Your Daily Dance Break: Battle of the Giselles - Not just for the ladies

Giselle is not just all about the ladies. Albrecht, Giselle's prince disguised as a peasant, is one of ballet's most prized roles for men. Barishnykov shows us how it's done, cause 'ya know, he's a DECENT dancer.

Enjoyed your week of Carmen? Loving the week of Giselle? Get ready for the battle royale of vixens vs. ingenues next week!

Your Daily Dance Break: Battle of the Giselles - Alina Cojacaru

Rounding out the Giselle pack is Alina Cojacaru in her Wili Pas De Deux with Johan Kobborg. Thoughts? Which Giselle is your favorite so far?

Enjoyed your week of Carmen? Loving the week of Giselle? Get ready for the battle royale of vixens vs. ingenues next week!

Your Daily Dance Break: Battle of the Giselles - Allesandra Ferri

For the next Giselle contender, we are moving to Act II where she's been transformed into an ethereal Wili (a jilted bride ghost that kills men in the forest at night, obviously). Allesandra Ferri makes one gorgeous ghost.

Enjoyed your week of Carmen? Loving the week of Giselle? Get ready for the battle royale of vixens vs. ingenues next week!

Hello! We've Moved!

Just a quick note to let you know that the Oregon Ballet Theatre blog has moved over to Wordpress.

You'll find the latest Daily Dance Breaks, behind the scenes rehearsal reports and saucy fun social media contests over here.

Thanks!

Your Daily Dance Break: Battle of the Giselles - Svetlana Zakharova

Next up is Svetlana Zakharova's interpretation of Giselle. Spoiler Alert: She goes crazy.

Enjoyed your week of Carmen? Loving the week of Giselle? Get ready for the battle royale of vixens vs. ingenues next week!

Team Carmen vs. Team Giselle: The Tragic Heroine Throwdown Begins!

The super-secret social media project we've been working on for weeks is finally ready for launch, and boy are we excited.  Without further ado, OBT presents . . .

THE TRAGIC HEROINE THROWDOWN!

It's going to be so epic.  Click this link to play!

Your Daily Dance Break: Carmen, Flamenco Style

Here's a quick, colorful, flamenco variation of Carmen to brighten up your Friday.

Enjoyed your week of Carmen? Next week, we'll cross over to the sweethearts and ingenues side for a week of Giselles we have loved...

Your Daily Dance Break: Carmen Shows Her Vixen Side

This almost NSFW (not safe for work) version features a very sexy Carmen reminding us all that "sweet and innocent" was never a Carmen strong suit.

Happy Birthday Martha Graham!

People the world over are celebrating the 117th birthday of legendary modern dance innovator Martha Graham thanks to a clever motion-capture Google logo.

Check it out below:



You can sneak a peak at the process that created the Google logo here:



Here's a video of Martha in the iconic dance film Appalachian Spring.



Got a great Martha memory or quote to share? Do tell.

Two Truths and a Lie

We've been doing a little research on Georges Bizet (composer of Carmen) and we have uncovered some absolutely too good to be true tidbits about him... exactly the sort of racy gossip you would expect of the man who composed the world's most successful opera featuring a decidedly amoral female protagonist.

Some of the tidbits are so unbelievable, in fact, that we'd like to test you to see if you can spot the fiction versus the facts.

Ready to play Two Truths and a Lie: the Classical Edition?


Here we go:

• Although Bizet's death certificate claimed his death was by  congestive heart failure, the real reason he died was because he was challenged to a icy swimming duel by the illegitimate son of French composer Charles Valentin-Alkan.
• When he was 23, Bizet got himself into a bit of a scrape when it was revealed the Bizet family maid was with child. The family tried to claim that the father was George's dad, Adolphe, but later it was discovered that it was really little Georgie who did the deed.
• The Opera Comique (where Carmen debuted) were horrified by what a "debauched" character Carmen was. The Opera's box seats were often used by prospective parents to interview their future daughters-in-law and it was thought that racy, fiery, definitely not ladylike Carmen would give these young women the wrong idea.

