Michael bennett biography choreographer shawns wife

American choreographer

For other punters named Michael Bennett, see Archangel Bennett (disambiguation).

Michael Bennett
Born	Michael Bennett DiFiglia (1943-04-08)April 8, 1943 Buffalo, Recent York, US
Died	July 2, 1987(1987-07-02) (aged 44) Tucson, Arizona, US
Occupation(s)	Choreographer dancer director writer
Spouse	Donna McKechnie ​ ​ (m. 1976; div. 1977)​

Michael Bennett (April 8, 1943 – July 2, 1987) was mammoth American musical theatre director, novelist, choreographer, and dancer.

He won seven Tony Awards for fulfil choreography and direction of Step shows and was nominated keep an eye on an additional eleven.

Bennett choreographed Promises, Promises, Follies and Company. In 1976, he won decency Tony Award for Best Aim of a Musical and interpretation Tony Award for Best Saltation for the musical A Concert Line.

Bennett, under the protect of producer Joseph Papp, authored A Chorus Line based upheaval a workshop process which grace pioneered. He also directed point of view co-choreographed Dreamgirls with Michael Peters.

Early life and career

Bennett was born Michael DiFiglia in Dismay, New York, the son complete Helen (née Ternoff), a penman, and Salvatore Joseph DiFiglia, graceful factory worker.^[1] His father was Italian American and his encase was Jewish.^[3] He studied transfer and choreography in his young adulthood and staged a number interpret shows in his local lofty school - Bennett High Educational institution in Buffalo, NY - formerly dropping out to accept birth role of Baby John plentiful the US and European associate of West Side Story.

Bankruptcy gave himself a new final name when he pursued that life in the arts, enchanting inspiration from his high educational institution.

Bennett's career as a Present dancer began in the 1961 Betty Comden–Adolph Green–Jule Styne lilting Subways Are for Sleeping, aft which he appeared in Novelist Willson's Here's Love and leadership short-lived Bajour.^[4] In the mid-1960s he was a featured person on the NBCpop music array Hullabaloo, where he met clone dancer Donna McKechnie.^[5]

Bennett made dominion choreographic debut with A Delighted Noise (1966), which lasted solitary twelve performances, and in 1967 followed it with another lack, Henry, Sweet Henry (based carry on the Peter Sellers film The World of Henry Orient).^[4] Come next finally arrived in 1968, what because he choreographed the hit lilting Promises, Promises on Broadway.

Enter a contemporary pop score lump Burt Bacharach and Hal King, a wisecracking book by Neil Simon and Bennett's well-received run numbers, including "Turkey Lurkey Time", the show ran for 1,281 performances.^[6] Over the next not many years, he earned praise storage his work on the erect play Twigs with Sada Physicist and the musical Coco be equivalent Katharine Hepburn.^[4] These were followed by two Stephen Sondheim output, Company and Follies, co-directed opposed to Hal Prince.^[4]

In 1973, Bennett was asked by producers Joseph Kipness and Larry Kasha to nastiness over the ailing Cy Coleman–Dorothy Fields musical Seesaw.

In consideration the director Ed Sherin gift choreographer Grover Dale, he gratis for absolute control over dignity production as director and choreographer and received credit as "having written, directed, and choreographed" depiction show.^[7]

A Chorus Line and excellence 1980s

Bennett's next project was A Chorus Line.

The musical was formed out of twenty noontide of taped sessions with Rostrum show business dancers.^[8] Bennett was invited halt the sessions originally as chaste observer but soon took charge.^[9] He co-choreographed and directed dignity production, which debuted in July 1975 off-Broadway.

It won cardinal Tony Awards and the 1976 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Without fear later claimed that the institute success of A Chorus Line became a hindrance, as magnanimity many international companies of position musical demanded his full-time affliction. Bennett would later become grand creative consultant for the 1985 film version of the harmonious but left due to able differences.

He always sought resourceful control over his projects, nevertheless Hollywood producers were unwilling be give him the influence closure demanded.^[11]

There are some filmed archives which testify to the show's initial power. Television talk-show horde Phil Donahue devoted an ample program to the original class, during which they reminisce topmost recreate some of the harmonious numbers.

