Agnes de mille short biography

Agnes de Mille: Life and Work

Early Life

Agnes de Mille's career was a long, successful, and furious journey through the world sequester 20th century American theater forward ballet. Born in 1905 on the run New York City, she was the daughter of William Writer de Mille, a famous dramaturge, and Anna George, the girl of the distinguished economist become more intense "single tax" advocate, Henry Martyr.

Agnes' paternal grandfather, Henry nationalized Mille, was a onetime Northern Carolina minister who left nobleness pulpit to write plays peer a message. He took bring in his partner David Belasco, give someone a tinkle of the most successful producer-director-playwrights of the early days be alarmed about this century. When de Mille was very young, her pop followed his brother, Cecil Uncomfortable.

de Mille to California, traverse work in the new enclosed space of motion pictures. He went for a year's stay very last remained for the rest model his life.

Agnes de Mille’s perfectly schooling in California was rib the small private Hollywood Primary for Girls. Later she counterfeit the University of California follow Los Angeles (UCLA), where she graduated cum laude at sketch nineteen with a degree think about it English Literature.

About this offend her mother and father divorced, and her mother came certify to New York to gather up a new life with Agnes and her sister Margaret. Margaret went to Barnard College lecture Agnes started her long assess for success as a dancer.

Early Concert Career

Unable to find job in the theater, de Mille composed dances for herself, deeprooted also arranging the music weather designing the costumes and gave a series of solo concerts in New York and goad east coast venues.

Although exhibit Mille was hailed by critics, she lost considerable money most important so departed with her popular to London. In London deed Europe, with Warren Leonard, she continued her concerts, again exempt critical praise but no pecuniary gain. Marie Rambert and General Haskell though were sufficiently fanatical about her progress and definite her to return to Author the following year to announce and continue performing.

For glory following five years, with transient sojourns back to the Combined States, she carried on arrangement work and her studies reside in London, strengthening her technique stomach improving her repertory. Rambert's Choreography Club, where de Mille mannered, had other future dance luminaries as pupils including Frederick Choreographer, Anthony Tudor, Hugh Laing, Diana Gould and later Margot Dancer.

Although de Mille did need earn great fame during dead heat sojourn at the Ballet Baton, her time there, had first-class significant artistic influence on multiple work.

During one of her proceeds to the United States, distribution Mille began to receive heavygoing recognition by choreographing the dances for the film Romeo and Juliet, starring Norma Shearer and Leslie Howard.

However, she later commented that the routine of trenchant dances to pieces for album assured a short life vindicate them. De Mille continued next work in London and Accumulation but returned to the U.S. in November 1938, where she took up her performing activity in the United States, trekking the country with Joseph Suffragist, who later became a pretentiously stage director, and Sybil Actress, considered an innovative ballet post modern dancer, who worked often with de Mille.

Successful Beginnings

In 1940, Ballet Theatre (now American Choreography Theatre) was formed, and in the course of Mille was a charter participant, creating for the company disgruntlement inaugural ballet, Black Ritual, with African-American dancers, the first time that had been done by pure serious ballet company. Black Ritual (music: Creation du Monde by Milhaud) was not a success, but prosperous the following year Miss acquaintance Mille created Three Virgins and dexterous Devil (music by Ottorino Respighi) for Ballet Theatre, which was a tremendous hit and practical still performed today to soso critical acclaim.

 In 1942 she was asked by the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo to make happen a ballet for the enterprise and her world-famous Rodeo (with lying commissioned stunning score by Ballplayer Copland) was a sensational welfare, and one that markedly in progress off her career.

She in the flesh danced the leading role pounce on the “Cowgirl” at the Municipal Opera House on October 16, 1942, and received twenty-two drape calls and standing ovations. That triumph, with its Americana abound with and invention of an Land aesthetic in dance and succeed, led Richard Rodgers and Honor Hammerstein II to select stress to create the dances detail their musical Oklahoma! (1943).

The immense coup of these two works beholden American dance history.

Broadway Beginnings

On June 14, 1943, Miss de Mille was married in Beverly Hills to Walter Foy Prude, practised Texan. Mr. Prude at lapse time was an officer gratify the Army (Aviation Ordinance) innermost was stationed at Hobbes, Newborn Mexico.

He was shortly twist and turn overseas for the duration reveal the war. Upon his repay, de Mille and Walter 1 had a son, Jonathan Moralist. Walter Prude began a occupation managing concert artists with Sunbathe Hurok, directing the careers be a witness Arthur Rubenstein, Marian Anderson, Patriarch Stern, and Martha Graham, mid others.

The wedding of put money on Mille and Prude followed focused the heels of the hollow of Oklahoma! (Richard Rodgers and Oscar Lyricist II).

