Saturday, March 30, 2013
Friday, March 29, 2013
Thursday, March 28, 2013
Women's History Month - Maria Tallchief
Maria Tallchief
Elizabeth
Maria Tallchief (born January 24, 1925) was the first Native American
to become prima ballerina. From 1942 to 1947 she danced with the Ballet
Russe de Monte Carlo, but she is even better known for her time with the
New York City Ballet, from its founding in 1947 through 1965. Known
professionally as Maria Tallchief, her family called her Betty Marie.
Betty learned the Osage traditions from her grandmother, Eliza Bigheart
Tallchief. Maria is the sister of notable ballerina Marjorie Tallchief.
Of her childhood she wrote, "I was a good student and fit in at Sacred Heart (Catholic school). But in many ways, I was a typical Indian girl — shy, docile, introverted. I loved being outdoors and spent most of my time wandering around my big front yard, where there was an old swing and a garden. I'd also ramble around the grounds of our summer cottage hunting for arrowheads in the grass. Finding one made me shiver with excitement. Mostly, I longed to be in the pasture, running around where the horses were...".
Madame Nijinska's philosophy of discipline made sense to Tallchief. "When you sleep, sleep like a ballerina. Even on the street waiting for the bus, stand like ballerina".
Of her childhood she wrote, "I was a good student and fit in at Sacred Heart (Catholic school). But in many ways, I was a typical Indian girl — shy, docile, introverted. I loved being outdoors and spent most of my time wandering around my big front yard, where there was an old swing and a garden. I'd also ramble around the grounds of our summer cottage hunting for arrowheads in the grass. Finding one made me shiver with excitement. Mostly, I longed to be in the pasture, running around where the horses were...".
Madame Nijinska's philosophy of discipline made sense to Tallchief. "When you sleep, sleep like a ballerina. Even on the street waiting for the bus, stand like ballerina".
Tallchief left Los Angeles at the age of 17 and auditioned in New York City. She joined the Ballets Russes and quickly became a featured soloist. After a tour in Canada during 1942, the company asked her to change her name to Maria Tallchieva. She declined to change her Osage name, but agreed to be called Maria Tallchief.
She was the first prima ballerina of the New York City Ballet from 1947 to 1960. Her performance of Balanchine's The Firebird in 1949 and their earlier collaboration at the Paris Opera elevated Maria Tallchief onto the world stage. She also originated the role of the Sugarplum Fairy in Balanchine's version of The Nutcracker, in 1954.
Tallchief continued to dance with the New York City Ballet and with other groups until her retirement in 1965. She was director of the Chicago Lyric Opera Ballet from 1973 to 1979. With her sister Marjorie, she founded the Chicago City Ballet in 1981 and served as its artistic director until 1987. From 1990 to present she has been artistic advisor to Von Heidecke’s Chicago Festival Ballet. (source)
Wednesday, March 27, 2013
Woman's History Month - Me
After many pokings from various friends, a long explanation about why I got defensive about assumptions made about me on Facebook and wanting to add another post about Woman's history before Woman's History Month 2013 was over; I've decided to write about me. YAY! (Be excited damnit!)
Several people have told me after an antidote or two about my life has been divulged, that I should write a book. So I am going to give this a whirl in, at very least, blog form. Forgive me if this is disjointed, or confusing, I'll do my best to be as linear as possible, but I am gonna also write about what I remember best first probably...except for the beginning, I guess I can give you a vague idea of the beginning.
My parents are from Chicago, they met sometime in the spring or summer of 1967 I believe. At a party, they met at a party that my dad's roommates were having at the place they lived. In a house they bought collectively with money they made selling sheets of acid to the party community of Chicago. The house was on Altgeld Ave, and Lincoln. A few lots in from the street, but just around the corner from the legendary Biograph Theater where John Dillinger was shot. He always said it was fate, love at first sight. That voices told him it was her he was meant to spend the rest of his life with, but that is perhaps for another time, before I melt into a puddle of tears...
My mother moved to Quebec, Canada with her family when her father's job moved him there. My daddy moved to Los Angeles. Why, I'm not exactly sure...adventure I suppose...it didn't occur to me when running over this idea of biography in my mind how many questions were going to come up or how sad it was going to make me to not have my parents to ask...fuck. Especially since my father is still so alive in my mind that I could just call him...but, he is in fact no longer there to call...fuck.
