awesomepeoplehangingouttogether:
Groucho Marx (70) and Diana Ross (22), 1966
A 22-year-old Diana Ross and 70-year-old Groucho Marx on the dance floor doing the frug at a barbecue at Bobby Darin’s house in Bel-Air on August 19, 1966. Photo: AP.
Yes, it’s true. Lola Falana really is the “Lola” in Barry Manilow’s “Copacabana.”
Argentine Dancers at Howard University, 1963
- by Scurlock Studio
An Argentine dancer instructing a group of women at Howard University in February 1963. Another gem from the Scurlock Studio.
Arthur Mitchell teaching a class at his Dance Theater of Harlem, circa 1970s. Photo courtesy of The Dance Theater of Harlem.
Dance legend Carmen de Lavallade turns 81 today! Here she is in the October 1964 issue of Harper’s Bazaar in a beaded necklace by Coppola e Toppa.
Nichelle Nichols rehearses a dance number with some of the cast from “Kicks and Co.,” a 1961 musical satire about segregation that was directed at one point by Lorraine Hansberry and produced by her husband). Although the show had major financial backing, an “all-star interracial cast” (Burgess Meredith, Lonnie Sattin, Vi Velasco) and success in Chicago, it never made it to Broadway as planned. Photo via The New York Public Library.
Carmen de Lavallade and Geoffrey Holder on their wedding day, June 26, 1955, with theater legend Lucille Lortel, who hosted the wedding on her estate in Westport, Connecticut. Photo by Carl Van Vechten.
Whitney Houston with Arthur Mitchell, Cicely Tyson and her mother, Cissy Houston on December 9, 1988. Photo courtesy of Robert Garland of the Dance Theater of Harlem.
Dorothy Dandridge stretching in preparation for her Porgy and Bess role with Walter Saxer, in the January 22, 1959 issue of Jet. Saxer was a Swiss-born personal trainer whose Hollywood clientele included Ingrid Bergman and Jennifer Jones. In 1948, the legendary gossip columnist Hedda Hopper reported that Saxer was hired by Elizabeth Arden as the Physical Director of her Beverly Hills location with plans to put his “rhythmic exercises” on television. I need to pay a visit to the Paley Center to see if that ever happened. I also need to stop by and see their Bill Cosby tribute before it closes.
Dancers Alvin Ailey and Joyce Trisler - Hue Magazine, January, 1954 on Flickr.
Alvin Ailey and Joyce Trisler backstage at Hollywood’s Earl Carrol Theater. Hue magazine, January 1954 via my favorite Flickr user ever (who is now on Tumblr!) vieilles-annonces.
Josephine Baker et Georges-Henri Rivière dans une vitrine de l’exposition sur la Mission Dakar-Djibouti au Musée d’ethnographie du Trocadéro, 1933
Josephine Baker and Georges-Henri Rivière in a showcase exhibition on the Dakar-Djibouti Mission at the Ethnography Museum of the Trocadero, 1933 (translated from holdthisphoto’s French via Google Translator).
Janet Collins dancing in the Cole Porter musical ”Out of This World” in 1950. Her cousin, Carmen de Lavallade, said “Janet was rather like Auntie Mame… she’d just breeze into town because she danced with Katherine Dunham’s company. And when she came into town it was really something - and then she’d breeze out again. She was a fascinating woman.”
