Margo Sappington News

EPIX, the premium entertainment channel, video-on-demand and online service beams "Shatnerpalooza," the ultimate multi-platform experience, to viewers this summer.

EPIX, the premium entertainment channel, video-on-demand and online service announced today that it will preview its original EPIX Picture, The Captains, at this year's Comic-Con(R) in San Diego on Friday, July 22.

As we inch closer and closer to the Broadway's biggest night on Sunday, today we have the choreographic centerpiece of our extensive Tony Award countdown with a focus on the genius of Michael Bennett. While we have already featured his shows COMPANY, FOLLIES, A CHORUS LINE and DREAMGIRLS - and even took a look at the recent smash hit revival of PROMISES, PROMISES starring Sean Hayes and Kristin Chenoweth - today's triple dose of clips (with a few surprises) is undoubtedly as close as one can get to theatrical crack cocaine: "Turkey Lurkey Time" from the original Broadway production of PROMISES, PROMISES, "Fifty Percent" from BALLROOM performed by Dorothy Loudon and - one of the most elaborate numbers in Tony Awards history - "Always Mademoiselle" from COCO starring Katharine Hepburn. So, see some of the reasons why these are the best of the best of Bennett and, therefore, the best of the best of Broadway right here!

EPIX, the premium entertainment channel, video-on-demand and online service beams "Shatnerpalooza," the ultimate multi-platform experience, to viewers this summer.

BAX/Brooklyn Arts Exchange announces BAX arts and artists in progress Awards at the BAX 20th Birthday Celebration

BAX/Brooklyn Arts Exchange announces BAX arts and artists in progress Awards at the BAX 20th Birthday Celebration

On this very day in 1943, Michael DiFiglia was born in Buffalo, New York, and the world of Broadway would simply never be the same. Cutting his teeth with the accomplished choreography for A JOYFUL NOISE, PROMISES, PROMISES, SEESAW and COCO was merely the beginning of a career that would virtually rewrite and revolutionize the ways and means by which a director could yield ultimate control over a project. With COMPANY and FOLLIES, the later co-directing with Hal Prince, Bennett solidified himself as one of the most talented and brilliant choreographers of his generation and, shortly thereafter, proved with A CHORUS LINE that he was a master theatrical engineer with few, if any, peers. Worldwide success, Tony Awards and the Pulitzer Prize were just the gravy. Who else but Michael Bennett would then, or ever, receive - or should I say, earn - the credit "Entire Production Conceived, Produced and Directed by," besides him? While BALLROOM failed to live up to A CHORUS LINE in mostly every way, he soon after reinvented the wheel yet again with DREAMGIRLS in 1981. We never got to see his productions of CHESS and SCANDAL, both of which he was in the latter stages of developing at the time of his death in 1988. Broadway has never been the same since he's been gone. So, today, on the day following a glittering new production of COMPANY at Lincoln Center - with the complete dance sequence "Tick Tock" fully restored, now with five dancers - we take a tip of the top hat to the tops in taps, temerity and truthfulness onstage - the one and only Michael Bennett.

Popular with both critics and audiences, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago returns to Jacob's Pillow August 25-29 in a stirring Festival 2010 finale.

Popular with both critics and audiences, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago returns to Jacob's Pillow August 25-29 in a stirring Festival 2010 finale.

Popular with both critics and audiences, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago returns to Jacob's Pillow August 25-29 in a stirring Festival 2010 finale.

Popular with both critics and audiences, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago returns to Jacob's Pillow August 25-29 in a stirring Festival 2010 finale. Hubbard Street is recognized as one of the nation's leading contemporary dance companies, with the Chicago Sun-Times stating, 'The troupe's power has to do with far more than bravura technique; flawless dancing is simply a given at Hubbard Street. Rather, it is about mood-spinning and emotional intensity-about the preoccupations of the choreographers this company chooses to work with, and about the ability of the dancers to interpret these artists' fever dreams.'

This week, we are highlighting the unparalleled career of legendary director/choreographer Michael Bennett with a newly unearthed clip of the original Broadway cast of A JOYFUL NOISE performing Bennett's choreography on the Ed Sullivan Show, as well as a near-three-hour interview with his associates that was recorded last week as part of a benefit for Dancers Over 40 also titled A JOYFUL NOISE. There's certainly a lot to love and embrace here in this crash-course in Bennett for the uninitiated among us.

Dancers Over 40 continues its fascinating series of tributes to Broadway dance greats with Michael Bennett: A Joyful Noise, featuring an impressive roster of Broadway veterans who worked with the great choreographer/director, Monday May 17th at 8 PM, St. Luke's Theater.

Dancers Over 40 continues its fascinating series of tributes to Broadway dance greats with Michael Bennett: A Joyful Noise, featuring an impressive roster of Broadway veterans who worked with the great choreographer/director, Monday May 17th at 8 PM, St. Luke's Theater.

This week, in honor of the first Broadway revival of the Neil Simon/Hal David/Burt Bacharach musical PROMISES, PROMISES starring Sean Hayes and Kristin Chenoweth, it seems to be a particularly apropos time to go all the way back to an early Spring day of nearly fifty years ago: April 21, 1968, and that year's Tony Award telecast...

On Monday, April 12th DO40 will present its first-ever song and dance concert to benefit Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS and Project Achieve and the NYC HIV Vaccine Trials Unit. Former gypsy and perennial television star Valerie Harper (right), on the heels of her new Broadway show, LOOPED, will make a special appearance along with guests Anita Gillette (photo, bottom right) and Marge Champion. DO40 members will be heavily represented, and guests from the ballet and modern world will also appear and donate their performances for these important causes.

On Monday, April 12th DO40 will present its first-ever song and dance concert to benefit Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS and Project Achieve and the NYC HIV Vaccine Trials Unit. Former gypsy and perennial television star Valerie Harper (right), on the heels of her new Broadway show, LOOPED, will make a special appearance along with guests Anita Gillette (photo, bottom right) and Marge Champion. DO40 members will be heavily represented, and guests from the ballet and modern world will also appear and donate their performances for these important causes.

HOLIDAY EVENTS FOR 2009- Two full-length Nutcracker productions and an Irish Christmas Revels

The last two of six Russian ballet dancers to famously defect from the U.S.S.R. to the United States in the 1960's and 70's - Valentina Kozlova and Leonid Kozlov, who sought political asylum on September 16, 1979 - will commemorate the 30th anniversary of their celebrated defection with a one-night-only dance concert, 'The Legacy Gala' on Monday, November 23 at 7:30 p.m. at the Joyce Theater (175 Eighth Avenue) in New York City.

Variety's Army Archerd reports that the long planned Broadway revival of Neil Simon's Promises, Promises is still on track for a rialto run according to the famed theatre scribe himself.