Fayard Antonio Nicholas died on January 24, 2006 at the age of 91; he was an American choreographer, dancer and actor.
Fayard Nicholas was inducted into the National Museum of Dance C.V. Whitney Hall of Fame in 2001, along with his brother.
Heading west in 1934, to Hollywood, California, Fayard and Harold appeared in the films Kid Millions (1934), The Big Broadcast (1936) and Black Network.
They made their Broadway debut in a version of the Ziegfeld Follies, alongside the likes of Bob Hope and Ethel Merman, in 1936.
That same year, while performing in Manchester, England, as part of the cast of the touring show Blackbirds, the brothers were introduced to and developed an appreciation for a number of highly regarded European ballet companies.
By the start of the 1940s, the Nicholas Brothers were international celebrities.
The two men starred in several hit films, including Stormy Weather (1943) with Cab Calloway and Lena Horne, and acquired a reputation as the finest dance team in America.
Fayard Nicholas was one-half of The Nicholas Brothers, a famous African-American tap dancing team who appeared in several movies and became one of the famous and most beloved dance team of all time.
Self-taught, Fayard learned how to dance watching vaudeville shows while their parents played in the orchestra pit.
He then would teach the routines to his younger brother.
Fayard was considered the gregarious one of the duo; Harold was more withdrawn and introspective.
The Nicholas Brothers grew up in Philadelphia, the sons of musicians who played in their own band at the old Standard Theater, their mother at the piano and father on drums.
At the age of three, Fayard was always seated in the front row while his parents worked, and by the time he was ten, he had seen most of the great black Vaudeville acts, particularly the dancers, including such notables of the time as Alice Whitman, Willie Bryant and Bill Robinson.
He was completely fascinated by them and imitated their acrobatics and clowning for the kids in his neighbourhood.
The Nicholas Brothers have headlined shows all over the world. They have appeared in every major television show, nightclub and theater in America and performed for the troops in Viet Nam in 1965.
The Nicholas Brothers have received many tributes and awards, which include: A star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, The Kennedy Center Honors (presented by President George Bush), and an honorary doctorate degree from Harvard University.
They are also proud of the some of students they have taught tap.
They include Debbie Allen, Janet Jackson, and Michael Jackson.
In April 1995, the Nicholas Brothers received the "Dance Magazine" Award around the same time as the opening of Harold's latest film, "Funny Bones", and in April 1996 they completed a very successful residency at Harvard and Radcliff as Ruth Page Visiting Artists in
Wednesday, 9 December 2015
Tuesday, 8 December 2015
Lawrence Herkimer, cheerleading innovator, Died at 89
Lawrence Russell Herkimer was born on October 14, 1925, and died on July 1, 2015.
He was an American innovator in the field of cheerleading.
Lawrence created the Herkie cheerleading jump, which was named after him, and received a patent for the pom-pom.
Lawrence described his contribution to the field as taking it "from the raccoon coat and pennant to greater heights".
He was born in Muskegon, Michigan.
As a cheerleader at Southern Methodist University, Lawrence developed what became known as the Herkie by accident while intending to perform a split jump.
The move features one arm extended straight up in the air and the other on one's hip, with one leg extended straight out, and the other bent back.
At SMU, Lawrence formed a national organization for cheerleaders and created a cheerleading-oriented magazine called Megaphone.
Lawrence started his first cheerleading camp in 1948 at Sam Houston State Teachers College (now Sam Houston State University) with 53 participants, funded with $600 he had borrowed from a friend of his father-in-law.
By the following year, enrollment had grown to 350 participants.
Shortly thereafter, Lawrence was making more money from his summer programs than he was teaching the remainder of the year at Southern Methodist, so he gave up teaching and took up the cheerleading business full-time.
His camps had as many as 1,500 instructors teaching tens of thousands of students nationwide each summer, and his Cheerleader Supply Company was successfully retailing skirts and sweaters for cheerleading squads.
Lawrence sold his cheerleading camp program in 1986 for $20 million.
It was originally purchased by the BSN Corporation, which sold it to the Prospect Group in June 1988, with Herkimer staying on to run the business.
By 1990, Lawrence expected the business to bring in $50 million in revenue.
Lawrence Herkimer passed away due to heart failure on July 1, 2015, at the age of 89, in Dallas, Texas.
