May 3
Born Today:
Garth Fagan
Choreographer Garth Fagan (1940-) began performing in high school with the Jamaican National Dance Company and continued dancing in college while pursuing a degree in psychology. Fagan directed the All-City Dance Company in Detroit and relocated to New York to perform with Pearl Primus (1919-1994) and Lavinia Williams (1916-1989) in the 1960s. At the end of the decade, he was invited to teach at SUNY Brockport and, inspired by the inner-city students he encountered in Rochester, he founded the Bottom of the Bucket...BUT Dance Company, which later became Garth Fagan Dance. He developed the Fagan Technique, melding modern dance, Afro-Caribbean movement, ballet speed and precision, and post-modern experimentation in his technique classes and his choreography. He is perhaps best known as the ingenious choreographer of The Lion King (1997) on Broadway, a show that makes use of full-body animal puppets powered by dancers.
Also Born Today: Bolshoi ballerina Alexandra Balashova (1887-1979) was painted by artist Filipp Malyavin. Ballerina Mona Inglesby (1918-2006) directed the English touring company International Ballet from 1941-1953. Inglesby hired Nicholas Sergeyev (1876-1951), former member of the Russian Imperial Ballet, to stage the classical ballets of Marius Petipa (1818-1910) and others on her company. Sergeyev had fled the 1917 Russian Revolution salvaging a collection of papers notating 20 ballets, now known as the Sergeyev Collection, preserving important documentation of an important time in ballet history. Ballerina Marina Svetlova (1922-2009) danced with one of the Ballets Russes company offshoots, ABT, and the Metropolitan Opera ballet before accepting a teaching post at Indiana University. Known as the Godfather of Soul and the master of the Mashed Potato dance, singer/dancer James Brown (1933-2006) inspired the next generation of singer/dancers including Prince (1958-2016) and Michael Jackson (1958-2009). Dancer/teacher Lindsay Kemp (1938-2018) is best known for starring in The Line, The Cross, and The Curve (1993) with singer/dancer Kate Bush (1958-). Contemporary dance choreographer Hofesh Shechter (1975-) formed his company in 2008 and is best known for several iterations of the piece Political Mother (2010).
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Dance Premiere: Night Journey in 1947