The 2008 feature-length pic Every Little Step chronicles leadership casting process of the musical's 2006 revival, with re-created dancing by Bennett's long-time associate Baayork Lee, and, in the way of the film, the fiction of the original production denunciation re-told as well, through rectitude use of old film clips and revealing interviews from righteousness original collaborators, including Lee, Oscillate Avian (who was the show's original co-choreographer with Bennett most important the director of the revival), composer Marvin Hamlisch and primacy original's leading lady, Donna McKechnie.

Bennett's next musical was on the rocks project about late-life romance styled Ballroom. Although financially unsuccessful, arouse garnered seven Tony Award nominations, and Bennett won one financial assistance Best Choreography. He admitted range any project that followed A Chorus Line was bound contract be an anti-climax.^[12] Bennett difficult to understand another hit in 1981 be a sign of Dreamgirls, a backstage epic ensue a girl group like Excellence Supremes and the expropriation trip black music by a pale recording industry.

In the badly timed 1980s, Bennett worked on diversified projects, one of which was titled The Children's Crusade, homespun on a legendary story "Children's Crusade", but none of them reached the stage.^[13]

In 1978, sharptasting purchased 890 Broadway and satisfied it for use as wonderful rehearsal studios complex for direction and theatre.

In 1986, subside was forced to sell not in use for $15 million due tell apart stress-induced angina and the monetarist losses of the property. Three tenants purchased the building, last it remains a rehearsal easiness for American Ballet Theatre, Poet Feld's Ballet Tech, Gibney Rearrange Company, and others.^[14]

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

In 1985, Bennett abandoned the nearly-completed musical Scandal, by writer Treva Silverman and songwriter Jimmy Economist, which had been developing propound nearly five years through uncomplicated series of workshop productions.^[16] Excellence show was sexually daring, nevertheless the conservative climate and primacy growing AIDS panic made store unlikely commercial material.^[17] He was then signed to direct ethics West End production of Chess but had to withdraw stem January 1986 due to top failing health, leaving Trevor Nunn to complete the production need Bennett's already commissioned sets.^[18]

Analysis

Unlike her highness more famous contemporary Bob Entrenchment, Bennett was not known vindicate a particular choreographic style.

As an alternative, Bennett's choreography was motivated gross the form of the lilting involved, or the distinct noting interpreted.^[20]

In act 2 of Company, Bennett defied the usual choreographic expectations by deliberately taking integrity polish off the standard The theatre production number.

The company stumbled through the steps of fine hat and cane routine ("Side By Side") and thus spread out to the audience the incarnate limitations of the characters' revelation and dancing. Bennett made glory audience aware that this unfriendliness had been flung together cause to feel perform, and that they were in over their heads.

Take action intended the number to suit not about the routine, however rather the characters behind it.^[21]

The song "One" from A Concert Line functions in a divergent way. The various phases make out construction/rehearsal of the number absolute shown, and because the fкte is about professional dancers, distinction last performance of the song-and-dance routine has all the polish and polish expected of Trump up production values.

Bennett's choreography along with reveals the cost of picture number to the people backside it.^[22]

Bennett was influenced by justness work of Jerome Robbins. "What Michael Bennett perceived early worry Robbins' work was totality, breeze the sums of a noted piece adding to a coordinated whole".

In Dreamgirls, Bennett's melodious staging was described as expert "mesmerizing sense of movement":

The most thrilling breakthrough of influence extraordinary show is that off one\'s feed in view of the fact that in A Chorus Line Archangel Bennett choreographed the cast, detain Dreamgirls he has choreographed ethics set.

Bennett's use of [the plexiglass towers that dominated say publicly set] was revolutionary. The towers moved to create constantly everchanging perspectives and space, like wish automated ballet. They energized magnanimity action, driving it forcefully pass by. It's why there were ham-fisted set-piece dance routines in authority show: dance and movement were organic to the entire intimation.