Anyhow, I was born OK? In January of 1982, at UCLA hospital in Westwood California. I was both conceived and raised in Venice, California. I lived there till I was 18 and we were thrown out. My entire 31 years on this planet and I have moved 4 times and lived within a 30 mile radius of where I was born. I have a few, very specific memories of my young years, most of my real memory of my life comes in after the age of 11. My boyfriend thinks this is funny, and we've talked about how funny memories are because he is excatly the opposite.
One of my very first memories is of stepping on a bee, in order to kill it I suppose, and the stinger sticking in my big toe of my left foot. My older sister was with me (here I guess I should mention I am the middle child. I have one older sister, 11 years my senior and 1 younger sister, 1.5 years my junior. Odd age separations my mother informed me due to all of us being mistakes), I think she was the one to pull the stinger out. I have vague memory of her yelling across the lawn at my mom that I stepped on a bee. I think we were standing next to the night blooming jasmine plant in the north-west corner of the yard that wrapped all the way around the duplex we lived in, but I may be wrong here.
The lot where I grew up is still there. The house (well, apartment actually) is not. It was torn down by the people that bought the building after we were evicted in June 2000. It is a large, artsy, glass two story monstrosity reminiscent of Delia Deetz's dream home in Beetlejuice...
Several people have told me after an antidote or two about my life has been divulged, that I should write a book. So I am going to give this a whirl in, at very least, blog form. Forgive me if this is disjointed, or confusing, I'll do my best to be as linear as possible, but I am gonna also write about what I remember best first probably...except for the beginning, I guess I can give you a vague idea of the beginning.
My parents are from Chicago, they met sometime in the spring or summer of 1967 I believe. At a party, they met at a party that my dad's roommates were having at the place they lived. In a house they bought collectively with money they made selling sheets of acid to the party community of Chicago. The house was on Altgeld Ave, and Lincoln. A few lots in from the street, but just around the corner from the legendary Biograph Theater where John Dillinger was shot. He always said it was fate, love at first sight. That voices told him it was her he was meant to spend the rest of his life with, but that is perhaps for another time, before I melt into a puddle of tears...
My mother moved to Quebec, Canada with her family when her father's job moved him there. My daddy moved to Los Angeles. Why, I'm not exactly sure...adventure I suppose...it didn't occur to me when running over this idea of biography in my mind how many questions were going to come up or how sad it was going to make me to not have my parents to ask...fuck. Especially since my father is still so alive in my mind that I could just call him...but, he is in fact no longer there to call...fuck.
Anyhow, I was born OK? In January of 1982, at UCLA hospital in Westwood California. I was both conceived and raised in Venice, California. I lived there till I was 18 and we were thrown out. My entire 31 years on this planet and I have moved 4 times and lived within a 30 mile radius of where I was born. I have a few, very specific memories of my young years, most of my real memory of my life comes in after the age of 11. My boyfriend thinks this is funny, and we've talked about how funny memories are because he is excatly the opposite.
One of my very first memories is of stepping on a bee, in order to kill it I suppose, and the stinger sticking in my big toe of my left foot. My older sister was with me (here I guess I should mention I am the middle child. I have one older sister, 11 years my senior and 1 younger sister, 1.5 years my junior. Odd age separations my mother informed me due to all of us being mistakes), I think she was the one to pull the stinger out. I have vague memory of her yelling across the lawn at my mom that I stepped on a bee. I think we were standing next to the night blooming jasmine plant in the north-west corner of the yard that wrapped all the way around the duplex we lived in, but I may be wrong here.
The lot where I grew up is still there. The house (well, apartment actually) is not. It was torn down by the people that bought the building after we were evicted in June 2000. It is a large, artsy, glass two story monstrosity reminiscent of Delia Deetz's dream home in Beetlejuice...
Tuesday, March 26, 2013
Women's History Month - Louise Brooks
While I can bitch a blue streak about facebook, it is good for pretty pictures and interesting tidbits I love
Cult of AphroditeVintage, and this post is directly stolen from there! (which I think they stole from Wikipedia) Enjoy! (Also, go "like" them on the facebooks. Wonderful stuff.
