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Geoffrey Holder — Tony Award-Winning Director, Actor, Painter, Dancer and Choreographer — Transitions at Age 84 (Photos and Videos)

Early Life
Born in Port of Spain, Holder was of African descent. He was known for his height (6'6"), "hearty laugh" and heavily accented bass voice.

One of four children, of parents who had emigrated to the United States from Trinidad, Holder attended Tranquillity School and then secondary school at Queen's Royal College in Port-of-Spain. At the age of seven, he began dancing in the company of his brother, Boscoe Holder, who was a Tony Award-winning stage director and costume designer.

Career
In 1952, the choreographer Agnes de Mille saw Holder dance in St. Thomas. She invited him to New York; he would teach at the Katherine Dunham School of Dance for two years.

Holder was a principal dancer with the Metropolitan Opera Ballet in New York from 1955-56. He made his Broadway debut in House of Flowers, a musical by Harold Arlen (music and lyrics) and Truman Capote (lyrics and book). He also starred in an all-black production of Waiting for Godot in 1957.

Geoffrey Holder Dances in "Carib Gold"

Holder began his movie career in the 1962 British film All Night Long, a modern remake of Shakespeare's Othello. He followed that with Doctor Dolittle (1967) as Willie Shakespeare, leader of the natives of Sea-Star Island. This was a trying experience for Holder, as he had to contend with casual racism from Rex Harrison's then-wife, Rachel Roberts, and his entourage.

In the 1972, he was cast as the Sorcerer in Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex. The following year he was a henchman – Baron Samedi – in the Bond movie Live and Let Die; He contributed to the film's choreography. In addition to his movie appearances, Holder became a spokesman for the 1970s 7 Up soft drink "uncola" advertising campaign.

In 1975 Holder won two Tony Awards for direction and costume design of The Wiz, the all-black musical version of The Wizard of Oz. Holder was the first black man to be nominated in either category. He won the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Costume Design. The show ran for 1672 performances over a four-year period; it was revived in 1984.

As a choreographer, Holder has created dance pieces for many companies, including the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, for which he provided choreography, music and costumes for Prodigal Prince (1967), and the Dance Theatre of Harlem, for which he provided choreography, music and costumes for Dougla (1974) and designed costumes for Firebird (1982). In 1978, Holder directed and choreographed the Broadway musical Timbuktu! Holder's 1957 piece "Bele" is also part of the Dance Theater of Harlem repertory.


In the 1982 film version of the musical Annie, Holder played the role of Punjab. He was in the 1992 film Boomerang with Eddie Murphy. He was also the voice of Ray in Bear in the Big Blue House and provided narration for Tim Burton's version of Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. He reprised his role as the 7 Up Spokesman in the 2011 season finale of The Celebrity Apprentice, where he appeared as himself in a commercial for "7 Up Retro" for Marlee Matlin's team.

Geoffrey Holder's Advice to Young People

Holder was a prolific painter (patrons of his art included Lena Horne and William F. Buckley, Jr.), ardent art collector, book author and music composer. As a painter, he won a Guggenheim Fellowship in fine arts in 1956. A book of his photography, Adam, was published by Viking in 1986.

Personal life
In 1955, Holder married dancer Carmen de Lavallade, whom he met when both were in the cast of the musical House of Flowers. They lived in New York City and had one son, Leo Anthony Lamont. They were the subject of a 2004 film, Carmen & Geoffrey. Holder's brother was artist Boscoe Holder.

SOURCE: Wikepedia

Katherine Dunham Was A Ground-Breaking Anthropologist, Choreographer, Dancer and Social Activist

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Katherine Dunham (center).

Katherine Dunham (June 22, 1909 – May 21, 2006) was an American dancer, choreographer, author, educator, and social activist. Dunham had one of the most successful dance careers in American and European theater of the 20th century, and directed her own dance company for many years. She has been called the "matriarch and queen mother of black dance".^[1]

^{Katherine Dunham and Her Troupe in Action: Her innovative and distinctive
approach to modern dance became known as The Dunham School.}

During her heyday in the 1940s and 1950s, Dunham was renowned throughout Europe and Latin America and was widely popular in the United States, where the Washington Post called her "dancer Katherine the Great". For almost thirty years she maintained the Katherine Dunham Dance Company, the only self-supported American black dance troupe at that time, and over her long career she choreographed more than ninety individual dances.^[2] Dunham was an innovator in African-American modern dance as well as a leader in the field of dance anthropology, or ethnochoreology.

In 1935, Dunham was awarded travel fellowships from the Julius Rosenwald and Guggenheim foundations to conduct ethnographic study of the dance forms of the Caribbean, especially as manifested in the Vodun of Haiti, a path also followed by fellow anthropology student Zora Neale Hurston. She also received a grant to work with Professor Melville Herskovits of Northwestern University, whose ideas of African retention would serve as a platform for her research in the Caribbean.

Her stay in the Caribbean began in Jamaica, where she went to live several months in the remote Maroon village of Accompong, deep in the mountains of Cockpit Country. (She later wrote a book, Journey to Accompong, describing her experiences there.) Then she traveled on to Martinique and to Trinidad and Tobago for short stays, primarily to do an investigation of Shango, the African god who remained an important presence in West Indian heritage. Early in 1936 she arrived at last in Haiti, where she remained for several months, the first of her many extended stays in that country throughout the rest of her life.

While in Haiti, Dunham investigated Vodun rituals and made extensive notes on her research, particularly on the dance movements of the participants. Years later, after extensive studies and initiations, she became a mambo in the Vodun religion. She also became friends with, among others, Dumarsais Estimé, then a high-level politician, who became president of Haiti in 1949. Somewhat later, she assisted him, at considerable risk to her life, when he was persecuted for his progressive policies and sent in exile to Jamaica after a coup d'état.

SOURCE: Wikipedia - Find out more.