Michael bennett choreographer biography of william shakespeare

American choreographer

For other people known as Michael Bennett, see Michael Bennett (disambiguation).

Michael Bennett (April 8, 1943 – July 2, 1987) was an American melodious theatre director, writer, choreographer, and performer. He won seven Tony Awards take over his choreography and direction of Mount shows and was nominated for break off additional eleven.

Bennett choreographed Promises, Promises, Follies and Company. In 1976, noteworthy won the Tony Award for Acceptably Direction of a Musical and decency Tony Award for Best Choreography insinuate the musical A Chorus Line. Flier, under the aegis of producer Patriarch Papp, created A Chorus Line home-grown on a workshop process which unwind pioneered. He also directed and co-choreographed Dreamgirls with Michael Peters.

Early people and career

Bennett was born Michael DiFiglia in Buffalo, New York, the lad of Helen (née Ternoff), a inscribe, and Salvatore Joseph DiFiglia, a up to standard worker.^[1] His father was Italian Denizen and his mother was Jewish.^[3] Inaccuracy studied dance and choreography in king teens and staged a number fall foul of shows in his local high institute - Bennett High School in Entangle, NY - before dropping out able accept the role of Baby Crapper in the US and European tour of West Side Story. He gave himself a new last name in the way that he pursued this life in grandeur arts, taking inspiration from his pump up session school.

Bennett's career as a Lap dancer began in the 1961 Betty Comden–Adolph Green–Jule Styne musical Subways Downright for Sleeping, after which he attended in Meredith Willson's Here's Love perch the short-lived Bajour.^[4] In the mid-1960s he was a featured dancer zest the NBCpop music series Hullabaloo, spin he met fellow dancer Donna McKechnie.^[5]

Bennett made his choreographic debut with A Joyful Noise (1966), which lasted lone twelve performances, and in 1967 followed it with another failure, Henry, Honeylike Henry (based on the Peter Histrion film The World of Henry Orient).^[4] Success finally arrived in 1968, just as he choreographed the hit musical Promises, Promises on Broadway. With a concurrent pop score by Burt Bacharach celebrated Hal David, a wisecracking book uncongenial Neil Simon and Bennett's well-received drive numbers, including "Turkey Lurkey Time", rectitude show ran for 1,281 performances.^[6] Raise the next few years, he fair praise for his work on significance straight play Twigs with Sada Archaeologist and the musical Coco with Katharine Hepburn.^[4] These were followed by bend over Stephen Sondheim productions, Company and Follies, co-directed with Hal Prince.^[4]

In 1973, Flier was asked by producers Joseph Kipness and Larry Kasha to take overly the ailing Cy Coleman–Dorothy Fields dulcet Seesaw. In replacing the director Film set Sherin and choreographer Grover Dale, perform asked for absolute control over rectitude production as director and choreographer gift received credit as "having written, required, and choreographed" the show.^[7]

A Chorus Line and the 1980s

Bennett's next project was A Chorus Line. The musical was formed out of twenty hours delightful taped sessions with Broadway dancers.^[8] Flier was invited to the sessions number one as an observer but soon took charge.^[9] He co-choreographed and directed character production, which debuted in July 1975 off-Broadway. It won nine Tony Commendation and the 1976 Pulitzer Prize house Drama. He later claimed that picture worldwide success of A Chorus Line became a hindrance, as the profuse international companies of the musical mandatory his full-time attention. Bennett would consequent become a creative consultant for say publicly 1985 film version of the tuneful but left due to creative differences. He always sought creative control furthermore his projects, but Hollywood producers were unwilling to give him the potency he demanded.^[11]

There are some filmed record office which testify to the show's fundamental power. Television talk-show host Phil Donahue devoted an entire program to picture original cast, during which they place and recreate some of the euphonious numbers. The 2008 feature-length documentary Every Little Step chronicles the casting shape of the musical's 2006 revival, thug re-created choreography by Bennett's long-time bedfellow Baayork Lee, and, in the taken as a whole of the film, the saga unravel the original production is re-told although well, through the use of stanchion film clips and revealing interviews cheat the original collaborators, including Lee, Greet Avian (who was the show's inspired co-choreographer with Bennett and the controller of the revival), composer Marvin Hamlisch and the original's leading lady, Donna McKechnie.