What do you think the real story is? Identify the lie correctly in the comments below and you'll be entered to win tickets to Petrouchka/Carmen!

Your Daily Dance Break: Carmen... with a cigar

Continuing our week of Carmens, we present you with:

Shiny skirts, big black balls and Carmen with a cigar... delicious.

Your Daily Dance Break: A Ballet Bullfight

Christopher Stowell will be choreographing an all new world-premiere ballet set to the music of Bizet's Carmen. Will it be set in Spain? He won't say. Will Carmen be a cigarette factory girl? He won't say. He will say that he and Nicolo Fonte (choreographing the world premiere Petrouchka that will share the same program with Carmen) will be creating ballets that are nothing like any Carmen or Petrouchka you've ever seen.

That sounded like a challenge to us. So all this week we'll be giving you the opportunity to sample some other ballet versions of Carmen so that you will be able to truly assess whether Christopher's vision is "unlike anything you've ever seen."

For starters, we'll show you the bullfight scene from russian ballerina Maya Plisetskaya's Carmen.

SPOILER ALERT: If you don't want to know what happens to Carmen at the end, don't watch the last two minutes...

Top SECRET: In Search of a Few Good Hams

We could use a few good hams willing to look a little silly and fun for a great cause. It's for a social media project we are doing this summer.

Got a few hours to spare tomorrow (Saturday)? Want to earn a pair of tickets to the ballet? Read on.

What: Super Top Secret Video Social Media Project
When: Saturday, May 7th, 2011
Time: 9 am to 11 am
Location: OBT Studios, 818 SE Morrison
Details: Wear office casual attire (no white or bright red, think something a dull that a cubicle dweller might wear), regular dress casual shoes. Come prepared to learn a super simple choreography. Your two hours of participation with us will earn you a pair of tickets to the show of your choice next season!

Finished project will be part of a YouTube/Facebook/blog social media project that will be posted this summer in July and August. Come make ballet magic with us!

Your Daily Dance Break: The First Lady Helps Kids Get Moving!

This just in from The Daily Swarm: Michelle Obama teams up with Beyonce to get school kids dancing... and gets caught dancing herself! What a tremendous program and what a brave First Lady!

Enter to Win Season Tickets!

Would you rather kill for love or die for love?

That's the question at the heart of our 2011/2012 season.

Bizet's Carmen puts a lover in harm's way just so another lover can prove his worth...

Stravinsky's Petrouchka risks it all for love and loses...

Giselle's heart bursts before she will take revenge on a lover who betrays her...

Fortunately for you, neither murder nor suicide is needed to score FREE season tickets to the ballet!

All you need to do is click here to sign up for our e-newsletter by creating or updating your online account with us.

(The link will take you to a Ticketmaster sign up page. Don't worry, all it does is put your email address and preferences into our system so we can keep you up to date on all the bloody backstage goodness.)

On June 30th we'll choose one lucky e-news subscriber to win a pair of season tickets. Ready? Set? WIN.

“People Like a Little Glamour”

   

Lifelong musical theatre geek Claire Willett interviews Christopher Stowell about her all-time favorite work in the OBT rep: Stowell’s sparkling, sexy, witty Cole Porter ballet Eyes On You.

Christopher Stowell. Photo by Joni Kabana.

What inspired Eyes On You?  How did you come up with the idea?

Well, the practical reason was doing something to recording [because of] not having finances for live music for that program.  We opened in the Newmark that year because of The Lion King, we got kicked out of the Keller . . . so there was no orchestra for that program . . . I needed to make a new ballet and I couldn’t use live music.  And my thing with recorded music is, if it’s a great, famous, vintage recording, and it’s something we can’t recreate now, then it’s fine.  Like, we had done Paul Taylor’s Company B, which is all Andrews Sisters recordings, so of course you do the recordings, you know – those are the people!  You know what I mean?  So I was looking for a composer that was fun, and that there were interesting recordings of their work, and I liked the idea of vocals in the program.  And then it took a turn when Pamela South said, “Oh my God, I love those songs, I would love to sing them,” and I said, “Well, we don’t have any money for you,” and she said, “Well, let’s not worry about that.”  But I had already gotten attached to some recordings, so I said, “How about we alternate between vintage recordings and live?”  Which is actually kind of cool, I think.

