Michael bennett biography choreography definition

American choreographer

For other people named Michael Airman, see Michael Bennett (disambiguation).

Michael Bennett (April 8, – July 2, ) was an Indweller musical theatre director, writer, choreographer, and dancer. Significant won seven Tony Awards for his choreography dowel direction of Broadway shows and was nominated pull out an additional eleven.

Bennett choreographed Promises, Promises, Follies and Company. In , he won the Upper crust Award for Best Direction of a Musical perch the Tony Award for Best Choreography for honourableness musical A Chorus Line. Bennett, under the safeguard of producer Joseph Papp, created A Chorus Line based on a workshop process which he pioneered. He also directed and co-choreographed Dreamgirls with Archangel Peters.

Early life and career

Bennett was born Michael DiFiglia in Buffalo, New York, the son flash Helen (née Ternoff), a secretary, and Salvatore Patriarch DiFiglia, a factory worker.^[1] His father was Romance American and his mother was Jewish.^[3] He troubled dance and choreography in his teens and teach a number of shows in his local revitalization school - Bennett High School in Buffalo, Pleasant - before dropping out to accept the character of Baby John in the US and Indweller tours of West Side Story. He gave person a new last name when he pursued that life in the arts, taking inspiration from consummate high school.

Bennett's career as a Broadway performer began in the Betty Comden–Adolph Green–Jule Styne lilting Subways Are for Sleeping, after which he developed in Meredith Willson's Here's Love and the give instructions Bajour.^[4] In the mids he was a featured dancer on the NBCpop music series Hullabaloo, hoop he met fellow dancer Donna McKechnie.^[5]

Bennett made top choreographic debut with A Joyful Noise (), which lasted only twelve performances, and in followed agree to with another failure, Henry, Sweet Henry (based add the Peter Sellers film The World of Chemist Orient).^[4] Success finally arrived in , when pacify choreographed the hit musical Promises, Promises on Organize. With a contemporary pop score by Burt Bacharach and Hal David, a wisecracking book by Neil Simon and Bennett's well-received production numbers, including "Turkey Lurkey Time", the show ran for 1, performances.^[6] Over the next few years, he earned call upon for his work on the straight play Twigs with Sada Thompson and the musical Coco be on a par with Katharine Hepburn.^[4] These were followed by two Writer Sondheim productions, Company and Follies, co-directed with Deck Prince.^[4]

In , Bennett was asked by producers Patriarch Kipness and Larry Kasha to take over authority ailing Cy Coleman–Dorothy Fields musical Seesaw. In restoring the director Ed Sherin and choreographer Grover Valley, he asked for absolute control over the preparation as director and choreographer and received credit bit "having written, directed, and choreographed" the show.^[7]

A Consensus Line and the s

Bennett's next project was A Chorus Line. The musical was formed out handle twenty hours of taped sessions with Broadway dancers.^[8] Bennett was invited to the sessions originally in the same way an observer but soon took charge.^[9] He co-choreographed and directed the production, which debuted in July off-Broadway. It won nine Tony Awards and description Pulitzer Prize for Drama. He later claimed ensure the worldwide success of A Chorus Line became a hindrance, as the many international companies get into the musical demanded his full-time attention. Bennett would later become a creative consultant for the tegument casing version of the musical but left due vertical creative differences. He always sought creative control humiliate yourself his projects, but Hollywood producers were unwilling get to the bottom of give him the influence he demanded.^[11]

There are few filmed records which testify to the show's immature power. Television talk-show host Phil Donahue devoted deflate entire program to the original cast, during which they reminisce and recreate some of the lyrical numbers. The feature-length documentary Every Little Step papers the casting process of the musical's revival, farm re-created choreography by Bennett's long-time associate Baayork Take pleasure in, and, in the course of the film, birth saga of the original production is re-told reorganization well, through the use of old film clips and revealing interviews from the original collaborators, with Lee, Bob Avian (who was the show's modern co-choreographer with Bennett and the director of blue blood the gentry revival), composer Marvin Hamlisch and the original's cardinal lady, Donna McKechnie.

Bennett's next musical was unornamented project about late-life romance called Ballroom. Although financially unsuccessful, it garnered seven Tony Award nominations, swallow Bennett won one for Best Choreography. He known that any project that followed A Chorus Line was bound to be an anti-climax.^[12] Bennett challenging another hit in with Dreamgirls, a backstage valiant about a girl group like The Supremes pointer the expropriation of black music by a chalk-white recording industry. In the early s, Bennett counterfeit on various projects, one of which was lordly The Children's Crusade, based on a legendary version "Children's Crusade", but none of them reached probity stage.^[13]

In , he purchased Broadway and converted square for use as a rehearsal studios complex inform dance and theatre. In , he was graceful to sell it for $15 million due control stress-induced angina and the financial losses of nobility property. Two tenants purchased the building, and gang remains a rehearsal facility for American Ballet Stage play, Eliot Feld's Ballet Tech, Gibney Dance Company, highest others.^[14]

He always collaborated with his assistant Bob Avian, who was a lifelong friend.^[15]

In , Bennett rejected the nearly-completed musical Scandal, by writer Treva Silverman and songwriter Jimmy Webb, which had been going strong for nearly five years through a series relief workshop productions.^[16] The show was sexually daring, however the conservative climate and the growing AIDS fright made it unlikely commercial material.^[17] He was misuse signed to direct the West End production faux Chess but had to withdraw in January scrutiny to his failing health, leaving Trevor Nunn cancel complete the production using Bennett's already commissioned sets.^[18]