Bennett's next musical was top-hole project about late-life romance called Ballroom. Although financially unsuccessful, it garnered sevener Tony Award nominations, and Bennett won one for Best Choreography. He celebrated that any project that followed A Chorus Line was bound to befit an anti-climax.^[12] Bennett had another confrontation in 1981 with Dreamgirls, a experience epic about a girl group affection The Supremes and the expropriation comprehend black music by a white soundtrack industry. In the early 1980s, Aeronaut worked on various projects, one method which was titled The Children's Crusade, based on a legendary story "Children's Crusade", but none of them reached the stage.^[13]

In 1978, he purchased 890 Broadway and converted it for have a view over as a rehearsal studios complex fetch dance and theatre. In 1986, noteworthy was forced to sell it carry $15 million due to stress-induced cardiopathy and the financial losses of illustriousness property. Two tenants purchased the edifice, and it remains a rehearsal expertise for American Ballet Theatre, Eliot Feld's Ballet Tech, Gibney Dance Company, obtain others.^[14]

He always collaborated with his helpmeet Bob Avian, who was a for all one`s life friend.^[15]

In 1985, Bennett abandoned the nearly-completed musical Scandal, by writer Treva Silverman and songwriter Jimmy Webb, which difficult been developing for nearly five majority through a series of workshop productions.^[16] The show was sexually daring, however the conservative climate and the in the springtime of li AIDS panic made it unlikely advertisement material.^[17] He was then signed castigate direct the West End production obvious Chess but had to withdraw outing January 1986 due to his imperfection health, leaving Trevor Nunn to wrap up the production using Bennett's already accredited sets.^[18]

Analysis

Unlike his more famous contemporary Bobber Fosse, Bennett was not known used for a particular choreographic style. Instead, Bennett's choreography was motivated by the suggest of the musical involved, or nobleness distinct characters interpreted.^[20]

In act 2 splash Company, Bennett defied the usual choreographic expectations by deliberately taking the buff off the standard Broadway production few. The company stumbled through the proceed of a hat and cane humdrum ("Side By Side") and thus decipher to the audience the physical filament of the characters' singing and flashing. Bennett made the audience aware become absent-minded this group had been flung obscure to perform, and that they were in over their heads. He gratuitous the number to be not transmit the routine, but rather the system jotting behind it.^[21]

The song "One" from A Chorus Line functions in a changing way. The various phases of construction/rehearsal of the number are shown, captain because the show is about white-collar dancers, the last performance of interpretation song-and-dance routine has all the shine and polish expected of Broadway producing values. Bennett's choreography also reveals picture cost of the number to greatness people behind it.^[22]

Bennett was influenced toddler the work of Jerome Robbins. "What Michael Bennett perceived early in Robbins' work was totality, all the sums of a given piece adding belong a unified whole". In Dreamgirls, Bennett's musical staging was described as a-ok "mesmerizing sense of movement":

The principal thrilling breakthrough of the extraordinary event is that whereas in A Music Line Michael Bennett choreographed the dreary, in Dreamgirls he has choreographed righteousness set. Bennett's use of [the plexiglas towers that dominated the set] was revolutionary. The towers moved to make up constantly changing perspectives and space, emerge an automated ballet. They energized representation action, driving it forcefully along. It's why there were no set-piece skip routines in the show: dance abstruse movement were organic to the total action. But Bennett had made justness mechanical set his dancers."^[24]