So were you, like, a lifelong Cole Porter fan?  I know you’re kind of an old-movies buff . . .

Not particularly Cole Porter – I discovered actually a lot of songs that I knew, that I didn’t –

That you didn’t know were Cole Porter?

Exactly, and I think we all do that, you know?  Like, “Oh, I love that song, who wrote that?  Cole Porter.”  You could say that about, like, eight hundred times.  He wrote ‘em all.  (Laughs) I don’t remember, but it’s possible that I was not even attached to necessarily Cole Porter strictly in the beginning, but then I saw the wealth of great songs.  And what’s really good is that there are a lot of recordings that are not all the same – they’re not all from the same period, they’re not all necessarily sung.  Like, “Begin the Beguine” in the ballet is a non-vocal version.  “Night and Day” is usually a slow song, but the recording we have of it is fast.  So you can have all Cole Porter but you can also have it from different eras and different approaches. 

Who picked the music?

I picked all the recordings myself, and then picked songs where I couldn’t find  . . . recordings that were danceable, or that I felt like were going to fit in, and those were the things Pamela ended up singing because we could adjust the tempo, take out the bridge, or whatever.

Christopher Stowell's Eyes On You. Photo by Blaine Truitt Covert.

One of the things that really struck me the first time I saw it was how cinematic it feels, with the “The End” marquee and the costumes – was that a deliberate choice or did it evolve as you were working?

I honestly don’t remember exactly the route to that particular idea.  What I do remember is just liking the idea of some stereotypical characters, or notions, or situations that happen in those Hollywood movie musicals of the 30’s and 40’s.  Like, there’s frequently a bellhop, and there’s often girls that are secretaries on their lunch break.  And Latin locales, themes and rhythms were really popular then, so, you know, non-Latin people doing rhumbas and sambas and feeling really sexy is also in all of those movies, frequently.  So there’s that in there.  The actual marquee – I think that the very first image I had that included the seats was being ironic and starting at the end of something.  And what would people be going to in the 30’s and 40’s?  They’d be going to the movies.

You mentioned the rhumbas and the sambas, and there are so many different other kinds of non-ballet dance that are sort of incorporated throughout –

Yeah, I guess because it’s natural to those rhythms to want to move in a social dance way.  I have actually no social dance training, so everything that’s in there I made up based on some feeling of, like, “Isn’t this kind of like one of those things?”  (Laughs)  There was one social dance that I had somebody teach me and I can’t remember who it was – it’s in “Begin the Beguine,” the main step in that –

That one’s legit?

Yeah, that one’s legit.  The rest I made up.

It’s like the Christopher Stowell version of a foxtrot.

Exactly.  If you wiggle your hips, it’s a mambo.  (Laughs)  

Alison Roper and Ronnie Underwood in Christopher Stowell's Eyes On You. Photo by Blaine Truitt Covert

 

So what’s your choreographic process for a work like this?  Anne talked about it a little in her interview from her perspective as a dancer; what’s it like from your end?

Well, this one in particular, the structure of it was comforting, or non-scary, in that it’s episodic – it’s a bunch of numbers.  And each number – there should be an arc, but it doesn’t have to be an arc of logic, it needs to be an arc of aesthetic or style, or at least highs and lows that feel like you’re on a little bit of a journey or whatever, but they’re each separate numbers.  So I thought, “Who are the principal characters in this?” and then assigned the characters and the dancers I had in mind to particular songs.  And then that process makes me feel comfortable; it’s like not having to think about, I don’t know, like reading all of War and Peace.  It’s just a chapter, so everybody calm down.  It’s just a chapter at a time.  

