Authors! Authors!
DO40 ADVISORY BOARD MEMBER BOB AVIAN’S NEXT CREATION!
DANCING MAN: A BROADWAY CHOREOGRAPHER’S JOURNEY
OUT IN HARDCOVER IN MARCH!
Tony and Olivier Award–winning DO40 Advisory board member Bob Avian’s dazzling life story, Dancing Man: A Broadway Choreographer’s Journey, is being published this March! It is a memoir in three acts, and contains stories about working with Barbra Streisand and Mary Martin, teaching Katharine Hepburn how to sing and dance inCoco and working with Stephen Sondheim and Michael Bennett while helping to choreograph the original productions of Company and Follies. Bob has won a Tony Award as the co-choreographer of A Chorus Line and produced the original Dreamgirls. He also choreographed Julie Andrews’s return to the New York stage, devised all of the musical staging for Miss Saigon and Sunset Boulevard, and directed A Chorus Line on Broadway. He has worked with Andrew Lloyd Webber, Carol Burnett, Jennifer Holliday, Patti LuPone, Elaine Stritch, Glenn Close….and us! And we hope to help promote the book when he returns to NYC for his book promotion and all the honors we can bestow upon him! The publishers say it is a candid, witty and sometimes shocking (we can’t wait!) ultimate up-close and personal insider’s view of someone who participated in the creation of some of the biggest and best Broadway musicals of the past Over 40 years! Go to www.bobavian.com for more information and we will keep you up to date with e-blasts when we get more information on how Dancers Over 40 will help celebrate our long time Advisory board member and friend!
KEVIN WINKLER - BIG DEAL
Kevin Winkler enjoyed a career of more than twenty years as a curator, archivist, and library administrator at the New York Public Library, prior to which he was a professional dancer. His credits as a dancer include the Broadway productions of Little Me (1982 revival) and Wind in the Willows. He toured nationally in Cats, and appeared in summer stock, regional theater, and industrials.
Kevin has served as a consultant for Lincoln Center Education, curating resources to accompany PBS Lincoln Center Live performances available throughout New York City public libraries. He recently contributed contextual resources to support a series of performances for New York City schools at Lincoln Center venues. For several years he taught a popular class in performing arts librarianship at the Pratt Institute School of Library and Information Science. He is the editor of Their Championship Seasons: Acquiring, Processing, and Using Performing Arts Archives and associate editor of Performance Reclamation: Research, Discovery, and Interpretation (both published by Theatre Library Association), and co-edited the entry on performing arts libraries in International Dictionary of Library Histories (Fitzroy Dearborn). Kevin is a contributor to Performing Processes: Creating Live Performances (Intellect Books), The Gay and Lesbian Theatrical Legacy: A Biographical Dictionary of Major Figures in American Stage History in the Pre-Stonewall Era (University of Michigan Press), and Cast Out: Queer Lives in Theater (University of Michigan Press). His articles have appeared in Theatre History Studies and online at BroadwayWorld and Theatermania. Kevin has given lectures and presentations on musical theater dance, LGBT performance history, and libraries and archives at conferences in Europe, Canada, and across the United States. He has blogged for Huffington Post and is a MacDowell Colony fellow.
Kevin's first book, Big Deal: Bob Fosse and Dance in the American Musical (Oxford University Press) was published in 2018, and was a finalist for the 2018 Marfield Prize, the National Award for Arts Writing. He is an on-camera commentator in the new documentary Merely Marvelous: The Dancing Genius of Gwen Verdon. He is at work on his next book, Everything is Choreography: The Musical Theater of Tommy Tune, to be published by Oxford University Press.
Available now from Oxford University Press, in hard cover and audio book:
Big Deal: Bob Fosse and Dance in the American Musical by Kevin Winkler
Available now from Oxford University Press, in hard cover and audio book:
Big Deal: Bob Fosse and Dance in the American Musical by Kevin Winkler
RONALD YOUNG
A Journey from Oklahoma to Broadway and Beyond
The Only Boy Who Danced
Ronald Young lived his dream. From the small rural community of Grove, Oklahoma, he made it to Broadway and fulfilled a 33-year career in theater. Transitioning to the corporate world he found his niche as the archivist of Merrill Lynch, Inc. He has also launched Order Out of Chaos, a professional organizing business.
Ronald Young is the author of The Only Boy Who Danced, a motivational theater-based book with applications for anyone thinking about a show business career or making a career transition.
He now resides at his lake home on Grand Lake O’ the Cherokees in northeast Oklahoma. He has appearances all over that include singing his A Capella Version of the Star Spangled Banner, book signings and motivational speaking.
Sometimes Broadway dreams do come true
Fresh from the obscurity of living in the small farming community of Grove, Oklahoma, Ronald Young, at 22, is catapulted onto New York City’s “Great White Way”… BROADWAY.
