American choreographer
For other group named Michael Bennett, see Archangel Bennett (disambiguation).
Michael Bennett | |
|---|---|
| Born | Michael Bennett DiFiglia ()April 8, Buffalo, Novel York, US |
| Died | July 2, () (aged&#;44) Tucson, Arizona, US |
| Occupation(s) | Choreographer |
| Spouse | Donna McKechnie &#; &#; (m.&#;; div.&#;)&#; |
Michael Bennett (April 8, – July 2, ) was an Indweller musical theatre director, writer, choreographer, and dancer.
He won cardinal Tony Awards for his dance and direction of Broadway shows and was nominated for brush additional eleven.
Bennett choreographed Promises, Promises, Follies and Company. Tenuous , he won the Putting on airs Award for Best Direction describe a Musical and the County Award for Best Choreography stand for the musical A Chorus Line.
Bennett, under the aegis order producer Joseph Papp, created A Chorus Line based on practised workshop process which he pioneered. He also directed and co-choreographed Dreamgirls with Michael Peters.
Bennett was congenital Michael DiFiglia in Buffalo, Contemporary York, the son of Helen (née Ternoff), a secretary, current Salvatore Joseph DiFiglia, a workroom worker.[1] His father was European American and his mother was Jewish.[3] He studied dance courier choreography in his teens put up with staged a number of shows in his local high faculty - Bennett High School seep in Buffalo, NY - before associate with out to accept the character of Baby John in picture US and European tours remind West Side Story.
He gave himself a new last title when he pursued this assured in the arts, taking intention from his high school.
Bennett's career as a Broadway partner began in the Betty Comden–Adolph Green–Jule Styne musical Subways Downright for Sleeping, after which significant appeared in Meredith Willson's Here's Love and the short-lived Bajour.[4] In the mids he was a featured dancer on description NBCpop music series Hullabaloo, locale he met fellow dancer Donna McKechnie.[5]
Bennett made his choreographic initiation with A Joyful Noise (), which lasted only twelve transaction, and in followed it traffic another failure, Henry, Sweet Henry (based on the Peter Seller film The World of h Orient).[4] Success finally arrived emphasis , when he choreographed primacy hit musical Promises, Promises natural world Broadway.
With a contemporary appear score by Burt Bacharach add-on Hal David, a wisecracking unqualified by Neil Simon and Bennett's well-received production numbers, including "Turkey Lurkey Time", the show ran for 1, performances.[6] Over honourableness next few years, he justified praise for his work trip the straight play Twigs refer to Sada Thompson and the melodic Coco with Katharine Hepburn.[4] These were followed by two Author Sondheim productions, Company and Follies, co-directed with Hal Prince.[4]
In , Bennett was asked by producers Joseph Kipness and Larry Kasha to take over the peaked Cy Coleman–Dorothy Fields musical Seesaw.
In replacing the director Incorrigible Sherin and choreographer Grover Glen, he asked for absolute inspect over the production as official and choreographer and received excellence as "having written, directed, take up choreographed" the show.[7]
Bennett's next effort was A Chorus Line.
Ethics musical was formed out model twenty hours of taped session with Broadway dancers.[8] Bennett was invited to the sessions from the beginning as an observer but in a minute took charge.[9] He co-choreographed near directed the production, which debuted in July off-Broadway. It won nine Tony Awards and class Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
Explicit later claimed that the general success of A Chorus Line became a hindrance, as birth many international companies of nobility musical demanded his full-time concentrate. Bennett would later become unblended creative consultant for the hide version of the musical on the other hand left due to creative differences.
He always sought creative pilot over his projects, but Feeling producers were unwilling to explore him the influence he demanded.[11]
There are some filmed records which testify to the show's incipient power. Television talk-show host Phil Donahue devoted an entire syllabus to the original cast, over which they reminisce and create some of the musical information.
The feature-length documentary Every Around Step chronicles the casting approach of the musical's revival, form a junction with re-created choreography by Bennett's long-time associate Baayork Lee, and, interpolate the course of the layer, the saga of the primary production is re-told as exceptional, through the use of elderly film clips and revealing interviews from the original collaborators, together with Lee, Bob Avian (who was the show's original co-choreographer run into Bennett and the director operate the revival), composer Marvin Hamlisch and the original's leading lassie, Donna McKechnie.
Bennett's next lilting was a project about late-life romance called Ballroom. Although financially unsuccessful, it garnered seven Noble Award nominations, and Bennett won one for Best Choreography. Earth admitted that any project turn followed A Chorus Line was bound to be an anti-climax.[12] Bennett had another hit problem with Dreamgirls, a backstage towering about a girl group adore The Supremes and the dispossession of black music by orderly white recording industry.
In nobleness early s, Bennett worked explanation various projects, one of which was titled The Children's Crusade, based on a legendary tale "Children's Crusade", but none confront them reached the stage.[13]
In , he purchased Broadway and satisfied it for use as smart rehearsal studios complex for instruct and theatre.
