Six Degrees of Cole Porter

By Claire Willett

Cole Porter

“Six Degrees of Separation” is a statistical theory model which suggests that every human being on earth is connected to every other human being on earth through no more than six other people. That is beyond the scope of this undertaking, so we’re going to stick with its far-less-weighty spinoff, the pop-culture parlor game “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon,” which adapts this model to suggest that any Hollywood actor can be connected to movie star Kevin Bacon through no more than six movies. Bacon, a true Renaissance man (actor, director, musician, writer, producer) is a prolific Hollywood workhorse with over 70 movies to his name, in many different genres, which means has amassed a staggering array of celebrity co-stars, which is why the game works.

Kevin Bacon in Footloose

You may be skeptical. “Sure, it would work with Rob Lowe or Demi Moore,” you say, “but what about someone like, say, Orson Welles?”

Orson Welles

Easy! Orson Welles was in the original Casino Royale with Ursula Andress who was in Clash of the Titans with Laurence Olivier who was in Dracula with Frank Langella who was in Frost/Nixon with Kevin Bacon. BACON SCORE = 4.

Kevin Bacon is all well and good, but if we want to talk about the ultimate Renaissance man we must go back to singer/songwriter/pianist/musical theatre composer/social butterfly Cole Porter, who seemed to know every even remotely famous person in the first half of the 20th century. The hottest silver screen stars sang and danced in his films and Broadway shows; celebrity composers and artists hung out at his lavish cocktail parties. He defined an entire era with his witty lyrics and champagne-sparkling melodies, and the reverberations of his impact on popular music and culture are still felt today. Was there anyone worth knowing in 1920’s Paris that Cole Porter never shared a drink with? Not by my reckoning. In honor of our upcoming Cole Porter-themed ballet “Eyes On You,” I’d like to test that theory with a little game called “Six Degrees of Cole Porter.” Stop scrolling as you make your guesses - the solution is right below the image.  (If you figure out a way to get there in fewer moves, post it in the comments.)

Ready? Let’s play!

6 MOVES: Black Swan star Natalie Portman 

Natalie Portman in Black Swan

**NATALIE PORTMAN SOLUTION**

Natalie Portman was in Closer with Julia Roberts who was in Ocean’s Eleven with Elliott Gould who was in The Muppet Movie with James Coburn who was in Charade with Cary Grant who was in The Philadelphia Story with Jimmy Stewart who was in Born To Dance with a score by Cole Porter.

5 MOVES: Film and Musical Theatre Actor Hugh Jackman 

Hugh Jackman

**HUGH JACKMAN SOLUTION**


Hugh Jackman did voice-over work for Happy Feet with Robin Williams who was in Dead Poet’s Society with Robert Sean Leonard who stars on House with Hugh Laurie who was in Jeeves and Wooster written by PG Wodehouse who wrote the book to Anything Goes with Cole Porter.

4 MOVES: First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt

First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt

**ELEANOR ROOSEVELT SOLUTION**

 

Eleanor Roosevelt was married to Franklin Delano Roosevelt who was succeeded in the Oval Office by Harry Truman whose Secretary of State was Dean Acheson who was roommates at Harvard Law School with Cole Porter.

3 MOVES: Fashion Designer Coco Chanel 

Coco Chanel

**COCO CHANEL SOLUTION**

 

Coco Chanel had an affair with Igor Stravinsky who composed Firebird for the Ballets Russe who were once hired to perform at an extravagant private ball in Venice by Cole Porter.

2 MOVES: Who’s the Boss star Tony Danza 

Tony Danza

**TONY DANZA SOLUTION**

 

Tony Danza was in the Laughing With the Presidents TV special with Bob Hope who was in Red, Hot and Blue written by Cole Porter.

1 MOVE: Fred Astaire 

Fred Astaire

**FRED ASTAIRE SOLUTION**

Fred Astaire starred in Gay Divorce written by Cole Porter.

Want to take a stab at it? Try connecting Cole Porter and OBT Artistic Director Christopher Stowell. Yes, it can be done, we’ve tested it! The first person who posts a comment below doing it in the fewest number of moves by April 15th (feel free to be creative!) will win a pair of tickets to Song & Dance. Post your ideas below in the comments!

My Own First Firebird

by OBT Historian Linda Besant


(This is an excerpt from Béjart's Firebird, performed by the National Ballet of China for its 50th anniversary in 2009)


I was twenty-five and all by myself in Budapest when I saw my first ballet performance. I had worked as a music teacher in the Beaverton schools for four years after college, pinching every penny, living on Ramen noodles and sharing an old house in Tigard with four other young people (rent and utilities--$32 a month), saving for a fifteen-month grand adventure. In June of 1972, I set out solo around the world, with my bicycle, $3,000 in traveler's checks, and a Pan Am air mileage plane ticket.

By January, having sold my bike in Switzerland when it got too snowy to keep riding, I was in Hungary. I stayed in the old castle above the Danube that had been pressed into service as a hostel, with hundreds of Hungarians who were living there, waiting years for apartments of their own, their possessions in boxes under the beds. We communicated in sentences patched together with whatever English, German and French we had in common. Gradually, they led me to understand that the thing to do in Budapest if you could scrape together the money was go to the rush ticket box office in the afternoon and wait in line for the ticket drawing. Who knew what unsold seat in a theater somewhere in town might be yours for what, to me, was about 35 cents?