After arriving in Manhattan on a Friday, he auditions for his first Broadway show on Monday. Bingo! After three call back auditions he snags his first dancing role in the soon to be mega hit HELLO, DOLLY! directed and choreographed by Gower Champion and starring Carol Channing.
Armed with three music degrees and lots of enthusiasm he embarks on his career on Broadway. His resumé includes working with some of the legends of the theater: Ethel Merman, Shirley Booth, Angela Lansbury, Tommy Tune, Bernadette Peters, Joel Gray, Chita Rivera, Sandy Duncan, Georgia Engel and many others. He appeared in a host of shows: MAME, GEORGE M!, THE BOY FRIEND, MY ONE AND ONLY, A CHORUS LINE and the films HAIR and ANNIE.
THE ONLY BOY WHO DANCED is a series of compelling, riveting stories about Ronald Young’s personal quest to make it on Broadway. If you or a friend have hidden aspirations to make it on the New York theatrical scene, you will enjoy his tips and suggestions on how to break through this tough barrier.
Buy the book at Authorhouse. Visit The Only Boy Who Danced, book blog.
Praise for The Only Boy Who Danced
“With wit and charm, my friend Ron Young tells his amazing story.”
Angela Lansbury – Kennedy Center Honoree
“Totally Inspirational!”
Tommy Tune – 9 Time Tony Award Winner
“A wonderful read… fun and inspiring.”
Valerie Harper – 4 Time Emmy Award Winner
“Ron Young’s “Journey” inspires and empowers.”
David Hartman – Original Host of GMA on ABC
“What a remarkable career Ron has had…”
Chita Rivera – Kennedy Center Honoree
“By the end of the personal and inspiring book, I wanted to know this man. Then I remembered I do! This is by my friend, Ron, who makes everyone’s life he touches richer, as certainly his book will make yours.”
Sandy Duncan – Actress
“Have always known that Ron makes an art of friendship. He’s made an art out of his life’s journey, also. Inspiring!”
Georgia Engel – Actress
Visit Ronald Young's website to find out more.
GENE GAVIN’S AUTOBIOGRAPHY PUBLISHED
POSTHUMOUSLY BY GLENDALE PRESS AND NOW AVAILABLE ON AMAZON!
DO40 Legacy Award Honoree Gene Gavin never got to accept his award in December, 2015. He died unexpectedly from a fall in his apartment in October. But his three nephews came to accept the award, and were thrilled by the love and warmth shared by the audience to them – and of course, to Gene.
Well, it looks like Gene WILL have the last word! Gene, a contributing writer to our DO40 Newsletter, kept a diary! And nephew Richard Tuttle found it – and it has been published in book form by Glendale Press and available on Amazon! (A portion of Gene’s book about Jerome Robbins was read at our 60th Anniversary of West Side Story reunion back in 2017!)
Gene danced in the original West Side Story, Shinbone Alley, Sail Away, Skyscraper, Little Me, How to Succeed, Walking Happy, Bravo Giovanni and Ballets USA. He toured Europe and Japan with the New York City Ballet as well.
Richard Tuttle writes in the forward, “Gene Gavin, my uncle, wasn’t a star with his name in lights on the Great White Way but he was a star to me, and I thank him for giving me his memories.”
”The Girl who Fell Down: An interview with author Lisa Jo Sagolla
Lisa Jo Sagolla Are there guardian angels for books? It would ap-pear so, because according to author Lisa Jo Sagolla, this book found her. She was guided from point to point to write this compelling and compre-hensive biography of Joan McCracken. Initially asked to prepare an entry about McCracken for the American National Biography, Lisa Jo thought that that would be the end of it, but there followed one discovery and coincidence after another, and finally Sagolla concluded this biography was "meant to be."  Joan McCracken Joan McCracken, as many DO40 members know, was a Broadway star of her day, with an illustrious career and a little foray into movies (lighting up the screen alongside June Allyson and Peter Lawford in "Good News," for example). She started the choreographic career of her then husband, Bob Fosse, who regarded her as the biggest influence of his life. She was a longtime friend of Truman Capote and one of the models for the character of Holly Golightly. She was a Broadway star and a favorite de Mille dancer, creating roles in Oklahoma!, Bloomer Girl, and other shows. McCracken and Lisa Jo are both from the Philly area and both are Capricorns. Lisa Jo, by chance, handed in her completed book on October 31, the same day that Joan McCracken died in her sleep of a heart attack. And when the book was done, Lisa Jo was forty-three years old, the same young age as Mc-Cracken when she died. |
"Reminiscences II By Terry DeMari & Barbara Arms
(Photo: Book Cover with picture of Toumanova at age 15 in the Ballet Ruse at the St. James Theater in London) This book is a collection of rare photographs and personally written experiences by individual artists. Only about 50 re-printed second editions remain. Danilova, Balanchine, Patricia Wilde, and Mia Slavenska are just a few of the people featured. Also included are corps de ballets dancers who describe their personal experiences during their travels to cities small and large, bringing dance to people that had never seen dance before. |