In late 1920's, she was mixing with the rich and famous, and was a regular guest of William Randolph Hearst and his mistress, Marion Davies, at San Simeon, being close friends with Davies' niece, Pepi Lederer. Her distinctive bob haircut, which became eponymous, and is still recognized to this day, helped start a trend; many women styled their hair in imitation of her and fellow film star Colleen Moore. Soon after the film Beggars Of Life was made, Brooks, who loathed the Hollywood "scene", refused to stay on at Paramount after being denied a promised raise, and left for Europe to make films for G. W. Pabst, the prominent Austrian Expressionist director.
Paramount attempted to use the coming of sound films to pressure the actress, but she called the studio's bluff. It was not until 30 years later that this rebellious move would come to be seen as arguably the most savvy of her career, securing her immortality as a silent film legend and independent spirit.
Brooks retired from the screen and had an unsuccessful attempt at operating a dance studio, she returned East and, after brief stints as a radio actor and a gossip columnist, worked as a salesgirl in a Saks Fifth Avenue store in New York City for a few years, then eked out a living as a courtesan with a few select wealthy men as clients.
"I found that the only well-paying career open to me, as an unsuccessful actress of thirty-six, was that of a call girl ... and (I) began to flirt with the fancies related to little bottles filled with yellow sleeping pills." - Louise Brooks
Brooks had been a heavy drinker since the age of 14, but she remained relatively sober to begin writing about film, which became her second career. During this period she began her first major writing project, an autobiographical novel called Naked on My Goat, a title taken from Goethe's Faust. After working on the novel for a number of years, she destroyed the manuscript by throwing it into an incinerator.
She was a notorious spendthrift for most of her life, even filing for bankruptcy in 1932, but was kind and generous to her friends, almost to a fault.
By her own admission, Brooks was a sexually liberated woman, not afraid to experiment, even posing fully nude for art photography, and her liaisons with many film people were legendary, although much of it is speculation.
Brooks enjoyed fostering speculation about her sexuality, cultivating friendships with lesbian and bisexual women including Pepi Lederer and Peggy Fears, but eschewing relationships. She admitted to some lesbian dalliances, including a one-night stand with Greta Garbo. She later described Garbo as masculine but a "charming and tender lover". Despite all this, she considered herself neither lesbian nor bisexual:
"I had a lot of fun writing 'Marion Davies' Niece' [an article about Pepi Lederer], leaving the lesbian theme in question marks. All my life it has been fun for me. When I am dead, I believe that film writers will fasten on the story that I am a lesbian... I have done lots to make it believable [...] All my women friends have been lesbians. But that is one point upon which I agree positively with [Christopher] Isherwood: There is no such thing as bisexuality. Ordinary people, although they may accommodate themselves, for reasons of whoring or marriage, are one-sexed. Out of curiosity, I had two affairs with girls – they did nothing for me."
Cult of AphroditeVintage, and this post is directly stolen from there! (which I think they stole from Wikipedia) Enjoy! (Also, go "like" them on the facebooks. Wonderful stuff.
Louise Brooks
"A well dressed woman, even though her purse is painfully empty, can conquer the world." - Louise Brooks
Mary Louise Brooks (November 14, 1906 – August 8, 1985), generally known by her stage name Louise Brooks, was an American dancer and actress, noted for popularizing the bobbed haircut.
Brooks began her entertainment career as a dancer, joining the Denishawn modern dance company in Los Angeles (whose members included founders Ruth St. Denis, and Ted Shawn, as well as a young Martha Graham) in 1922. In her second season with the company, Brooks had advanced to a starring role in one work opposite Shawn. A long-simmering personal conflict between Brooks and St. Denis boiled over one day, however, and St. Denis abruptly fired Brooks from the troupe in 1924, telling her in front of the other members that "I am dismissing you from the company because you want life handed to you on a silver salver". The words left a strong impression on Brooks; when she drew up an outline for a planned autobiographical novel in 1949, "The Silver Salver" was the title she gave to the tenth and final chapter.
Thanks to her friend Barbara Bennett, Brooks almost immediately found employment as a chorus girl in George White's Scandals, followed by an appearance as a featured dancer in the 1925 edition of the Ziegfeld Follies on Broadway. As a result of her work in the Follies, she came to the attention of Paramount Pictures producer Walter Wanger, who signed her to a five-year contract with the studio in 1925. (She was also noticed by visiting movie star Charlie Chaplin, who was in town for the première of his film The Gold Rush. The two had an affair that summer).
