Innovative Choreographers Dance into Post Offices on Saturday

Mark your calendar for the National Dance Day celebration presented by the Music Center and the Dizzy Feet Foundation on Saturday, July 28. Join Nigel Lythgoe, SO YOU THINK YOU CAN DANCE co-creator, executive producer, and judge, and Ruth Goldway, U.S. Postal Regulatory Commission Chairman, for the day’s events including the First Day of Issue of the Innovative Choreographers stamps. The ceremony will take place at 10:00 a.m. at Los Angeles County’s Grand Park in downtown Los Angeles.

Will you be joining us?

Save the Date, Tune in . . . and Dance!

Isadora Duncan, José Limón, Katherine Dunham, and Bob Fosse crafted deeply personal, yet universal, works of art that forever transformed the art of dance. And on July 18, stamps honoring these four legends of choreography will be announced on America’s favorite summertime series, SO YOU THINK YOU CAN DANCE. Tune in to FOX this Wednesday at 8/7c, to see a live preview of the Innovative Choreographers stamps.

Plus, mark your calendar for the National Dance Day celebration presented by the Music Center and the Dizzy Feet Foundation on Saturday, July 28. Join Nigel Lythgoe, SO YOU THINK YOU CAN DANCE co-creator, executive producer, and judge, and Ruth Goldway, U.S. Postal Regulatory Commission Chairman, for the day’s events including the First Day of Issue of the Innovative Choreographers stamps. The ceremony will take place at 10:00 a.m. at Los Angeles County’s Grand Park in downtown Los Angeles.

Happy Birthday, Bob Fosse!

Today we’re celebrating the birthday of choreographer Bob Fosse. Check out this great performance from Fosse’s second film, Cabaret (1972), which starred Liza Minnelli as an American nightclub performer in Berlin when the Nazis come to power.

Cabaret is regarded as a landmark in the history of Hollywood musicals. Fosse was determined to set the action in the “real world” of Berlin in the 1930s, so he eliminated the stage convention in which characters sing in the course of their daily lives; here, the singing is “realistic” and occurs only in the context of the cabaret or beer garden.

The film won eight Oscars, including one for Fosse as best director, in 1973. That same year, he won two Tony awards as best director and best choreographer for the musical Pippin, as well as three Emmy awards for his direction, choreography, and production of the television special Liza With a Z. No other director has won the “Triple Crown” (Oscar, Tony, and Emmy awards) in the same year.

Bob Fosse will be featured on the Innovative Choreographers stamps, which will be issued July 28 in Los Angeles, California. We can’t wait! For more information about the stamps, visit Beyond the Perf.

Happy Birthday, Katherine Dunham!

The Katherine Dunham stamp may not be released until late July, but that doesn’t mean we can’t celebrate her birthday today!

Born in Chicago in 1909, Dunham had a dream: that African-American dance be taken seriously as an art. She founded one of the first African-American dance companies in the U.S. She was also the first choreographer to develop a formal dance technique that combined Caribbean and African dance elements with aspects of ballet.

Dunham and her dancers received accolades in the U.S. and around the world, but they also met with racial prejudice. Not only did some hotels and restaurants refuse to serve them, but Dunham and her troupe also had to work against the widespread belief that African Americans were incapable of mastering formal dance techniques.

A powerful encounter with racial segregation took place in 1944, as she describes in this video from 2002.

Despite the obstacles, Dunham eventually realized her dream. Audiences worldwide flocked to her shows, and Dunham’s dance technique influenced a generation of African-American dancers and choreographers, including Alvin Ailey. Dunham choreographed dance sequences for films and opened a performing arts school in New York City. In 1963, she choreographed a new production of Verdi’s opera Aida for the Metropolitan Opera.

“I decided if I couldn’t win at the beginning I’d win at the end,” she said later. Indeed.

Happy birthday, Ms. Dunham!

Visit Beyond the Perf for more information about the Innovative Choreographers stamps, which will be issued July 28 in Los Angeles, California.

The Transcendent Dance of Isadora Duncan

“The dancer of the future will be one whose body and soul have grown so harmoniously together that the natural language of that soul will have become the movement of the body.”

—Isadora Duncan

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A couple weeks ago I mentioned that Katherine Dunham will be honored this year with one of four Innovative Choreographers stamps. I am very excited that Isadora Duncan (1877–1927), widely considered the “mother of modern dance,” will also be included in the upcoming set.

Through dance Duncan expressed not only joy, contentment, and elation, but also grief, despair, and even evil. This link between emotion and movement was her most profound contribution to the history of dance. Through dance, she argued, we can transcend the limitations of the physical world to reveal the soul.