May 5
Born Today:
Arlene Croce
Dance writer Arlene Croce (1934-) graduated from Barnard College in 1955 and founded the Ballet Review magazine in 1965. Although ballet is of primary concern in her writings, she also writes about social and film dance - in fact her book The Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers Book (1972) cemented her reputation as the expert on the dance movie duo. She served as a dance critic for the New Yorker magazine from 1973-1998, wrote for the Dance in America series in the 1970s, and published several collections of her reviews and essays, including Afterimages (1978), Going to the Dance (1982), and Sight Lines (1987). She has also written for The Film Quarterly, The Dancing Times, and The Atlantic Monthly, but famously refused to review the multimedia piece Still/Here (1994) by contemporary modern choreographer Bill T. Jones (1952-), stating that it was unreviewable “victim art”.
Also Born Today: Ballerina Elena Lukom (1891-1968) trained at the Imperial Ballet school and danced with the company for over 30 years, retiring from performing in 1941. Dance philanthropist Sage Cowles (1925-2013) studied at the School of American Ballet and performed on Broadway as a young dancer, and later performed with Bill T. Jones (1952-) in The Last Supper at Uncle Tom's Cabin/The Promised Land (1992). Dancer Lee Mae-Bang (1927-2015) preserved traditional forms of Korean dance and introduced international audiences to an expanded scope of the dance form over a 70+ year career.
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Broadway Premiere: Damn Yankees in 1955