Dance in America From Broadway
to Hollywood Films
and the Concert Stage
Iris Fanger, Ph.D., theater and dance critic
American vernacular dance, beginning in the earliest theaters, was based on the talents and ingenuity of the performers rather than techniques learned in a studio. The various dance styles informed the 19th-century minstrel performances and vaudeville programs, into the entertainments of the 20th and 21st century: on Broadway, in Hollywood films and on the concert stage. Among the artists mentioned will be Fred and Adele Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Vernon and Irene Castle, George Balanchine, Agnes de Mille, Jerome Robbins, Bob Fosse, Madonna and Michael Jackson. Discussion with films.
This presentation is part of Iris Fanger's Dance in America series.
Iris Fanger
Iris Fanger
Iris Fanger is a theater and dance critic based in Boston. She has written reviews and feature articles for the Boston Herald, Boston Phoenix, The Christian Science Monitor, The New York Times and The Patriot Ledger, as well as for Dance Magazine and Dancing Times (London).
Former director of the Harvard Summer Dance Center (1977-95) she has taught at Lesley University Graduate School and Tufts University as well as Harvard and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She earned her doctorate in theater history at Tufts University and was a Bunting Fellow at Radcliffe. She received the 2005 Dance Champion Awards from the Boston Dance Alliance and, in 2008, won the Outstanding Career Achievement Award from the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Tufts. She lectures widely on dance and theater history.
Fanger has been elected a Fellow at the Massachusetts Historical Society.
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