He was an American innovator in the field of cheerleading.
Lawrence created the Herkie cheerleading jump, which was named after him, and received a patent for the pom-pom.
Lawrence described his contribution to the field as taking it "from the raccoon coat and pennant to greater heights".
He was born in Muskegon, Michigan.
As a cheerleader at Southern Methodist University, Lawrence developed what became known as the Herkie by accident while intending to perform a split jump.
The move features one arm extended straight up in the air and the other on one's hip, with one leg extended straight out, and the other bent back.
At SMU, Lawrence formed a national organization for cheerleaders and created a cheerleading-oriented magazine called Megaphone.
Lawrence started his first cheerleading camp in 1948 at Sam Houston State Teachers College (now Sam Houston State University) with 53 participants, funded with $600 he had borrowed from a friend of his father-in-law.
By the following year, enrollment had grown to 350 participants.
Shortly thereafter, Lawrence was making more money from his summer programs than he was teaching the remainder of the year at Southern Methodist, so he gave up teaching and took up the cheerleading business full-time.
His camps had as many as 1,500 instructors teaching tens of thousands of students nationwide each summer, and his Cheerleader Supply Company was successfully retailing skirts and sweaters for cheerleading squads.
Lawrence sold his cheerleading camp program in 1986 for $20 million.
It was originally purchased by the BSN Corporation, which sold it to the Prospect Group in June 1988, with Herkimer staying on to run the business.
By 1990, Lawrence expected the business to bring in $50 million in revenue.
Lawrence Herkimer passed away due to heart failure on July 1, 2015, at the age of 89, in Dallas, Texas.
Sunday, 6 December 2015
Fang Jing, China Central Television news anchor, Died at 44
Fang Jing was born in June 1971, and died on November 18, 2015.
She was an anchorwoman of China Central Television (CCTV).
Fang hosted several programs, including the prime-time military program Defence Watch.
In 2009, Fang came under suspicion of spying for Taiwan.
Fang started working for CCTV in 1994 after graduating from China's top school for broadcasting and spent four months at Harvard University as a visiting scholar.
She hosted a number of shows including the three day live coverage of the Transfer of sovereignty of Hong Kong and other millennium celebrations.
In 2009, Fang Jing was accused of disclosing state secrets to a man from Taiwan and receiving money from him.
Fang denied the accusation, but no longer hosted CCTV's Defence Watch program after March 1, 2009.
Fang suffered from cancer and received treatment in Taiwan, where she passed away on 18 November 2015, aged 44.
She was an anchorwoman of China Central Television (CCTV).
Fang hosted several programs, including the prime-time military program Defence Watch.
In 2009, Fang came under suspicion of spying for Taiwan.
Fang started working for CCTV in 1994 after graduating from China's top school for broadcasting and spent four months at Harvard University as a visiting scholar.
She hosted a number of shows including the three day live coverage of the Transfer of sovereignty of Hong Kong and other millennium celebrations.
In 2009, Fang Jing was accused of disclosing state secrets to a man from Taiwan and receiving money from him.
Fang denied the accusation, but no longer hosted CCTV's Defence Watch program after March 1, 2009.
Fang suffered from cancer and received treatment in Taiwan, where she passed away on 18 November 2015, aged 44.
Rodney Milnes, British opera critic, Died at 79
Rodney Milnes Blumer was born on July 26, 1936, and died on December 5, 2015.
He was an English music critic, musicologist, writer, translator and broadcaster, with a particular interest in opera.
Born in Stafford, Rodney attended Rugby School and studied history at Christ Church, Oxford University, before working in publishing.
Rodney was an opera critic of Harpers and Queen (1970 to 1990), opera critic of The Spectator (1988 to 1990), Evening Standard (1990 to 1992), and Chief Opera Critic The Times (1992 to 2002).
He was associate editor of Opera from 1976, deputy editor from 1984, and editor between 1986 to 1999.
There he honed his reputation as a "trenchant and entertaining writer, with a strong background in literature and theatre, and wide musical sympathies".
In his final editorial for Opera, Rodney wrote "Thank you to all of those who have written in outrage cancelling their subscriptions, and then not done so.