So I found myself one afternoon in a line quite like the morning lines for bread. When my turn came, my luck landed me a back-row-of-the-highest-tier ticket to see Maurice Béjart's Ballet of the 20th Century perform an iconic double bill: Stravinsky's Firebird and The Rite of Spring. What a wild introduction to ballet!


Here's an excerpt from Béjart's 1959 Rite of Spring, filmed in 1970.



Tell me: What was your first Firebird?

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Your Daily Dance Break: Paul DeStrooper interprets Firebird

Paul Destrooper, who is quoted in our post about the creation of OBT's Firebird and was Prince Ivan in the premiere of OBT's version, retired from OBT at the end of the 2006-07 season to become artistic director of Ballet Victoria in Canada. He has choreographed his own Firebird. See what he's been up to in this excerpt:

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LOOKING BACK AT THE FIRST FIREBIRD

by OBT Historian Linda Besant

The original Firebird premiered in 1910 for Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes in Paris. For nearly twenty years, from 1909 to 1929, Diaghilev’s company of primarily Russian-trained dancers performed radical new ballets that gave equal expression to all the arts involved.

Diaghilev and his Ballets Russes were among the greatest fruits of an extraordinary era. Historian Nina Lederman described “a great diaspora of intellectuals” to Paris in the early 1900s. A “generous portion of the world’s great artists” swirled through, and Diaghilev showered them with opportunities to collaborate in creating exciting dance, productions called ballets that actually had more in common with what we now term “modern dance.”



(For example, the original Firebird princesses danced in bare feet and Ivan walked naturally, not like a danseur noble; the Firebird herself did not use turnout, and Kachei’s monsters cavorted with grotesque jumps and squats.)

Firebird was among the first creations of the Ballets Russes. Michel Fokine was Diaghilev’s chosen choreographer during this period, but Stravinsky was Diaghilev’s second choice to compose Firebird. (First choice Liadov did not deliver in time.) Stravinsky was paid 100 rubles for the score, about the price of a Diet Coke in St. Petersburg these days.

Stravinsky and Fokine worked closely together on the ballet, weaving together elements from several Russian folk tales into a story with old symbols but a new outcome—total liberation from evil. Fokine described their process, improvising and refining toward the finished score and choreography:

“Stravinsky visited me with his first sketches and basic ideas, he played them for me, I demonstrated the scenes to him . . . When Ivan appears at the garden wall . . .
Stravinsky played, and I interpreted the role . . . substituting the piano for the wall.
I climbed over it, jumped down from it, and crawled, fear-struck, looking around my living room . . . Stravinsky, watching, accompanied me with patches of the melodies . . .
playing mysterious tremolos as background.”

For his part, in the autobiography Chronicles of My Life, Stravinsky wrote how his musical ideas “worked themselves loose” by improvisation at the piano. He likened improvising composers to a restless animals—“they feel the desire to seek for something.”

Of his choreography for Firebird, Fokine wrote,

“I completely excluded the stereotyped hand pantomime and ballet gesticulations for the development of the plot on the stage and expressed the story with actions and dance.”

Monsters crawled and rolled rather than advancing in symmetrical lines; the Firebird twisted and fluttered to escape from Ivan. (Fokine said her “arms would now open up like wings, now hug the torso and head, in complete contradiction of all ballet arm positions.")

Firebird was told non-stop—not once did the story pause for displays of virtuoso dancing.

Tamara Karsavina danced the first Firebird. Anna Pavlova was slated for the role, but found the music incomprehensible and refused to dance it. The great Vaslav Nijinsky wanted to premiere the Firebird role en pointe, but Diaghilev did not permit it. Fokine himself was the first Ivan.

Critic John Martin wrote that the original Firebird “ . . . was a magical work in its day, unlike anything we had ever seen.”

The Ballets Russes premiered Firebird, Petrouchka and The Rite of Spring in almost yearly succession between 1910 and 1913, all composed by Stravinsky. As Lederman wrote,

“They established the one-act ballet as an important new form in music theater. Stravinsky… is the age … a force of utmost immediacy that has pierced our ears, extended their range, re-formed our appetites.”

Oregon Ballet Theatre is pleased to have generated its own Firebird and The Rite of Spring with acclaimed choreographers Yuri Possokhov and Christopher Stowell. With the commission of Nicolo Fonte to create a new Petrouchka for OBT’s 2011-12 season, the company will complete an historic trilogy.

More posts about The Stravinsky Project | Buy Tickets to The Stravinsky Project

Notes:

Stravinsky in the Theatre, Ed. Nina Lederman. Pellegrini and Cudahy, 1949.
Lecture: Stravinsky’s Firebird, Joni Steshko. Portland State University, 2003.
Fokine: memoirs of a ballet master, Michel Fokine. Trans. Vitale Fokine. 1969
Stravinsky, Frank Onnen. Continental Books Company, Stockholm, 1958.
Dance Classics: A Viewers Guide to the Best-Loved Ballets and Modern Dances, Nancy
Reynolds and Susan Reimer-Torn, a capella books, 1991.
Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes, Boris Kochno. Harper and Row, 1970.