Vaudeville

Vaudeville (/ˈvɔːdᵊvɪl/; French: [vodvil]) is a theatrical genre of variety entertainment. It was especially popular in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s. A typical vaudeville performance is made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill. Types of acts have included popular and classical musicians, singers, dancers, comedians, trained animals, magicians, female and male impersonators, acrobats, illustrated songs, jugglers, one-act plays or scenes from plays, athletes, lecturing celebrities, minstrels, and movies. A vaudeville performer is often referred to as a "vaudevillian."

Vaudeville developed from many sources, including the concert saloon, minstrelsy, freak shows, dime museums, and literary American burlesque. Called "the heart of American show business," vaudeville was one of the most popular types of entertainment in North America for several decades.

Etymology

The origin of this term is obscure, but is often explained as being derived from the French expression voix de ville ("City Voice"). A second speculation is that it comes from the fifteenth-century songs on satire by poet Olivier Basselin, "Vaux de Vire." In his Connections television series, science historian James Burke claims that the term is a corruption of the French "Vau de Vire" ("Vire River Valley", in English), an area known for its bawdy drinking songs and where Basselin lived. Some, however, preferred the earlier term "variety" to what manager Tony Pastor called its "sissy and Frenchified" successor. Thus, vaudeville was marketed as "variety" well into the 20th century.

New Zealand

New Zealand (/njuːˈziːlənd/ new-ZEE-lənd, Māori: Aotearoa [aɔˈtɛaɾɔa]) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. The country geographically comprises two main landmasses – that of the North Island, or Te Ika-a-Māui, and the South Island, or Te Waipounamu – and numerous smaller islands. New Zealand is situated some 1,500 kilometres (900 mi) east of Australia across the Tasman Sea and roughly 1,000 kilometres (600 mi) south of the Pacific island areas of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga. Because of its remoteness, it was one of the last lands to be settled by humans. During its long isolation, New Zealand developed a distinctive biodiversity of animal, fungal and plant life. The country's varied topography and its sharp mountain peaks, such as the Southern Alps, owe much to the tectonic uplift of land and volcanic eruptions. New Zealand's capital city is Wellington, while its most populous city is Auckland.

Somewhere between 1250 and 1300 CE, Polynesians settled in the islands that were to become New Zealand, and developed a distinctive Māori culture. In 1642, Abel Tasman, a Dutch explorer, became the first European to sight New Zealand. In 1840, representatives of the British Crown and Māori Chiefs signed the Treaty of Waitangi, making New Zealand a British colony. Today, the majority of New Zealand's population of 4.5 million is of European descent; the indigenous Māori are the largest minority, followed by Asians and Pacific Islanders. Reflecting this, New Zealand's culture is mainly derived from Māori and early British settlers, with recent broadening arising from increased immigration. The official languages are English, Māori and New Zealand Sign Language, with English predominant.

Performing arts

Performing arts are art forms in which artists use their voices and/or the movements of their bodies, often in relation to other objects, to convey artistic expression—as opposed to, for example, purely visual arts, in which artists use paint/canvas or various materials to create physical or static art objects. Performing arts include a variety of disciplines but all are intended to be performed in front of a live audience.

Performers

Artists who participate in performing arts in front of an audience are called performers. Example of this include actors, comedians, dancers, magicians, circus artists, musicians, and singers. Performing arts are also supported by workers in related fields, such as songwriting, choreography and stagecraft.

A performer who excels in acting, singing, and dancing is commonly referred to as a "triple threat". Well-known examples of historical triple threat artists include Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire, and Judy Garland.

Performers often adapt their appearance, such as with costumes and stage makeup, stage lighting, and sound.

Theatre

Theatre or theater is a collaborative form of fine art that uses live performers to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place, often a stage. The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music, and dance. Elements of art and stagecraft are used to enhance the physicality, presence and immediacy of the experience. The specific place of the performance is also named by the word "theatre" as derived from the Ancient Greek θέατρον (théatron, "a place for viewing"), itself from θεάομαι (theáomai, "to see", "to watch", "to observe").

Modern Western theatre comes, in large measure, from ancient Greek drama, from which it borrows technical terminology, classification into genres, and many of its themes, stock characters, and plot elements. Theatre artist Patrice Pavis defines theatricality, theatrical language, stage writing, and the specificity of theatre as synonymous expressions that differentiate theatre from the other performing arts, literature, and the arts in general.

Haley Reinhart

Haley Reinhart (born September 9, 1990) is an American singer, songwriter, and voice actress from Wheeling, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. She first rose to prominence after placing third in the tenth season of American Idol. In July 2011, Reinhart signed a recording deal with Interscope Records. Her debut album Listen Up! was released on May 22, 2012 to critical acclaim, and she subsequently became the first American Idol alum to perform at Lollapalooza. After being dropped by Interscope Records following a change in the company's management in 2012, Reinhart expanded the agreement she had with her music publisher, ole, in 2014. The independent rights management company was granted co-publishing rights on her existing and future catalog. In return, they agreed to provide financial support for the recording a new EP.

Reinhart garnered widespread recognition in 2015 for performing and touring with Scott Bradlee's Postmodern Jukebox and for her cover of Elvis Presley's "Can't Help Falling in Love", which was used in a commercial for Extra Gum and became a viral sensation. Additionally, she made her voice acting debut as Bill Murphy in the Netflix animated comedy F Is for Family on December 18, 2015. In February 2016, Reinhart initiated a radio promotion tour in order to distribute "Can't Help Falling in Love" to wider radio markets throughout the United States. Her upcoming second studio album, Better, serves as an expansion of an initially conceived EP and will be released in April 2016, following the release of the lead single and title track, "Better." She intends to support the release of the album with a 2016 promotional tour.