Mary Louise Brooks (November 14, 1906 – August 8, 1985), generally known by her stage name Louise Brooks, was an American dancer and actress, noted for popularizing the bobbed haircut.
Brooks began her entertainment career as a dancer, joining the Denishawn modern dance company in Los Angeles (whose members included founders Ruth St. Denis, and Ted Shawn, as well as a young Martha Graham) in 1922. In her second season with the company, Brooks had advanced to a starring role in one work opposite Shawn. A long-simmering personal conflict between Brooks and St. Denis boiled over one day, however, and St. Denis abruptly fired Brooks from the troupe in 1924, telling her in front of the other members that "I am dismissing you from the company because you want life handed to you on a silver salver". The words left a strong impression on Brooks; when she drew up an outline for a planned autobiographical novel in 1949, "The Silver Salver" was the title she gave to the tenth and final chapter.
Thanks to her friend Barbara Bennett, Brooks almost immediately found employment as a chorus girl in George White's Scandals, followed by an appearance as a featured dancer in the 1925 edition of the Ziegfeld Follies on Broadway. As a result of her work in the Follies, she came to the attention of Paramount Pictures producer Walter Wanger, who signed her to a five-year contract with the studio in 1925. (She was also noticed by visiting movie star Charlie Chaplin, who was in town for the première of his film The Gold Rush. The two had an affair that summer).
In late 1920's, she was mixing with the rich and famous, and was a regular guest of William Randolph Hearst and his mistress, Marion Davies, at San Simeon, being close friends with Davies' niece, Pepi Lederer. Her distinctive bob haircut, which became eponymous, and is still recognized to this day, helped start a trend; many women styled their hair in imitation of her and fellow film star Colleen Moore. Soon after the film Beggars Of Life was made, Brooks, who loathed the Hollywood "scene", refused to stay on at Paramount after being denied a promised raise, and left for Europe to make films for G. W. Pabst, the prominent Austrian Expressionist director.
Paramount attempted to use the coming of sound films to pressure the actress, but she called the studio's bluff. It was not until 30 years later that this rebellious move would come to be seen as arguably the most savvy of her career, securing her immortality as a silent film legend and independent spirit.
Brooks retired from the screen and had an unsuccessful attempt at operating a dance studio, she returned East and, after brief stints as a radio actor and a gossip columnist, worked as a salesgirl in a Saks Fifth Avenue store in New York City for a few years, then eked out a living as a courtesan with a few select wealthy men as clients.
"I found that the only well-paying career open to me, as an unsuccessful actress of thirty-six, was that of a call girl ... and (I) began to flirt with the fancies related to little bottles filled with yellow sleeping pills." - Louise Brooks
Brooks had been a heavy drinker since the age of 14, but she remained relatively sober to begin writing about film, which became her second career. During this period she began her first major writing project, an autobiographical novel called Naked on My Goat, a title taken from Goethe's Faust. After working on the novel for a number of years, she destroyed the manuscript by throwing it into an incinerator.
She was a notorious spendthrift for most of her life, even filing for bankruptcy in 1932, but was kind and generous to her friends, almost to a fault.
By her own admission, Brooks was a sexually liberated woman, not afraid to experiment, even posing fully nude for art photography, and her liaisons with many film people were legendary, although much of it is speculation.
Brooks enjoyed fostering speculation about her sexuality, cultivating friendships with lesbian and bisexual women including Pepi Lederer and Peggy Fears, but eschewing relationships. She admitted to some lesbian dalliances, including a one-night stand with Greta Garbo. She later described Garbo as masculine but a "charming and tender lover". Despite all this, she considered herself neither lesbian nor bisexual:
"I had a lot of fun writing 'Marion Davies' Niece' [an article about Pepi Lederer], leaving the lesbian theme in question marks. All my life it has been fun for me. When I am dead, I believe that film writers will fasten on the story that I am a lesbian... I have done lots to make it believable [...] All my women friends have been lesbians. But that is one point upon which I agree positively with [Christopher] Isherwood: There is no such thing as bisexuality. Ordinary people, although they may accommodate themselves, for reasons of whoring or marriage, are one-sexed. Out of curiosity, I had two affairs with girls – they did nothing for me."
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