Thank you to all readers for being so patient with my bêtes noires. I know I’m wrong about surtitles (like hell I am) and they’re here to stay.
So are sponsors and their lordly, impertinent ways. Call me old-fashioned, but I don’t really feel that a century that starts with Lilian Baylis and ends with Chris Smith is one that has seen a lot in the way of progress".
Rodney translated various operas under his original name, including Rusalka, The Jacobin, Osud, Don Chischiotte, Pollicino, Undine, Giovanna d'Arco, Die drei Pintos and Tannhäuser.
Rodney Milnes contributed entries on Massenet and his operas in the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians.
He was consultant editor of the Viking Opera Guide, and revised and updated A Concise History of Opera in 1987.
Rodney was a contributor to Opera on Record Vol 1 (Carmen), Vol 2 (Thais and Don Quichotte) and Vol 3 (The stage works of Weill).
Rodney passed away at age 79 in December 2015.
He was an English music critic, musicologist, writer, translator and broadcaster, with a particular interest in opera.
Born in Stafford, Rodney attended Rugby School and studied history at Christ Church, Oxford University, before working in publishing.
Rodney was an opera critic of Harpers and Queen (1970 to 1990), opera critic of The Spectator (1988 to 1990), Evening Standard (1990 to 1992), and Chief Opera Critic The Times (1992 to 2002).
He was associate editor of Opera from 1976, deputy editor from 1984, and editor between 1986 to 1999.
There he honed his reputation as a "trenchant and entertaining writer, with a strong background in literature and theatre, and wide musical sympathies".
In his final editorial for Opera, Rodney wrote "Thank you to all of those who have written in outrage cancelling their subscriptions, and then not done so.
Thank you to all readers for being so patient with my bêtes noires. I know I’m wrong about surtitles (like hell I am) and they’re here to stay.
So are sponsors and their lordly, impertinent ways. Call me old-fashioned, but I don’t really feel that a century that starts with Lilian Baylis and ends with Chris Smith is one that has seen a lot in the way of progress".
Rodney translated various operas under his original name, including Rusalka, The Jacobin, Osud, Don Chischiotte, Pollicino, Undine, Giovanna d'Arco, Die drei Pintos and Tannhäuser.
Rodney Milnes contributed entries on Massenet and his operas in the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians.
He was consultant editor of the Viking Opera Guide, and revised and updated A Concise History of Opera in 1987.
Rodney was a contributor to Opera on Record Vol 1 (Carmen), Vol 2 (Thais and Don Quichotte) and Vol 3 (The stage works of Weill).
Rodney passed away at age 79 in December 2015.
Saturday, 5 December 2015
Luiz Carlos Miele, Brazilian artist and musical producer, Died at 77
Luiz Carlos Miele was born on May 31,1938, in Rio de Janeiro and died on October 14, 2015.
He was a producer, actor, writer, Brazilian artist, musical producers and director of shows.
Luiz started his professional career as an announcer for the radio stations Excelsior, Tupi and Nacional.
In 1959 Luiz moved to the city of Rio de Janeiro, where he met the composer Ronaldo Bôscoli.
Together they formed the duo Miele & Bôscoli, responsible for the direction and production of various shows, and music programs on television stations.
After the death of comedian Manuel de Nobrega in 1976, he then presents The Praça da Alegria on Rede Globo, leaving the air in 1979.
The program included the participation of Ronald Golias.
On television, Luiz worked in the direction and production of the musical programs Gala Evening and Cara & Crown (with Dori Caymmi and Sylvia Telles), the TV Rio.
He was also apart of the following: Two in the balance sheet (jazz and bossa nova), The Apartment (with Cyl Farney and Odete Lara), King River, The 7 Sins (with Fernando Barbosa Lima) and Musical in Bossa 9, on TV Excelsior, O Fino da Bossa, Show in Simonal and Elis Special on TV Record, Hello Dolly, Dick & Betty 17 (with Dick Farney and Betty Faria), Fantastic (musical direction), Elis Especial, Praça da Alegria, Sandra & Miele, A hundred years show, Viva Marilia and Battle of the Stars, as well as music festivals, on Rede Globo, a man - a woman (with Tuca), Cassio Muniz Show (creation of trade) and Program Flávio Cavalcanti (essential musical) on TV Tupi, Miele & Co. and His & Her (with Leila Richers), in Headline TV, Cocktail and Cocktail at SBT, and Little School of Noise on TV Record.