Baby steps.

Exactly!  Baby steps, yeah.  And then I decided, “Okay, I’m gonna pick a song, and it’s gonna be a song that I associate with Anne, and that’s just gonna be how we get started.”  So I’d get in a room with her, with a song that I feel like is about her or for her, and just see what comes up.

Is that different from how you’d choreograph something like Rite of Spring with the bigger arc to it? 

No, actually.  Rite of Spring scared the shit out of me – unlike, you know, ten cute Cole Porter tunes.  (Laughs)  And I started the process exactly the same way, to calm myself down.

Break it into little chunks.

Break it into chunks, and get one person in the room – Anne, let’s say – and let’s make something up.  Because as soon as I have something to work with, I feel better.  When I feel like I have to come up with thirty-five minutes of steps, I’m like, “Oh my God . . .”

Anne Mueller in Christopher Stowell's Eyes On You. Photo by Blaine Truitt Covert.

When it’s like, staring you in the face and you’re like, “Holy crap.”

Yes!  Exactly.  So it’s like, “Okay, let’s make two steps, and then we’ll make four steps . . .”

One of the things I like about Eyes on You is that it’s so funny – I feel like that’s something that comes through in a lot of the works in our rep.  Is that something that you like in your work?

Yeah, definitely.  I do like to do that.  But I like to mostly make situations that can be funny, and not say, “Here, do this gag,” and “Here, do that gag,” overtly.  There are some gags in this – there are, but they need to be done subtly.  I didn’t want it packed with one spit-take after another.  Like, that’s too much.

Slapstick.

Slapstick, yeah.  But it also makes sense with both the music and the aesthetic that inspired the thing, because those movies often were comedies, so I like the funny situation more than the fall-down-on-your-face stuff.

Did you watch a lot of the old 40’s movies when you were a kid?  Did you grow up with that aesthetic?

Fred Astaire movies, for sure.  Fred and Ginger stuff.  My father is a huge fan of all of those movies – Gene Kelly, the whole genre.  Yeah.  So I did grow up seeing those.  But then I actually got my hands on – I can’t remember what they were now – some movies that I did not know that were Cole Porter scores.  And that was actually helpful because they were kind of obscure, so, I mean, they were probably fun at the time but they’re not classics, you know what I mean?  But it gave me some insight into different situations than the ones we remember all the time.  They were so specific, you know – they did a lot of, like, they’re in a war, or they’re stuck in Panama . . .

The catalog is just huge.

Yeah.

The number of things he wrote –

They must have churned them out, those movies.  Like, make it in two weeks, boom, let’s go.

Did you do musical theatre as a kid?

Nope.  I would have been happy to, though.  I acted a little bit when I was a kid, before I started ballet, in school.  I did do Annie, Get Your Gun.  Yes.  I was Little Jake in Annie, Get Your Gun.  If I’d had any kind of voice I would have preferred doing that, frankly.  Way more fun.

More fun than ballet?

Yeah!  Ballet’s hard!  It’s a lot of work!  (Laughs)

And there’s no jazz hands in ballet.

No jazz hands!  I know! 

Anne Mueller and company in Christopher Stowell's Eyes On You. Photo by Blaine Truitt Covert.

Eyes On You is such an audience favorite.  Why do you think people respond to it so much?

I hate to use the word “accessible,” but I think the thing that scares people sometimes about dance is “I don’t get it,” and there’s no question of not getting it, really.  Well, actually – once, I forget if it was a review or if it was someone talking to me, but they said, “I don’t get why they’re in their underwear,” and I’m like, “Uh, it’s funny.  That’s it.  That’s the end of the story.”  “Well, if they were in the movies they wouldn’t be in their underwear!” And I’m like, “Um, you’re thinking way too hard.” (Laughs)  Like, it’s madcap.  Whatever.  What was the question?  Oh, accessibility.  Right.  So, comfort level – I think it makes people relaxed, like, “I get this genre.”  I think a lot of people like a little glamour too, and it has beautiful costumes that move a lot.  And all of that also makes the dancers relax, and I think audiences get to see maybe more personality than they might in other [ballets], which is more appropriate in this, too.  And it’s very infectious music, too.  You feel yourself snapping your fingers a little bit, like, “I know the words to this song.”  It’s just fun.