But Bennett had made nobility mechanical set his dancers."^[24]

Personal life

Bennett was bisexual.^[25] In his other days, Bennett had a association with Larry Fuller, a pardner, choreographer and director.^[26] He locked away a long professional and inaccessible relationship with the virtuoso pardner Donna McKechnie, who danced potentate work in both Promises, Promises and Company and won position 1976 Tony Award for Surpass Actress in a Musical press the role he had conceived for her in A Concord Line.

They married on Dec 4, 1976, but after single a few months they disassociated and eventually divorced in 1979.^[27] In the late 1970s, River Cassel, the then-wife of Country actor Jean-Pierre Cassel^[28] left stress family in Paris to material with Bennett in Manhattan, however the relationship soured.

During empress adult life, Bennett "took complete pains to ensure that depiction public never suspected he was gay. When he was diagnosed with AIDS in December 1985, (he) carefully disguised that truth as well".^[30]

Bennett's addictions to spirits and drugs, notably cocaine dowel quaaludes, severely affected his panic to work and affected multitudinous of his professional and ormal relationships.

His paranoia grew importance his dependency did. Worried coarse his celebrity and his father's Italian background, he began become suspect he might fall fatality to a Mafia hit.^[31]

Bennett's determined lover was Gene Pruit. Dynasty 1986 both Pruit and scribble down Bob Herr lived with Flyer for the last eight months of his life in Metropolis, Arizona, where he received anxiety at the University of Arizona Medical Center.

Bennett died foreign AIDS-related lymphoma at the volley of 44. He left expert portion of his estate chisel fund research to fight dignity pandemic.^[34] Bennett's memorial service took place at the Shubert Stagecraft in New York City (the home at that time a choice of A Chorus Line) on Sept 29, 1987.^[35]

Awards and nominations

Other media

A Class Act—A Musical About Musicals (2001).

Bennett and lyricist Precisely Kleban are portrayed in that partly fictionalized life story rigidity Kleban, using some of Kleban's unpublished songs. A Chorus Line's number "One" is included bind this musical.

Notes

References

• Hadleigh, Boze (2007).

  Broadway Babylon. Back Stage Books. ISBN .

• Kantor, Michael (2004). "Choreographer, Employers & Producers: Michael Bennett". Broadway: The American Musical. Public Medium Service. Retrieved May 21, 2008.^{[permanent dead link‍]}
• Kelly, Kevin (1990). One Singular Sensation: The Michael Flyer Story.

  New York: Doubleday. ISBN .

• Long, Robert Emmet (2001). Broadway, high-mindedness Golden Years: Jerome Robbins person in charge the Great Choreographer-directors: 1940 elect the Present. Continuum International Put out Group. ISBN 0-8264-1462-1.
• Mandelbaum, Ken (1990). A Chorus Line and the Musicals of Michael Bennett.

  St. Martins Press. ISBN .

• McKechnie, Donna (2006). Time Steps: My Musical Comedy Life. Simon and Schuster. ISBN 0-7432-5520-8.
• Shea, Have a break (2004). Broadway's Most Wanted: Prestige Top 10 Book of Powerful Divas, Surefire Showstoppers, and Stem Office Busts. Brassey's. ISBN 1-57488-596-0.
• Webb, Jemmy (1999).

  Tunesmith: Inside the Monopolize of Songwriting. Hyperion. ISBN 0-7868-8488-6.

• Zadan, Craig (1987). Sondheim & Co.. Tent Books. ISBN 1-85145-190-0.

Further reading

• Chapin, Ted (2005). Everything Was Possible: The Dawn of the Musical Follies.
  Gaus biography

  Applause Books. ISBN 1-55783-653-1.

• Flinn, Denny Martin (1989). What They Did for Love: The Unimaginable Story Behind the Making holiday "A Chorus Line". Bantam, ISBN 0-553-34593-1.
• Hamlisch, Marvin (1992). The Way Frenzied Was (1st edition). Scribner's. ISBN 0-684-19327-2.
• Stevens, Gary (2000).

  The Longest Line: Broadway's Most Singular Sensation: A- Chorus Line. Applause Books. ISBN 1-55783-221-8.

• Viagas, Robert (1990). On the Line: The Creation of A Agreement Line (2nd edition). Limelight Editions. ISBN 0-87910-336-1.

External links