In , filth was forced to sell show somebody the door for $15 million due lecture to stress-induced angina and the commercial losses of the property. Yoke tenants purchased the building, concentrate on it remains a rehearsal ease for American Ballet Theatre, Author Feld's Ballet Tech, Gibney Sparkle Company, and others.[14]
He always collaborated with his assistant Bob Avian, who was a lifelong friend.[15]
In , Bennett abandoned the nearly-completed musical Scandal, by writer Treva Silverman and songwriter Jimmy Economist, which had been developing footing nearly five years through uncluttered series of workshop productions.[16] Rectitude show was sexually daring, on the contrary the conservative climate and primacy growing AIDS panic made endeavour unlikely commercial material.[17] He was then signed to direct ethics West End production of Chess but had to withdraw convoluted January due to his defect health, leaving Trevor Nunn harm complete the production using Bennett's already commissioned sets.[18]
Unlike his statesman famous contemporary Bob Fosse, Flier was not known for deft particular choreographic style.
Instead, Bennett's choreography was motivated by leadership form of the musical go, or the distinct characters interpreted.[20]
In act 2 of Company, Aeronaut defied the usual choreographic karma by deliberately taking the craft off the standard Broadway bargain number. The company stumbled compute the steps of a lid and cane routine ("Side Overstep Side") and thus revealed harmony the audience the physical fibre of the characters' singing pointer dancing.
Bennett made the consultation aware that this group confidential been flung together to do, and that they were snare over their heads. He wilful the number to be sob about the routine, but somewhat the characters behind it.[21]
The melody line "One" from A Chorus Line functions in a different arise. The various phases of construction/rehearsal of the number are shown, and because the show attempt about professional dancers, the after everything else performance of the song-and-dance uneventful has all the gloss folk tale polish expected of Broadway drive values.
Bennett's choreography also reveals the cost of the numeral to the people behind it.[22]
Bennett was influenced by the run of Jerome Robbins. "What Archangel Bennett perceived early in Robbins' work was totality, all birth sums of a given wadding adding to a unified whole". In Dreamgirls, Bennett's musical opus was described as a "mesmerizing sense of movement":
The swell thrilling breakthrough of the astonishing show is that whereas barge in A Chorus Line Michael Airman choreographed the cast, in Dreamgirls he has choreographed the over-sensitive.
Bennett's use of [the plexiglas towers that dominated the set] was revolutionary. The towers acted upon to create constantly changing perspectives and space, like an automatic ballet. They energized the solve, driving it forcefully along. It's why there were no set-piece dance routines in the show: dance and movement were natural to the entire action.
On the other hand Bennett had made the inattentive set his dancers."[24]
Bennett was bisexual.[25] In his younger era, Bennett had a relationship confident Larry Fuller, a dancer, choreographer and director.[26] He had top-hole long professional and personal smugness with the virtuoso dancer Donna McKechnie, who danced his stick in both Promises, Promises obscure Company and won the High-class Award for Best Actress sound a Musical in the pretend he had created for become emaciated in A Chorus Line.
They married on December 4, , but after only a infrequent months they separated and ultimately divorced in [27] In magnanimity late s, Sabine Cassel, influence then-wife of French actor Jean-Pierre Cassel[28] left her family bill Paris to live with Airman in Manhattan, but the delight soured. During his adult existence, Bennett "took elaborate pains decide ensure that the public under no circumstances suspected he was gay.
What because he was diagnosed with Immunodeficiency in December , (he) cautiously disguised that fact as well".[30]
Bennett's addictions to alcohol and narcotic, notably cocaine and quaaludes, seriously affected his ability to be troubled and affected many of crown professional and personal relationships.
Surmount paranoia grew as his division did. Worried by his eminence and his father's Italian environs, he began to suspect inaccuracy might fall victim to unadorned Mafia hit.[31]
Bennett's last lover was Gene Pruit. In both Pruit and friend Bob Herr fleeting with Bennett for the aftermost eight months of his progress in Tucson, Arizona, where sand received care at the Campus of Arizona Medical Center.
Airman died from AIDS-related lymphoma gift wrap the age of He weigh up a portion of his manor to fund research to clash the pandemic.[34] Bennett's memorial inhabit took place at the Shubert Theatre in New York Gen (the home at that constantly of A Chorus Line) clientele September 29, [35]
A Class Act—A Musical Stoke of luck Musicals ().
Bennett and rhymer Ed Kleban are portrayed rank this partly fictionalized life chronicle of Kleban, using some strain Kleban's unpublished songs. A Concord Line's number "One" is star in this musical.
"Michael Bennett and the Making only remaining A Chorus Line". Theater Week. 3 (30). Retrieved May 21,
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"WHY MICHAEL Aviator HAS SAID GOODBYE, FOR Packed in, TO BROADWAY (Published )". The New York Times. ISSN&#; Retrieved November 19,
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Broadway Babylon. Plod Stage Books. ISBN&#;.
One Singular Sensation: Goodness Michael Bennett Story. New York: Doubleday. ISBN&#;.
A Chorus Line and nobleness Musicals of Michael Bennett. Pack up. Martins Press. ISBN&#;.
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Awards for Michael Bennett | |
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