What’s your favorite Cole Porter song?  Do you have a personal favorite?

My favorite recording in the show is the first one, “De-Lovely,” because it’s really, really clever – the lyrics are really clever.  You know what’s really good – it’s not in the show – is, how does it go?  (singing unintelligibly under his breath) Oh, it’s “Let’s Do It, Let’s Fall In Love.” Brilliant lyrics, so funny.  I almost used a recording of Alanis Morissette singing that [from the film De-Lovely], but it kind of fluctuates tempo a lot – so you’re like dancing dancing dancing, “Wait, why is she slowing down?” [EDITOR’S NOTE: Rather than transcribe for you the next 5 minutes where we geeked out about the De-Lovely soundtrack, I’ll just give you the link and tell you that Christopher’s favorite track is “True Love” sung by Ashley Judd, and mine is “Night and Day” sung by Kevin Kline with John Barrowman of Doctor Who and Torchwood fame.  Now back to our regularly-scheduled programming.]

So how does the process change, now that you’re doing it again with different dancers?

Honestly, with a ballet like this, it is a little – not “challenging,” but there’s another dimension to it.  Because you want, if not the same, a similar, equally effective effect, and people are different people with different bodies and different personalities.  So I probably adjust things in this more than I would in something else, because the point is the ultimate effect and not the individual steps, necessarily, or where to put the emphasis of either a gag, or a romantic look, or whatever like that. But I do get attached in something like this more than in other things, like, “You’re not doing that thing that so-and-so did that was so funny!”  But then I have to step back and go, “They can’t be that person.” And I’ve found that asking them to do something that was basically an inspired moment by one dancer, asking another dancer to do it is usually not effective.  It wouldn’t feel natural to them.

So what made you decide to bring it back for this season, and how does it fit in with the other pieces in Song & Dance?

Well, we brought it back because, you know, marketing directors are always happy.  Like, “Give me something that’s gonna sell a lot of tickets!”  (Laughs)  In this particular program – so Square Dance wasn’t on the program yet when I planned it because we added it later.  [With Left Unsaid and Speak], well, I don’t know if “heavy” is the right word, but there’s some darkness and some earthbound-ness and some seriousness about those works that needed some complementing with something light.

How did you come up with the name Eyes On You?  It’s not in any of the songs in the piece.

The naming of the piece was actually fun.  I was choreographing it during OBT Exposed!, when we had the tent in the park in the fall, and I think we showed some Cole Porter movies in the evening and had some popcorn, to sort of get people who were interested in the ballet focused on Cole Porter and the process of creating this new work.  And then I think I had to give a lecture one night, and I hadn’t come up with a name for the piece, and I said, “Well, I’ll throw it out to the audience.”  There were maybe fifty people there, and everyone wrote down their thought for a name for the piece and we collected them, and – it was actually longer, it was “Eyes on blah blah blah blah blah something,” but I read all of them, all those little slips of paper and then saw that one.  And I reduced it, edited it a little bit, and liked it, and got in touch with that person, and they got credit and free tickets to the ballet.

That’s awesome.

Yeah.  I like the title.  People have said, you know, is it “Eyes On You” or I-apostrophe-S, like “I’s on you?”  (Laughs)

It works on so many levels.

Yeah.

-----------

Song & Dance, featuring Eyes On You is at the Newmark Theatre April 21 - May 1.

more posts about Song & Dance | Buy Tickets to Song & Dance

Your Daily Dance Break: Yo Yo Ma and Lil Buck

It seems we are not the only ones creating a little classical/hip hop fusion. Check out this extraordinary video of famed cellist Yo Yo Ma collaborating with hip hop dance artist Lil Buck on a brief improvised performance piece.