At the end of 2011 Luis preformed in the film The Adventures of Agamemnon, the reporter playing the father of Agamemnon Mendes quarry .
In 2012 Luiz starred in the miniseries The Brado Resounding in the role of "Nicodemo Cabral, Senator."
He plays the mogul Jack Parker, the novel Generation Brazil, in 2014.
In 2014 Luiz starred in the miniseries The Web, in the role of former Senator Walter Gama.
In August 2014, part of the Famous dance in the program Domingão Faustão.
In 2014, Luiz interprets the stallion neighbor Gustavo Pennaforte, in the episode "She is the Owner of Everything" sitcom betray and Scratching It's Only Starting, channel Multishow.
Luis Carlos Miele passed away at 77 yrs old.
He was a producer, actor, writer, Brazilian artist, musical producers and director of shows.
Luiz started his professional career as an announcer for the radio stations Excelsior, Tupi and Nacional.
In 1959 Luiz moved to the city of Rio de Janeiro, where he met the composer Ronaldo Bôscoli.
Together they formed the duo Miele & Bôscoli, responsible for the direction and production of various shows, and music programs on television stations.
After the death of comedian Manuel de Nobrega in 1976, he then presents The Praça da Alegria on Rede Globo, leaving the air in 1979.
The program included the participation of Ronald Golias.
On television, Luiz worked in the direction and production of the musical programs Gala Evening and Cara & Crown (with Dori Caymmi and Sylvia Telles), the TV Rio.
He was also apart of the following: Two in the balance sheet (jazz and bossa nova), The Apartment (with Cyl Farney and Odete Lara), King River, The 7 Sins (with Fernando Barbosa Lima) and Musical in Bossa 9, on TV Excelsior, O Fino da Bossa, Show in Simonal and Elis Special on TV Record, Hello Dolly, Dick & Betty 17 (with Dick Farney and Betty Faria), Fantastic (musical direction), Elis Especial, Praça da Alegria, Sandra & Miele, A hundred years show, Viva Marilia and Battle of the Stars, as well as music festivals, on Rede Globo, a man - a woman (with Tuca), Cassio Muniz Show (creation of trade) and Program Flávio Cavalcanti (essential musical) on TV Tupi, Miele & Co. and His & Her (with Leila Richers), in Headline TV, Cocktail and Cocktail at SBT, and Little School of Noise on TV Record.
At the end of 2011 Luis preformed in the film The Adventures of Agamemnon, the reporter playing the father of Agamemnon Mendes quarry .
In 2012 Luiz starred in the miniseries The Brado Resounding in the role of "Nicodemo Cabral, Senator."
He plays the mogul Jack Parker, the novel Generation Brazil, in 2014.
In 2014 Luiz starred in the miniseries The Web, in the role of former Senator Walter Gama.
In August 2014, part of the Famous dance in the program Domingão Faustão.
In 2014, Luiz interprets the stallion neighbor Gustavo Pennaforte, in the episode "She is the Owner of Everything" sitcom betray and Scratching It's Only Starting, channel Multishow.
Luis Carlos Miele passed away at 77 yrs old.
Julia Wilson Dickson, English dialect coach, Died at 66
Julia Wilson Dickson was born in 1949 in Brighton, East Sussex, England and died on October 16, 2015.
She was an English dialect coach (Braveheart, In Bruges, Chocolat).
Dickson attended Guildford high school for girls, and then on to the Central School of Speech and Drama, London. She was a teacher.
Julia’s profound technical knowledge combined with an intellectual and emotional understanding of both text and dialogue, and musicality she helped gain greater recognition for the work of dialect coaches within the British film industry.
She was the daughter of Olivia (nee Rudder) and her father Philip Wilson-Dickson, who worked at the Home Office.
Julia coached Robert de Niro on Frankenstein in 1994 and Helena Bonham Carter on Mighty Aphrodite in1995.
She also coached Julianne Moore for The End of the Affair in 1999, Glenn Close on Albert Nobbs in 2011, and Eddie Redmayne for the performance as Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything in 2014, that won him an Oscar.