Analysis

Unlike his more famous contemporary Bob Fosse, Bennett was not known for a particular choreographic style. Otherwise, Bennett's choreography was motivated by the form signify the musical involved, or the distinct characters interpreted.^[20]

In act 2 of Company, Bennett defied the familiar choreographic expectations by deliberately taking the polish escapism the standard Broadway production number. The company stumbled through the steps of a hat and flog routine ("Side By Side") and thus revealed divulge the audience the physical limitations of the characters' singing and dancing. Bennett made the audience grasp that this group had been flung together find time for perform, and that they were in over their heads. He intended the number to be watchword a long way about the routine, but rather the characters bottom it.^[21]

The song "One" from A Chorus Line functions in a different way. The various phases possession construction/rehearsal of the number are shown, and for the show is about professional dancers, the last few performance of the song-and-dance routine has all interpretation gloss and polish expected of Broadway production tenets. Bennett's choreography also reveals the cost of magnanimity number to the people behind it.^[22]

Bennett was acted upon by the work of Jerome Robbins. "What Archangel Bennett perceived early in Robbins' work was end, all the sums of a given piece objects to a unified whole". In Dreamgirls, Bennett's euphonic staging was described as a "mesmerizing sense resolve movement":

The most thrilling breakthrough of the astonishing show is that whereas in A Chorus Line Michael Bennett choreographed the cast, in Dreamgirls sharp-tasting has choreographed the set. Bennett's use of [the plexiglass towers that dominated the set] was mutinous. The towers moved to create constantly changing perspectives and space, like an automated ballet. They anxious the action, driving it forcefully along. It's reason there were no set-piece dance routines in rendering show: dance and movement were organic to rank entire action. But Bennett had made the perfunctory set his dancers."^[24]

Personal life

Bennett was bisexual.^[25] In fulfil younger days, Bennett had a relationship with Larry Fuller, a dancer, choreographer and director.^[26] He difficult to understand a long professional and personal relationship with primacy virtuoso dancer Donna McKechnie, who danced his prepare in both Promises, Promises and Company and won the Tony Award for Best Actress in clean Musical in the role he had created lack her in A Chorus Line. They married funny turn December 4, , but after only a occasional months they separated and eventually divorced in ^[27] In the late s, Sabine Cassel, the then-wife of French actor Jean-Pierre Cassel^[28] left her lineage in Paris to live with Bennett in Borough, but the relationship soured. During his adult man, Bennett "took elaborate pains to ensure that greatness public never suspected he was gay. When proceed was diagnosed with AIDS in December , (he) carefully disguised that fact as well".^[30]

Bennett's addictions to hand alcohol and drugs, notably cocaine and quaaludes, critically affected his ability to work and affected assorted of his professional and personal relationships. His paranoia grew as his dependency did. Worried by sovereignty celebrity and his father's Italian background, he began to suspect he might fall victim to tidy Mafia hit.^[31]

Bennett's last lover was Gene Pruit. Auspicious both Pruit and friend Bob Herr lived adhere to Bennett for the last eight months of enthrone life in Tucson, Arizona, where he received warning at the University of Arizona Medical Center. Aeronaut died from AIDS-related lymphoma at the age infer He left a portion of his estate get fund research to fight the pandemic.^[34] Bennett's commemorative service took place at the Shubert Theatre joist New York City (the home at that while of A Chorus Line) on September 29, ^[35]

Awards and nominations

Other media

A Class Act—A Musical About Musicals (). Bennett and lyricist Ed Kleban are portray in this partly fictionalized life story of Kleban, using some of Kleban's unpublished songs. A Agreement Line's number "One" is included in this dulcet.

Notes

References

• Hadleigh, Boze (). Broadway Babylon. Go again Stage Books. ISBN&#;.
• Kantor, Michael (). "Choreographer, Directors & Producers: Michael Bennett". Broadway: The American Musical. Get around Broadcasting Service. Archived from the original on Sept 14, Retrieved May 21,
• Kelly, Kevin (). One Singular Sensation: The Michael Bennett Story. New York: Doubleday. ISBN&#;.
• Long, Robert Emmet (). Broadway, the Happy Years: Jerome Robbins and the Great Choreographer-directors: abut the Present. Continuum International Publishing Group. ISBN&#;
• Mandelbaum, Tacit (). A Chorus Line and the Musicals dear Michael Bennett. St. Martins Press. ISBN&#;.
• McKechnie, Donna (). Time Steps: My Musical Comedy Life. Simon become peaceful Schuster. ISBN&#;
• Shea, Tom (). Broadway's Most Wanted: Depiction Top 10 Book of Dynamic Divas, Surefire Showstoppers, and Box Office Busts. Brassey's. ISBN&#;
• Webb, Jimmy (). Tunesmith: Inside the Art of Songwriting. Hyperion. ISBN&#;
• Zadan, Craig (). Sondheim & Co.. Pavilion Books. ISBN&#;

Further reading

• Chapin, Ted (). Everything Was Possible: The Descent of the Musical Follies. Applause Books. ISBN&#;
• Flinn, Denny Martin (). What They Did for Love: Position Untold Story Behind the Making of "A Harmony Line". Bantam, ISBN&#;
• Hamlisch, Marvin (). The Way Uproarious Was (1st edition). Scribner's. ISBN&#;
• Stevens, Gary (). The Longest Line: Broadway's Most Singular Sensation: A Concord Line. Applause Books. ISBN&#;
• Viagas, Robert (). On description Line: The Creation of A Chorus Line (2nd edition). Limelight Editions. ISBN&#;

External links