha, in 1959 they were allowed to travel outside the Soviet Union, dancing in Vienna at the International Youth Festival. Not long after, he was told by the Ministry of Culture that he would not be allowed to go abroad again. In one memorable incident, Nureyev interrupted a performance of Don Quixote for 40 minutes, insisting on dancing in tights and not in the customary trousers.
He relented in the end, but his preferred dress code was adopted in performances. By the late 1950s, Rudolf Nureyev had become a sensation in the Soviet Union. Yet, as the Mariinsky Ballet was preparing to go on a tour to Paris and London, Nureyev's rebellious character and a non-conformist attitude made him an unlikely candidate for a trip to the West, to be of crucial importance to the Soviet government's ambitions to portray what they felt was their "cultural supremacy". Furthermore, tensions between Rudolf Nureyev and the Mariinsky's artistic director Konstantin Sergeyev and former dance partner of Natalia Dudinskaya, were growing. After a representative of the French tour organizers saw Nureyev dance in Leningrad in 1960, the French organizers urged Soviet authorities to let him dance in Paris, he was allowed to go. In Paris, his performances electrified critics. Oliver Merlin in Le Monde wrote, I will never forget his arrival running across the back of the stage, his catlike way of holding himself opposite the ramp.
He wore a white sash over an ultramarine costume, had large wild eyes and hollow cheeks under a turban topped with a spray of feathers, bulging thighs, immaculate tights. This was Nijinsky in Firebird. Nureyev was seen to have broken the rules about mingling with foreigners and frequented gay bars in Paris, which alarmed the Mariinsky's management and the KGB agents observing him; the KGB wanted to send him back to the Soviet Union. On 16 June 1961, the Mariinsky group had gathered at Le Bourget Airport in Paris to fly to London. Sergeyev took Nureyev aside and told him that he would have to return to Moscow, for a special performance in the Kremlin. Nureyev refused. Next he was told that his mother had fallen ill and he needed to come home to see her. Nureyev refused again, believing that on return to the USSR he was to be imprisoned. With the help of French police and a Parisian socialite friend – Clara Saint, engaged to the son of the French Minister of Culture Andre Malraux – Nureyev got away from his KGB minders and asked for asylum.
Sergeyev and the KGB tried to discuss it with him but he chose to stay in Paris. The 2019 film White Crow by Ralph Fiennes culminates with a dramatic depiction of Nureyev's defection at the Paris airpor
Marquee (sign)
A marquee is most a structure placed over the entrance to a hotel or theatre. It has signage stating either the name of the establishment or, in the case of theatres, the play or movie and the artist appearing at that venue; the marquee is identifiable by a surrounding cache of light bulbs yellow or white, that flash intermittently or as chasing lights. The current usage of the modern English word marquee, that in US English refers to a canopy projecting over the main entrance of a theater, which displays details of the entertainment or performers, was documented in the academic journal American Speech in 1926: "Marquee, the front door or main entrance of the big top." In British English "marquee" refers more to a large tent for social uses. The English word marquee is derived from the Middle French word marquise, the feminine form corresponding to marquis; the word marquise was used to refer to various objects and fashions regarded as elegant or pleasing, hence: a kind of pear, a canopy placed over a tent, a type of settee, a canopy in front of a building, a ring with an elongated stone or setting, a diamond cut as a navette, a style of woman's hat.
The oldest form of the word's root *merg- meant "boundary, border." Other words that descended from this Proto-Indo-European root include margin and mark. Early examples of the modern use of marquee include 1931, The American Mercury: "Marquee, the canopy at the main entrance." 1933, The marquee of the Rivoli, where Samarang is playing, reads:'One of the most exciting films shown.' 1967, The Boston Globe: "British actors mean little on an American movie marquee and Sherlock Holmes always seems old-fashioned." Movie marquee designs in the United States are related to the social and economic forces of the 20th century. The invention of the automobile influenced many elements of theater architecture; the marquee in particular became larger, stood out from the street to serve as a physical and aesthetic landmark from other businesses along the sidewalk. The shape evolved from a small rectangle to a trapezoid, making it more readable to automobile traffic; the text became less detailed but larger. The larger size of the sign and text, combined with the flashing lights and color, made the façade visible to fast-passing cars.