She worked on several of Peter Hall productions, on stage with Dustin Hoffman as Shylock in The Merchant of Venice at Phoenix theatre, London, in1989 and Vanessa Redgrave as Lady Torrance in Orpheus Descending (Haymarket, 1988), and Judi Dench.
She also worked with Anthony Hopkins in the title roles of Antony and Cleopatra (at the National Theatre, 1987.
Dickson also worked with the casts of Sam Mendes’s 1995 productions of Company and The Glass Menagerie, Max Stafford-Clark’s Royal Court productions of The Queen and I (1994) and Our Country’s Good (1988), Peter Wood’s 1994 The Beaux’ Stratagem, and Peter Gill’s 1989 Juno and the Paycock.
Her work in television productions including Oranges are Not the Only Fruit (1989), The Camomile Lawn (1992), The Lost Prince (2003), Wolf Hall (2015), and series including Spooks, Doctor Who, The Good Wife and EastEnders.
Julia Wilson Dickson passed away at 66 due to a brain haemorrhage.
She was an English dialect coach (Braveheart, In Bruges, Chocolat).
Dickson attended Guildford high school for girls, and then on to the Central School of Speech and Drama, London. She was a teacher.
Julia’s profound technical knowledge combined with an intellectual and emotional understanding of both text and dialogue, and musicality she helped gain greater recognition for the work of dialect coaches within the British film industry.
She was the daughter of Olivia (nee Rudder) and her father Philip Wilson-Dickson, who worked at the Home Office.
Julia coached Robert de Niro on Frankenstein in 1994 and Helena Bonham Carter on Mighty Aphrodite in1995.
She also coached Julianne Moore for The End of the Affair in 1999, Glenn Close on Albert Nobbs in 2011, and Eddie Redmayne for the performance as Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything in 2014, that won him an Oscar.
She worked on several of Peter Hall productions, on stage with Dustin Hoffman as Shylock in The Merchant of Venice at Phoenix theatre, London, in1989 and Vanessa Redgrave as Lady Torrance in Orpheus Descending (Haymarket, 1988), and Judi Dench.
She also worked with Anthony Hopkins in the title roles of Antony and Cleopatra (at the National Theatre, 1987.
Dickson also worked with the casts of Sam Mendes’s 1995 productions of Company and The Glass Menagerie, Max Stafford-Clark’s Royal Court productions of The Queen and I (1994) and Our Country’s Good (1988), Peter Wood’s 1994 The Beaux’ Stratagem, and Peter Gill’s 1989 Juno and the Paycock.
Her work in television productions including Oranges are Not the Only Fruit (1989), The Camomile Lawn (1992), The Lost Prince (2003), Wolf Hall (2015), and series including Spooks, Doctor Who, The Good Wife and EastEnders.
Julia Wilson Dickson passed away at 66 due to a brain haemorrhage.
Thursday, 3 December 2015
Michelangelo Antonioni, Italian film director, Died at 94
Dead, Michelangelo Antonioni on the 30th of July 2007 at the age of 94, he was an Italian film director, screenwriter, editor, and short story writer.
Born into a prosperous family of landowners in Ferrara, Emilia Romagna, in northern Italy on the 29th of September 1912, in 1940, Antonioni moved to Rome, where he worked for Cinema, the official Fascist film magazine edited by Vittorio Mussolini.
However, Antonioni was fired a few months afterward. Later that year he enrolled at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia to study film technique, but left it after three months. He was drafted into the army afterwards.
During the war Antonioni survived being condemned to death for his membership in the resistance.
In 1943, he travelled to France to assist Marcel Carné on Les visiteurs du soir and then began a series of short films with Gente del Po (1943), a story of poor fishermen of the Po valley.
After the Liberation, the film stock was stored in the East-Italian Fascist "Republic of Salò" and could not be recovered and edited until 1947 (the complete footage was never retrieved).
These films were neorealist in style, being semi-documentary studies of the lives of ordinary people.
Antonioni then signed a deal with producer Carlo Ponti that would allow artistic freedom on three films in English to be released by MGM.
The first, Blowup (1966), set in Swinging London, was a major international success.
The script was loosely based on the short story The Devil's Drool (otherwise known as Blow Up) by Argentinian writer Julio Cortázar.
