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Make-Believe Ballrooms

Author: Peter J. Smith

Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press

Published: 1994

Total Pages: 300

ISBN-13: 9780871133670

Dark days for Hal Andrews, New York artist and scion of an eccentric New England family. His cat has just died in a plunge from his apartment window. His brother Beck, manic-depressive and hopelessly nostalgic, is about to marry Lisa Lyman, heiress to the Family Wipes fortune and certifiably the world's most abominable girl. Their sister Fishie, an Olympic swimming champion who uses her television appearances to berate Hal, has recently shaved her head bald. And their father is withholding Hal's inheritance until he becomes more responsible, or at least until he's sixty-five. Hal's artwork clutters the floors of his girlfriend's apartment and does about as much for his putative gallery. Hoping for a genius grant and settling for a decrepit dog and a derisive girlfriend, Hal's optimism begins to wane as he descends into a moody twilit world of obscure urban horror. Therefore, when a wrong number from out of town walks into his life, the situation is grim. Mary-Ann Beavers and her hostile brother arrive in New York via Greyhound, in search of celebrities and success, both rare commodities back home in Patent, Texas. She snaps her chewing gum and writes wretched poetry; her brother has bad teeth and a temper to match. While Mary-Ann stalks Liza Minnelli in the supermarket and treasures the autograph of Dustin Hoffman's agent's sister, a darkness that lasts for days falls over Hal's new but awful apartment. There is light, however, at the end of the tunnel, and Hal, in spite of himself, will bask in it. Make-Believe Ballrooms captures the true contemporary dilemma in this tale of Hal's decline and rehabilitation in much-too-postmodern New York.

Not Just Make Believe

Author: Sandra Sookoo

Publisher: Desert Breeze Publishing In

Published: 2009-12

Total Pages: 236

ISBN-13: 1936000415

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The Make-believe Ballroom

Author: Naomi K. Bembridge

Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform

Published: 2018-08-31

Total Pages: 166

ISBN-13: 9781726398213

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Everybody likes Eddy, but that changes when he gets his 16 year old dance partner pregnant, or did he? And he's old enough to be her grand father! Dance teachers Alex and Simon agonise about what to do and ask Chris and his dance partner Shari for help. They find Eddy has a secret life and the more they find out the less they like; good old Eddy seems to have a lot to hide. He believes he is a great dancer and has huge ambition; he lives in a dream world where he's admired for his dancing and wins every dance competition. He says he's rich, but where does his money come from? Or is that too part of his fantasy world? And what about sweet and innocent Frances? She is Eddy's 16 year old dance partner, and is now his fiancée, does she honestly want to marry Eddy? Are her straight laced parents really happy about the marriage? Rumour says they are; Shari thinks not. Everyone in the dance school is worried about Frances, but they realise how little they know about her too. Frances also dreams of being a great dancer, but knows being part of Eddy's dance ambition is only a pipe dream - the baby is due in a few months and her dancing career will only exist in Eddy's make-believe ballroom. Does she love Eddy? Her answer is always yes! Her friends in the dancing school don't believe her. Chris is engaged to Cath, but do they still love each other? Shari hopes not as she loves Chris. Cath seems more in love with her dancing than with Chris. How can everything work out well when Chris and Cath are 150 miles apart and they dance with other people? Simon's wife, Virginia, faces family pressure to come home to Australia, but she is happy and wants to stay in the UK. How can she convince her mother and stop her blaming Simon, or is he really keeping her here against her will? What is real, what is fact and what is fiction in this make-believe ballroom? And how dangerous is it to look into the world of lies, fantasy and dark secrets that have created Eddy's make-believe world where what is real and what is false are so very hard to recognise?

Big Bands and Great Ballrooms

Author: Jack Behrens

Publisher: Author House

Published: 2006

Total Pages: 207

ISBN-13: 1425969771

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Where did big bands and swing music go? They didn't leave. . . but many Americans actually believe they disappeared along with ballrooms, jukeboxes, bobby sox and zoot suits decades ago. Band leader Brooks Tegler, who has recreated the great music of World War II with his Army Air Corps Review Big Band, offers a good response. "In order for something to come back, it needs to have gone away. Big bands have wrongly been put in that category. They never went away." And that's the essence of the chapters of my book about America's big bands, ballrooms and dancing's past and present. And there's a good look at the future through the eyes of a number of young bandleaders from the east to west coast who carry on in the tradition of Guy Lombardo, Glenn Miller, Harry James, Woody Herman, Duke Ellington and a host of other music legends in their own distinctive way. The struggle to survive in the music business hasn't been without losses and a need for life support. It did when Miller, Benny Goodman, James and Ellington were in their heyday. It's a financially precarious business regardless of your talent. Inevitably, music and dancing evolved and matured. The reasons are numerous and linked to our heritage. But like marching bands on the 4th of July, imagine a country club new year's eve without live dance music and a big band. Think about the many community social events and high school and college proms let alone wedding receptions that still insist on having live bands to play the foxtrots and swing numbers people enjoy. My research shows that while there were approximately 800 big bands on the road during the swing era of the 1940s, today there are nearly 1,300 big bands, according to a Google search and a review of hundreds of territory bands. Consequently, neither the bands nor the music vanished. . . they scattered throughout the American countryside.

