On Your Toes

On Your Toes (1936) is a musical with a book by Richard Rodgers, George Abbott, and Lorenz Hart, music by Rodgers, and lyrics by Hart. It was adapted into a film in 1939.

While teaching music at Knickerbocker University, Phil "Junior" Dolan III tries to persuade Sergei Alexandrovich, the director of the Russian Ballet, to stage the jazz ballet "Slaughter on Tenth Avenue". After becoming involved with the company's prima ballerina, Vera Barnova, Junior is forced to assume the male lead in "Slaughter". Trouble ensues when he becomes the target of two thugs hired by Vera’s lover and dance partner to kill him.

On Your Toes marked the first time a Broadway musical made dramatic use of classical dance and incorporated jazz into its score.

Background

On Your Toes was originally conceived as a film, and as a vehicle for Fred Astaire. His refusal of the part, because he thought that the role clashed with his debonair image developed in his contemporary films, caused it to be produced as a theatrical performance. Richard Rodgers wrote: "Astaire at that point in his career was a pretty chic fellow who usually wore white ties and tails, and the producers felt that there was no chance in our script for him to appear that way." Astaire thought that the ballet background in the plot was too "highbrow" for his audiences.Ray Bolger was given the role, which allowed him to rise to stardom.

Vera Zorina

Vera Zorina (January 2, 1917 – April 9, 2003) was a Norwegian ballerina, theatre and film actress, and choreographer.

Background

Vera Zorina was born Eva Brigitta Hartwig in Berlin, Germany. Her father, Fritz Hartwig, was a German lapsed Roman Catholic, and mother, Abigail Johanne Wimpelmann (known as Billie Hartwig), Norwegian and Lutheran. Both were both professional singers. Young Eva was brought up in a small coastal town between Trondheim and Bergen, called Kristiansund North, where she debuted as a dancer at the Festiviteten, the oldest opera house in Norway. She received her education at the Lyceum for Girls in Berlin and was trained in dance by Olga Preobrajenska and Nicholas Legat.

Career

At age 12, she was presented to Max Reinhardt, who cast her in A Midsummer Night's Dream (1929) and Tales of Hoffman (1931). A performance at London's Gaiety Theatre won her an invitation to join the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo in 1933, at which time she adopted the stage name of Vera Zorina. A few years later, she attained a lead role in the London production of On Your Toes (1937) and was seen by American film producer Samuel Goldwyn, who signed her to a seven-year film contract. She appeared in a number of Hollywood movies between 1938 and 1946.

Toe

Toes are the digits of the foot of a tetrapod. Animal species such as cats that walk on their toes are described as being digitigrade. Humans, and other animals that walk on the soles of their feet, are described as being plantigrade; unguligrade animals are those that walk on hooves at the tips of their toes.

Structure

The toe refers to a part of the human foot, with five toes present on each human foot. Each toe consists of three phalanx bones, the proximal, middle, and distal, with the exception of the big toe (Latin: Hallux). The hallux only contains two phalanx bones, the proximal and distal. The phalanx bones of the toe join to the metatarsal bones of the foot at the interphalangeal joints. Outside the hallux bones is skin, and present on all five toes is a toenail.

The toes are, from medial to lateral:

Ryan Lewis

Ryan Lewis (born March 25, 1988) is an American DJ, musician, record producer, videographer, photographer, graphic designer and music video director, born in Spokane, Washington. Along with producing his own album titled Instrumentals, Lewis produced the albums The VS. EP (2009) and The Heist (2012). In 2006, Lewis befriended rapper Macklemore on MySpace and soon after became the behind-the-scenes partner of a successful duo, producing, recording, engineering and mixing all of the duo's music, as well as directing the music videos for "Same Love", "Thrift Shop", "And We Danced", "Otherside (Remix)", "Can't Hold Us", "Irish Celebration", "My Oh My", "Victory Lap", " Downtown " and "White Walls" and designing promotional graphics.

Early life

Ryan Lewis was born on March 25, 1988 to Julie and Scott Lewis. Lewis has two sisters, Teresa and Laura, four years and two years older than him, respectively. At an early age, he played guitar in rock bands, and nursed a growing interest in music production around the age of 15. He attended Ferris High School in Spokane, Washington and graduated from Roosevelt High School in Seattle. He graduated from the University of Washington majoring in Comparative History of Ideas.

Cinema of the United States

The cinema of the United States, often generally referred to as Hollywood, has had a profound effect on cinema across the world since the early 20th century. The dominant style of American cinema is Classical Hollywood Cinema, which developed from 1917 to 1960 and characterizes most films to this day. While the French Lumière Brothers are generally credited with the birth of modern cinema, it is American cinema that soon became the most dominant force in an emerging industry. Since the 1920s, the American film industry has grossed more money every year than that of any other country in the world.

In 1878, Eadweard Muybridge demonstrated the power of photography to capture motion. In 1894, the world's first commercial motion picture exhibition was given in New York City, using Thomas Edison's Kinetoscope. The United States was in the forefront of sound film development in the following decades. Since the early 20th century, the U.S. film industry has largely been based in and around Hollywood, Los Angeles, California. Picture City, Florida was also a planned site for a movie picture production center in the 1920s, but due to the 1928 Okeechobee hurricane, the idea collapsed and Picture City returned to its original name of Hobe Sound. Director D. W. Griffith was central to the development of film grammar. Orson Welles's Citizen Kane (1941) is frequently cited in critics' polls as the greatest film of all time.