Although it dealt with the challenging theme of the impossibility of objective standards and the ever-doubtable truth of memory, it was a successful and popular hit with audiences, no doubt helped by its sex scenes, which were explicit for the time. It starred David Hemmings and Vanessa Redgrave.
The second film was Zabriskie Point (1970), his first set in America and with a counterculture theme.
The soundtrack carried popular artists such as Pink Floyd (who wrote new music specifically for the film), the Grateful Dead and the Rolling Stones.
In 1994 he was given the Honorary Academy Award "in recognition of his place as one of the cinema's master visual stylists." It was presented to him by Jack Nicholson.
Months later, the statuette was stolen by burglars and had to be replaced.
Previously, he had been nominated for Academy Awards for Best Director and Best Screenplay for Blowup.
Antonioni's final film, made when he was in his 90s, was a segment of the anthology film Eros (2004), entitled "Il filo pericoloso delle cose" ("The Dangerous Thread of Things").
The short film's episodes are framed by dreamy paintings and the song "Michelangelo Antonioni", composed and sung by Caetano Veloso.
Antonioni is recognizably the product of the mild, uneventful plains of northern Italy that form the background for several of his films.
Reserved and unexpansive in manner, he has said that the experience most important to his development as a filmmaker and as a man was his upbringing in a settled, bourgeois, provincial home, with a sufficiency of money; a traditional education; a code of reserve and self-discipline; and the leisure and ease necessary for a detached view of people and of life.
He attended school in Ferrara and went to the university at Bologna, though he continued to live at home and commuted daily to his studies.
Born into a prosperous family of landowners in Ferrara, Emilia Romagna, in northern Italy on the 29th of September 1912, in 1940, Antonioni moved to Rome, where he worked for Cinema, the official Fascist film magazine edited by Vittorio Mussolini.
However, Antonioni was fired a few months afterward. Later that year he enrolled at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia to study film technique, but left it after three months. He was drafted into the army afterwards.
During the war Antonioni survived being condemned to death for his membership in the resistance.
In 1943, he travelled to France to assist Marcel Carné on Les visiteurs du soir and then began a series of short films with Gente del Po (1943), a story of poor fishermen of the Po valley.
After the Liberation, the film stock was stored in the East-Italian Fascist "Republic of Salò" and could not be recovered and edited until 1947 (the complete footage was never retrieved).
These films were neorealist in style, being semi-documentary studies of the lives of ordinary people.
Antonioni then signed a deal with producer Carlo Ponti that would allow artistic freedom on three films in English to be released by MGM.
The first, Blowup (1966), set in Swinging London, was a major international success.
The script was loosely based on the short story The Devil's Drool (otherwise known as Blow Up) by Argentinian writer Julio Cortázar.
Although it dealt with the challenging theme of the impossibility of objective standards and the ever-doubtable truth of memory, it was a successful and popular hit with audiences, no doubt helped by its sex scenes, which were explicit for the time. It starred David Hemmings and Vanessa Redgrave.
The second film was Zabriskie Point (1970), his first set in America and with a counterculture theme.
The soundtrack carried popular artists such as Pink Floyd (who wrote new music specifically for the film), the Grateful Dead and the Rolling Stones.
In 1994 he was given the Honorary Academy Award "in recognition of his place as one of the cinema's master visual stylists." It was presented to him by Jack Nicholson.
Months later, the statuette was stolen by burglars and had to be replaced.
Previously, he had been nominated for Academy Awards for Best Director and Best Screenplay for Blowup.
Antonioni's final film, made when he was in his 90s, was a segment of the anthology film Eros (2004), entitled "Il filo pericoloso delle cose" ("The Dangerous Thread of Things").
The short film's episodes are framed by dreamy paintings and the song "Michelangelo Antonioni", composed and sung by Caetano Veloso.
Antonioni is recognizably the product of the mild, uneventful plains of northern Italy that form the background for several of his films.
Reserved and unexpansive in manner, he has said that the experience most important to his development as a filmmaker and as a man was his upbringing in a settled, bourgeois, provincial home, with a sufficiency of money; a traditional education; a code of reserve and self-discipline; and the leisure and ease necessary for a detached view of people and of life.
He attended school in Ferrara and went to the university at Bologna, though he continued to live at home and commuted daily to his studies.
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