We present this in honor of our sister organization Portland Center Stage's opening night performance of Opus. Break legs, guys! Or, as we say in the dance world, "Merd."

Gargouillade and Entrechat: the Filigree Footwork of Square Dance

by Linda Besant

“More steps per minute than any other show in town,” said dance writer Nancy Reynolds of Square Dance. For fifty years, audiences have been wowed by this non-stop ballet:

“Tempos that could only be called lickety-split.” (Manchester, 1958)

 “Filigree footwork that requires the most astonishing technical dexterity.” (Kaplan, 1988)

“The speed of the footwork…could be compared to breaking the four-minute mile.” (Vranish, 2007) 

Pacific Northwest Ballet principal dancers Carrie Imler and Lucien Postlewaite with company dancers in Square Dance, choreographed by George Balanchine © The George Balanchine Trust. Photo © Angela Sterling

Patricia Wilde, on whom the principal role in Square Dance was created in 1957, described Balanchine's emphasis on the foot in this kind of choreography. “From the moment it left the floor, the foot had to draw the eye to it -- we really worked on that." Under Balanchine's direction, less time was spent in plié or in preparing for a movement. "Don't sit there and have a cup of coffee," he would say, pushing for accents that were out and up. Square Dance “has a terrific bounce and a very unique drive. It was a joyous experience. Mr. B wanted it to be fun.”

Merrill Ashley, who took on Square Dance in 1977, remains among the most acclaimed ballerinas to accomplish the principal role. "The ballet was filled with fast footwork, jumps, and beats, all part of the standard classical ballet vocabulary, but the steps had to be done in a much freer and more spontaneous way than in most 'classical' ballets. A joyful I-love-to-dance approach was needed . . . Many of the steps seemed to have their own momentum, which swept me along, and I felt in perfect harmony with the music and choreography."     

OBT’s Ballet Master Lisa Kipp taught Square Dance to the company. She performed it with Ballet Chicago in the 1990s. “It’s one of my best memories, and the music is beautiful,” Lisa says, “but it was the most exhausted I ever got, ever, You have to reach down into the depths and pull something out if you’re going to get to the end of the ballet. You hit the wall and go past it. There’s a weird euphoria to that.”

Here are a couple of examples of the allegro steps and jumps in Square Dance that dancers find most challenging:

Gargouillade: (literally means gurgling or rumbling) Both legs execute a rond de jambe in l’air (circle of the legs in the air) almost simultaneously, while the body is in the air. “Like a kitten with tape stuck to its paws,” says OBT dancer Andrea Cooper.

This video excerpt of Pacific Northwest Ballet's Square Dance rehearsal shows Carrie Imler tossing off her gargouillades with ease. She does the first gargouillade at the very beginning of the video, and the corps repeat her movement in the next moment.

Long strings of échappés interwoven with entrechats six        

Échappé: An escaping or slipping movement where the feet go from a closed to an open position, both sauté (jumping the feet apart), and sur les pointes (on the toes).

Entrechat six: Interweaving or braiding. A step of beating in which the dancer jumps into the air and rapidly crosses the legs before and behind each other.

Christopher Stowell says, “It’s not so much that these steps are hard but that there are so many of them.” Damara Bennett, Director of the School of OBT, adds, “It’s relentless, and exhilarating.”

To see demonstrations of échappé and entrachat so that you can recognize them in the finale of Square Dance, visit American Ballet Theatre's Online dance dictionary.



more posts about Song & Dance | Buy Tickets to Song & Dance

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!

Why Do We Do What We Do?

Thanks so much to everyone who helped to make Saturday Night's Moveable Feast Gala such a success! If you weren't able to join us, take a moment to check out this short video sharing why we do what we do...



If you would like to contribute to OBT's Education and Outreach opportunities, please contact Emily at emily.tucker@obt.org.