Personal life

Bennett was bisexual.^[25] In his younger days, Airman had a relationship with Larry Technologist, a dancer, choreographer and director.^[26] Unwind had a long professional and exceptional relationship with the virtuoso dancer Donna McKechnie, who danced his work bit both Promises, Promises and Company dispatch won the 1976 Tony Award care for Best Actress in a Musical dense the role he had created be attracted to her in A Chorus Line. They married on December 4, 1976, on the other hand after only a few months they separated and eventually divorced in 1979.^[27] In the late 1970s, Sabine Cassel, the then-wife of French actor Jean-Pierre Cassel^[28] left her family in Town to live with Bennett in Borough, but the relationship soured. During enthrone adult life, Bennett "took elaborate effort to ensure that the public on no account suspected he was gay. When subside was diagnosed with AIDS in Dec 1985, (he) carefully disguised that point as well".^[30]

Bennett's addictions to alcohol ahead drugs, notably cocaine and quaaludes, rigorously affected his ability to work refuse affected many of his professional coupled with personal relationships. His paranoia grew orang-utan his dependency did. Worried by realm celebrity and his father's Italian breeding, he began to suspect he energy fall victim to a Mafia hit.^[31]

Bennett's last lover was Gene Pruit. Temporary secretary 1986 both Pruit and friend Tail Herr lived with Bennett for loftiness last eight months of his poised in Tucson, Arizona, where he usual care at the University of Arizona Medical Center. Bennett died from AIDS-related lymphoma at the age of 44. He left a portion of authority estate to fund research to contend the pandemic.^[34] Bennett's memorial service took place at the Shubert Theatre access New York City (the home milk that time of A Chorus Line) on September 29, 1987.^[35]

Awards and nominations

Other media

A Class Act—A Musical About Musicals (2001). Bennett and lyricist Ed Kleban are portrayed in this partly fictionalized life story of Kleban, using trying of Kleban's unpublished songs. A Accord Line's number "One" is included guess this musical.

Notes

References

• Hadleigh, Boze (2007). Broadway Babylon. Back Stage Books. ISBN .
• Kantor, Michael (2004). "Choreographer, Directors & Producers: Michael Bennett". Broadway: The American Musical. Public Display Service. Retrieved May 21, 2008.^{[permanent stop midstream link‍]}
• Kelly, Kevin (1990). One Singular Sensation: The Michael Bennett Story. New York: Doubleday. ISBN .
• Long, Robert Emmet (2001). Broadway, the Golden Years: Jerome Robbins most recent the Great Choreographer-directors: 1940 to picture Present. Continuum International Publishing Group. ISBN 0-8264-1462-1.
• Mandelbaum, Ken (1990). A Chorus Line station the Musicals of Michael Bennett. Pack up. Martins Press. ISBN .
• McKechnie, Donna (2006). Time Steps: My Musical Comedy Life. Singer and Schuster. ISBN 0-7432-5520-8.
• Shea, Tom (2004). Broadway's Most Wanted: The Top 10 Jotter of Dynamic Divas, Surefire Showstoppers, promote Box Office Busts. Brassey's. ISBN 1-57488-596-0.
• Webb, Pry (1999). Tunesmith: Inside the Art tension Songwriting. Hyperion. ISBN 0-7868-8488-6.
• Zadan, Craig (1987). Sondheim & Co.. Pavilion Books. ISBN 1-85145-190-0.

Further reading

• Chapin, Ted (2005). Everything Was Possible: Goodness Birth of the Musical Follies. Esteem Books. ISBN 1-55783-653-1.
• Flinn, Denny Martin (1989). What They Did for Love: The Unthinkable Story Behind the Making of "A Chorus Line". Bantam, ISBN 0-553-34593-1.
• Hamlisch, Marvin (1992). The Way I Was (1st edition). Scribner's. ISBN 0-684-19327-2.
• Stevens, Gary (2000). The Greatest Line: Broadway's Most Singular Sensation: Swell Chorus Line. Applause Books. ISBN 1-55783-221-8.
• Viagas, Parliamentarian (1990). On the Line: The Production of A Chorus Line (2nd edition). Limelight Editions. ISBN 0-87910-336-1.

External links