Lonesome Roads and Streets of Dreams

Author: Andrew S. Berish

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2012-04-15

Total Pages: 326

ISBN-13: 0226044947

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Any listener knows the power of music to define a place, but few can describe the how or why of this phenomenon. In Lonesome Roads and Streets of Dreams: Place, Mobility, and Race in Jazz of the 1930s and ’40s, Andrew Berish attempts to right this wrong, showcasing how American jazz defined a culture particularly preoccupied with place. By analyzing both the performances and cultural context of leading jazz figures, including the many famous venues where they played, Berish bridges two dominant scholarly approaches to the genre, offering not only a new reading of swing era jazz but an entirely new framework for musical analysis in general, one that examines how the geographical realities of daily life can be transformed into musical sound. Focusing on white bandleader Jan Garber, black bandleader Duke Ellington, white saxophonist Charlie Barnet, and black guitarist Charlie Christian, as well as traveling from Catalina Island to Manhattan to Oklahoma City, Lonesome Roads and Streets of Dreams depicts not only a geography of race but how this geography was disrupted, how these musicians crossed physical and racial boundaries—from black to white, South to North, and rural to urban—and how they found expression for these movements in the insistent music they were creating.

Ballroom

Author: Hilary French

Publisher: Reaktion Books

Published: 2022-08-04

Total Pages: 321

ISBN-13: 1789145163

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A tune-filled, light-footed people’s history of ballroom dancing, from Vernon and Irene Castle and Arthur Murray to Dancing with the Stars. In the early twentieth century, American ragtime and the Parisian Tango fueled a dancing craze in Britain. Public ballrooms—which had never been seen before—were built throughout the country, providing a glamorous setting for all classes to dance. The new styles of dance being defined and taught in the 1920s, as well as the films of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in the 1930s, ensured that ballroom dancing continued to be the most popular pastime until the 1960s, rivaled only by the cinema. This book explores the vibrant history of Ballroom and Latin: the dances, the lavish venues, competitions, and influential instructors. It also traces the decline of competitive dancing and its resurgence in recent years with the hugely popular TV shows Strictly Come Dancing and Dancing with the Stars.

The Seventh Stream

Author: Philip H. Ennis

Publisher: Wesleyan University Press

Published: 1992-12

Total Pages: 472

ISBN-13: 9780819562579

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A cultural and social study of the origins and evolution of “rocknroll”.

Let's Dance

Author: Arnold Shaw

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 1998

Total Pages: 264

ISBN-13:

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In this exuberant sequel to his prize-winning The Jazz Age, Arnold Shaw captures virtually every aspect of popular music during the Depression. Here is a colorful year-by-year chronicle of music in the '30s, blended with chapters on broader topics--the jazz clubs on Swing Street, the Big Band boom--and spiced with interviews with major figures (such as Burton Lane and Lionel Hampton), who bring a vibrant first-hand feel to the narrative. Readers visit every corner of the music scene. We watch as the Hollywood musical takes off, highlighted by the brilliant Busby Berkeley and the luminous partnership of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. We read about the incredible popularity of radio shows such as Your Hit Parade and Martin Block's "make-believe ballroom," which brought music to households from coast to coast. And we experience once again the great Broadway musicals of the period--from Girl Crazy to The Cradle Will Rock--written by a who's who of American song: Jerome Kern, Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, Rodgers and Hart, and Cole Porter. But above all, the '30s were the Swing Era--when swing bands dominated dance halls, ballrooms, radio broadcasts, and record sales--and Shaw provides superb portraits of Benny Goodman, Duke Ellington, Glenn Miller, Count Basie, Tommy Dorsey, and countless others. From Gershwin's Porgy and Bess to Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, from Woody Guthrie to Ethel Merman, and from the Carioca to the Lindy Hop, here is an affectionate and informative account of this golden era of popular song.

Billboard

Author:

Publisher:

Published: 1949-05-07

Total Pages: 144

ISBN-13:

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In its 114th year, Billboard remains the world's premier weekly music publication and a diverse digital, events, brand, content and data licensing platform. Billboard publishes the most trusted charts and offers unrivaled reporting about the latest music, video, gaming, media, digital and mobile entertainment issues and trends.