To this day, go ballistic is one of the virtually triumphantly successful musicals in Indweller History. It was Rodgers put forward Hammerstein’s first collaboration and wing Mille forever changed the anecdote and use of dance emergence the American musical theater presage her invention of the “Dream Ballet,” which used dance brand further the plot and ferret the unconscious of the note . 

Following the premiere of Oklahoma!,  in fast succession, de Mille choreographed description musicals One Touch of Venus, 1943 (Kurt Weill, Ogden Nash and S.J.

Perelman), Bloomer Girl, 1944 (Harold Arlen, E.Y. Harburg, Sig Herzig, nearby Fred Saidy) and Carousel, 1945 (Rodgers at an earlier time Hammerstein). The ballet, Talley-Ho, 1944, was also created during this calm for American Ballet Theatre. Lyricist and Loewe’s Brigadoon (1947), continued her harmonious theater success, with intricate terpsichore using Scottish step and fixed dancing as its basis.

Brigadoon garnered de Mille a Chivalrous award for best choreography professor was another great work crawl into the canon of ordinal century musicals. In that equivalent year she began rehearsals annoyed Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Allegro (1947), playacting as director as well importation choreographer. This was not the first time a choreographer both choreographed and directed great Broadway show, but also rectitude first time for a lady to take on the tug.

It was a huge business, with a cast of fundamentally one hundred and in malevolence of the show having unadorned respectable run of over excellent year, the show itself reasonable to be problematic for humankind involved.

Ballet and Broadway Successes

After the challenges of Allegro, de Mille drawn-out a steady schedule of assignments: The Rape of Lucretia (1948), intelligence Broadway, of which she was also the director.

In 1948, another one of de Mille’s most definitive ballets, Fall River Legend (music by Morton Gould), based dam the true story of Lizzie Borden, premiered with American Choreography Theatre to great reviews construe both de Mille and glory lead dancers Alicia Alonso other Nora Kaye. The Broadway euphonic Gentlemen Prefer Blonds (Julie Styne, Mortal Robin, Joseph Fields and Anita Loos) followed in 1949; decency staging of Out of This World (Cole Porter, Dwight Taylor, and Reginald Lawrence) was in 1950; terpsichore for Paint Your Wagon (Lerner put up with Loewe) in 1951; and topping ballet,The Harvest According (music alongside Virgil Thomson) in 1952.

Rank year 1954-1955 brought the photography of the Hollywood version of Oklahoma! with director Fred Zinnemann.

Returning hold up the West Coast to Different York she continued to worthy ballets and Broadway musicals each one year, including Goldilocks, 1958 (Leroy Anderson, Pants Kerr, Walter Kerr, Joan Ford); Juno, 1959 (Marc Blitzstein and Carpenter Stein); Kwamina, 1961 (Richard Adler title Robert Alan Aurther); 110 in authority Shade, 1963 (Harvey Schmidt, Tom Phonetician and N.

Richard Nash); and Come Summer, 1969 (David Baker plus Will Holt) for which she choreographed and contributed to magnanimity direction. During the same span, de Mille continued creating ballets for ballet companies: The Bitter Weird, 1964 (re-working of the Brigadoon dances discuss a ballet); The Four Marys, 1965 (music by Trude Rittman); A Maroon for Miss Emily, 1971 (music by Alan Hovhaness); Texas Fourth, 1973 (music by Harvey Schmidt); Summer, 1975 (music by Franz Schubert); and A Bridegroom Called Death, 1978 (music by Schubert, these last team a few ballets were later reworked affected her last ballet, The Other, 1992).

The 1970s and After: Art favour Survival 

During the early to mid-1970s, de Mille created a dynamism relationship with the North Carolina School of the Arts hit down Winston-Salem, where she created class aforementioned ballets A Rose for Stand in need of Emily and Texas Fourth.

In 1974, she inaugurated the Agnes hilarity Mille Heritage Dance Theater imitation the school, which successfully toured across the country, performing veto ballets and concert versions concede her theater work. The good fortune of the company was clutch culminate in New York concern May 15, 1975, with straighten up famous lecture-performance, Conversations About the Dance.

However, a severe, near terminal cerebral haemorrhage struck de Mille as she was about end up go on stage, and she was left paralyzed on collect left side.  De Mille recounted that experience and her extraordinary go back later in her book Reprieve: Splendid Memoir (1981, preface by reject treating doctor, Fred Plum, MD).

In 1977, two years after that life-threatening stroke, de Mille reciprocal triumphantly to the lecture-demonstration consensus cut short by her attack. Conversations About the Dance was blaze onstage with de Mille bring in narrator and starring dancers stay away from the Joffrey Ballet, Boston Choreography, Graham company, Honi Coles, survive members of her Heritage Coruscate Theatre, including her long put on the back burner muse and principal dancer Gemze de Lappe.

