Gelsey Kirkland, star of American Ballet Theatre, is seen here as Kitri in Don Quixote on the cover of TIME Magazine on the 1st of May, 1978. Kirkland, whose professional career began with New York City Ballet at only fifteen, moved to ABT in 1974, where she found fame dancing with Soviet ballet star Mikhail Baryshnikov.
This photograph, dated the 2nd of March, 1986, was released to the media to introduce “the new generation of American Ballet Theatre stars”.
Pictured are Gil Boggs, Amanda McKerrow, John Turjoman and Bonnie Moore.
A 1985 interview with Turjoman and Moore, where they discuss interpreting Romeo and Juliet as very young dancers, can be read HERE.
McKerrow went on to be known as one of the greatest ballerinas in the history of ABT.
Foyer de Danse, a ballet by English choreographer Frederick Ashton, had its premiere on the 9th of October, 1932.
This footage (begins 24 seconds in) from the 1932 production features Ashton alongside English prima ballerina Alicia Markova (born Lilian Alice Marks):
Ashton would go on to become one of ballet’s best-known choreographers. His productions of ballets such as Cinderella and La fille mal gardée are still seen onstage at the Royal Opera House on a regular basis.
Fred and Adele Astaire, circa 1906.
Adele Astaire, stage star and sister of her movie star brother, Fred, was born in Omaha, Nebraska on the 10th of September, 1896. Her birth name was Adele Marie Austerlitz, but the surname was changed to make her sound more “American”. As a child, she and her brother moved to New York to attend the Alviene Master School of the Theatre and Academy of Cultural Arts.
Three years Fred’s senior, Adele was actually the more successful stage performer of the two siblings. However her brother went on to find Hollywood fame, and while Adele considered moving into film, she abandoned the plan, admitting to being intimidated by her brother.
Astaire married twice (her first husband died in this thirties), and had three children. She was considered the more personable of the two siblings.
She died in January of 1981, at the age of eighty-four.
World-famous German composer Richard Strauss is seen here in London in June, 1914. The photograph was taken on the 20th; he stands in front of a poster advertising his concert on the 26th.
People magazine cover from the 1st of April, 1985. Featured are English actress Jacqueline Bisset and her then partner Alexander Godunov. Godunov was a Soviet ballet star who defected in the late 1970s, becoming a featured actor in Hollywood until his shock death a decade after this picture was taken.
Martina von Trapp, the inspiration for the character of Gretl in The Sound of Music, died giving birth to her first child on the 25th of February, 1951. She was thirty at the time.
Martina was not particularly similar to her movie version, as she had dark hair and eyes, and was in her late teens when she left Austria, not five, as she is in the movie.
She was buried in Vermont, holding her stillborn daughter.
Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev rehearsing Roland Petit’s ballet Paradise Lost at the Royal Opera House in London. 20th February, 1967.