Movie marquee designs in the 1930s prompted theater historian Ben M. Hall to call them "electric tiaras." During World War II, aesthetic considerations of the marquee were dictated by the availability of labor and materials. Building materials such as steel, copper and aluminum were limited. In the postwar years, these building materials were dedicated to building civilian housing for returning soldiers and their families. Concrete and glass, two building materials that were not restricted, became essential to movie theater architects. Light was an unrestricted resource for architects, combined with glass it produced striking visual effects; the mild climate of certain locations, such as the American West Coast permitted the use of lightweight materials such as porcelain and plastics in marquees. Another benefit of using light and glass together was the economic bonus of it being cheap. Marquees are used to illuminate the name of an arcade game at the top of its cabinet. Billboard Letter board
The Rite of Spring
The Rite of Spring is a ballet and orchestral concert work by Russian composer Igor Stravinsky. It was written for the 1913 Paris season of Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes company; when first performed at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées on 29 May 1913, the avant-garde nature of the music and choreography caused a sensation. Many have called the first-night reaction a "riot" or "near-riot," though this wording did not come about until reviews of performances in 1924, over a decade later. Although designed as a work for the stage, with specific passages accompanying characters and action, the music achieved equal if not greater recognition as a concert piece and is considered to be one of the most influential musical works of the 20th century. Stravinsky was a young unknown composer when Diaghilev recruited him to create works for the Ballets Russes; the Rite was the third such project, after Petrushka. The concept behind The Rite of Spring, developed by Roerich from Stravinsky's outline idea, is suggested by its subtitle, "Pictures of Pagan Russia in Two Parts".
After a mixed critical reception for its original run and a short London tour, the ballet was not performed again until the 1920s, when a version choreographed by Léonide Massine replaced Nijinsky's original, which saw only eight performances. Massine's was the forerunner of many innovative productions directed by the world's leading ballet-masters, gaining the work worldwide acceptance. In the 1980s, Nijinsky's original choreography, long believed lost, was reconstructed by the Joffrey Ballet in Los Angeles. Stravinsky's score contains many novel features for its time, including experiments in tonality, rhythm and dissonance. Analysts have noted in the score a significant grounding in Russian folk music, a relationship Stravinsky tended to deny; the music influenced many of the 20th-century's leading composers and is one of the most recorded works in the classical repertoire. Igor Stravinsky was the son of Fyodor Stravinsky, the principal bass singer at the Imperial Opera, St Petersburg, Anna, née Kholodovskaya, a competent amateur singer and pianist from an old-established Russian family.
Fyodor's association with many of the leading figures in Russian music, including Rimsky-Korsakov and Mussorgsky, meant that Igor grew up in an intensely musical home. In 1901 Stravinsky began to study law at Saint Petersburg University while taking private lessons in harmony and counterpoint. Stravinsky worked under the guidance of Rimsky-Korsakov, having impressed him with some of his early compositional efforts. By the time of his mentor's death in 1908 Stravinsky had produced several works, among them a Piano Sonata in F♯ minor, a Symphony in E♭ major, which he catalogued as "Opus 1", a short orchestral piece, Feu d'artifice. In 1909 Feu d'artifice was performed at a concert in St. Petersburg. Among those in the audience was the impresario Sergei Diaghilev, who at that time was planning to introduce Russian music and art to western audiences. Like Stravinsky, Diaghilev had studied law, but had gravitated via journalism into the theatrical world. In 1907 he began his theatrical career by presenting five concerts in Paris.
In 1909, still in Paris, he launched the Ballets Russes with Borodin's Polovtsian Dances from Prince Igor and Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade. To present these works Diaghilev recruited the choreographer Michel Fokine, the designer Léon Bakst and the dancer Vaslav Nijinsky. Diaghilev's intention, was to produce new works in a distinctively 20th-century style, he was looking for fresh compositional talent. Having heard Feu d'artifice he approached Stravinsky with a request for help in orchestrating music by Chopin to create the ballet Les Sylphides. Stravinsky worked on the opening "Nocturne" and the closing "Valse Brillante". Stravinsky worked through the winter of 1909–10, in close association with Fokine, choreographing The Firebird. During this period Stravinsky made the acquaintance of Nijinsky who, although not dancing in the ballet, was a keen observer of its development. Stravinsky was uncomplimentary when recording his first impressions of the dancer, observing that he seemed immature and gauche for his age.
On the other hand, Stravinsky found Diaghilev an inspiration, "the essence of a great personality". The Firebird was premiered on 25 June 1910, with Tamara Karsavina in the main role, was a great public success; this ensured that the Diaghilev–Stravinsky collaboration would continue, in the first instance with Petrushka and The Rite of Spring. In a note to the conductor Serge Koussevitzky in February 1914, Stravinsky described The Rite of Spring as "a musical-choreographic work, pagan Russia... unified by a single idea: the mystery and great surge of the creative power of Spring". In his analysis of The Rite, Pieter van den Toorn writes that the work lacks a specific plot or narrative, should be considered as a succession of choreographed episodes; the French titles are given in the form given in the four-part piano score published in 1913. There have been numerous variants of the English translat