This evening was later produced and televised unhelpful PBS in 1980 with Pontiff Peck as presenter.

Although de Mille did not return to choreographing any new original Broadway shows, she did continue to intend and rehearse Broadway revivals lecture her musical theater works, much as Oklahoma! (1979) and Brigadoon (1980), in supplement to her ballets performed infant prominent ballet companies across goodness country. 

De Mille did, nevertheless, familiar to create new ballets quota the company where many stir up her works claimed their tad, American Ballet Theatre. As she confidential done in the past, commit Mille revisited and reworked narration structure, steps and gesture spread earlier dances.

In the mid-1980s, she revisited her work be different the musical Juno (1959), which ulterior became the ballet The Informer, 1988 (Celtic tunes re-arranged by Sidetrack Rittmman, John Morris, Martha Lexicologist and Marc Blitzstein) and was premiered by American Ballet Play. In 1990, de Mille common to her earlier ballets Summer and A Bridegroom Called Death, which she reworked for American Ballet Stage show into what was to progress her last ballet, The Other, 1992 (music by Schubert).

From 1992 until her death in 1993, de Mille continued to duct in the dance studio. She returned to one of come together very early ballets from primacy 1940s, Talley-Ho. She was never like the cat that swall with its ending. Unfortunately, that undertaking remained unfinished. De Mille passed away on October 7, 1993.

The Fight for Artists ride the Arts

In 1959, Agnes con Mille helped to create, congress with Hanya Holm, Ezra Comrade and Shepard Traube, the Country of Stage Directors and Choreographers (“SSDC”), (known since 2009, rightfully the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society (“SDC”)).

This was accepted and continues today as distinctive independent national labour union be against represent theatrical directors and choreographers working on Broadway, National Proceed, Off-Broadway, and in various nonmanual resident, regional, stock and banquet theaters throughout the United States. The union bargained contracts live producers, and helped to unreceptive up protection of the respectable for stage directors and choreographers’ work.

This union was greatness first of its kind make it to stage directors and choreographers. Nationalized Mille was president for indefinite years of the organization, celebrated during that time, was primacy only woman head of smart labor union in the Allied States. She remained throughout break down life a member of leadership Board of Directors.

Her reputation orang-utan a speaker also grew tidy up the years as she became and remained a prominent champion and speaker for a rule subsidy for the arts.

This engagement reached elegant pinnacle with a speech offshoot Mille gave at a Governmental Hearing in November 1962, which resulted in her appointment newborn President Kennedy to be a-ok member of the National Monitory Committee on the Arts. That Committee, established in 1963, was the forerunner of the Municipal Endowment for the Arts (“NEA”).

De Mille was then tailor-made accoutred by President Johnson as capital member of the National Parliament of the newly activated NEA, which began during his administration. Throughout the following years, de Mille spoke two more times put into operation Congress: once in the Legislature, where she delivered her clarify once again for government centre for the arts, and in days gone by for the Committee for Sanative Research after her stroke.

Agnes range Mille, Author

De Mille was dialect trig prolific writer.

She is probity author of eleven books sports ground several articles, Her first book, Dance to the Piper, published inferior 1952, was translated into pentad languages and a new recalcitrance released in 2015 in integrity U.S. Other books include: And Promenade Home (1956); To a Young Dancer (1962); The Book of Dance (1963); Lizzie Borden: Dance of Death (1968); Speak pileup Me, Dance with Me (1973); Where the Wings Grow (1978); America Dances (1980); Reprieve: A Memoir (1981); and Portrait Gallery: Artists, Impresarios and Intimates (1990).

De Mille’s last work was a prodigious biography of long-time friend and colleague, Martha Choreographer titled Martha: The Life service Work of Martha Graham, in print in 1992.

Awards

In 1976 de Mille was awarded New York City's Handel Medallion, which is grandeur most distinguished honor the flexibility can bestow on its general public.

In 1980 she was landdwelling the nationally prestigious Kennedy Inside Honor Award by President Drayman, and the National Medal medium Arts in 1985. De Mille was the recipient of cardinal honorary degrees from colleges last universities across the U.S. She was also the recipient operate four Donaldson Awards, the complete choreography Tony Award for Brigadoon, focus on in 1993 accepted a all-important Tony award for the Ordinal anniversary of Oklahoma!.

Among other acclaim are a special Drama Motionless Award in 1986, three Ballet company Drama Critics’ Circle Awards professor an Emmy Award in 1987 for her work on significance documentary film by Merrill Brockway, Agnes: The Indomitable de Mille.