Famous Dancers Trivia Quiz

Answer: Darcey Bussell

Darcey Andrea Bussell was born in 1969, in London. She trained at the Royal Ballet School and made a successful debut in "Concerto" in 1986. She became a member of the Royal Ballet in 1988.
She is a tall dancer with long limbs and a very strong technique, and she has danced all the leading classical roles, including Giselle and Aurora. She has also danced, with great success, with the New York City Ballet.
Kenneth MacMillan created roles for her in "The Prince of the Pagodas" (1989) and "Winter Dreams" (1991) and Twyla Tharp created the role of Mistress Truth-on-Toe in "Mr Worldly Wise" for her in 1995. Bussell received the 1990 Evening Standard Award for Outstanding Achievement in Ballet and in 1997 the choreographer Glen Tetley created a new work, "Amores" in her honour. She was appointed an OBE in 1995, and has become one of the most popular dancers of today.

Answer: Fred Astaire

Fred Astaire was born in 1899 in Omaha, Nebraska. From 1917 to 1932 himself and his sister Adele were a noted Broadway dancing team, appearing in musicals like "Over the Top", "Lady Be Good" and "Funny Face". After Adele retired from the stage, Fred Astaire began a career in films, his first film being "Dancing Lady" in 1933.

His films with the dancer Ginger Rogers, began with "Flying Down to Rio" in 1933 and included "Roberta" (1935), "Top Hat" (1935), "Shall We Dance?" (1937) and "The Barkleys of Broadway" (1949). Astaire and Rogers developed an elegant dancing style, recognised for its technicality and intimacy. Perhaps the greatest dancer of his time, Fred Astaire combined technical mastery with ease and good humour and in 1949 his film work was recognised with an Academy Award.

He died in 1987.

Answer: Isadora Duncan

Isadora Duncan was born in 1877 in San Francisco, California and she made her professional debut in Chicago, Illinois, in 1899. She toured Europe and the United States in dance recitals and established dance schools in Berlin, Paris and Moscow.
However, she had a tragic personal life - she was in favour of 'free love' and had a daughter by the British stage designer Edward Gordon Craig and a son by Paris Singer, the American heir to a sewing-machine fortune. However, both children were killed in a car accident in 1913. She married the Russian poet Sergey Yesenin in 1922, but they separated shortly after.
Isadora Duncan lived in poverty for many years before making one final dramatic appearance in Paris; she died in a car accident in France in 1927.
Duncan's dancing style was noted by its free, flowing movements expressing inner emotion and was inspired by natural phenomena such as waves and winds. She was fascinated with ancient Greek ideals of human form and beauty and she usually appeared on stage dressed in a delicate tunic with her feet, arms, and legs bare. When she first introduced her style of dancing in America, she was met with strong resistance, but eventually her ideas were accepted and favoured. In her lifetime, she greatly influenced 20th-century ballet and laid the groundwork for the modern dance movement of the 20th century.

Answer: Mata Hari

Mata Hari was born in 1876 in Leeuwarden and at the age of eighteen, she married Campbell MacLeod, a British-born captain of the Dutch army; they were divorced a few years later. She settled in Paris, and after 1900 she began to perform erotic dances at private gatherings.

In 1907 she became a spy for Germany. Through her intimate liaisons with high-ranked Allied officers she was able to get important military information. She was executed at Vincennes in October 1917 by the French.

Answer: Anna Pavlova

Anna Pavlovna Pavlova was born in 1882 in St Petersburg. She was trained at the school of Imperial Ballet and made her debut as a soloist in 1899, before becoming prima ballerina for the company in 1906. Pavlova toured Europe in 1907 and appeared briefly with the Ballets Russes of the Russian impresario Sergei Diaghilev, and in 1910 made her American debut with the Russian dancer Mikhail Mordkin at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York.

She founded her own company in 1911, and danced extensively in Europe, North and South America and Africa, bringing ballet to the most remote areas, until her retirement in 1925. Anna Pavlova was an outstanding representative of classical Russian ballet and was admired for the poetic quality of her movement.

Her most famous classical roles were in "Giselle", "Swan Lake", "Les Sylphides", "Don Quixote", "Coppelia" and in the solo dance "The Dying Swan" which was created for her in 1905 by the Russian choreographer Michel Fokine.

Answer: Dame Margot Fonteyn

Dame Margot Fonteyn was born in 1919 in Surrey, England and was originally named Margaret Hookham. After marrying and recognition for her important role in modern British ballet, her full name eventually became Dame Margot Fonteyn de Arias. She studied in London with the Russian teacher and dancer Seraphima Astafieva.

In 1934 she became a member of the Vic-Wells Ballet and by 1940 Fonteyn was prima ballerina of the Sadler's Wells Company. Fonteyn's dancing was recognised for its technical expertise and musical sensitivity.

Her most famous role was Aurora in "The Sleeping Beauty", but she also established strong roles in many ballets by the British choreographer Sir Frederick Ashton. In 1954 she became president of the Royal Academy of Dancing, and in 1956 was made Dame by the British Empire. Through the 1960s and 1970s, Fonteyn performed regularly with Soviet-born dancer Rudolf Nureyev whilst he was with the Royal Ballet.

In 1979 the Royal Ballet awarded her the rare title prima ballerina assoluta.

She died in 1991.

Answer: Gene Kelly

Gene Kelly was born in 1912 as Eugene Curran Kelly in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He studied at his mother's dance school and first performed in the chorus of the Broadway musical "Leave It to Me" in 1938, and went on to be recognised for the starring role of Pal Joey. Moving to Hollywood, he appeared in and co-directed important film musicals like "On the Town" (1949) and his best-remembered film, "Singin' in the Rain" (1952). His dancing and choreography in "An American in Paris" (1951), which won an Oscar for Best Film, were acclaimed as outstanding examples of film ballet. As director, his most successful film was "Hello Dolly" in 1969, which he didn't perform in himself. He died on February 2, 1996.

None of the incorrect options meet all the requirements of the description in the question, although they are all well known for their achievements in one or more of these areas.

Answer: Joaquin Cortes

Joaquin Cortes was born in 1969 in a village near Cordoba. He was taught flamenco by his uncle, Cristobal Reyes, a renowned Spanish dancer; he also studied classical ballet and performed with the Ballet Nacional de Espana for six years until 1990.
Cortes then formed his own dance company. His productions, which use the technical developments of staging, have risen swiftly to popular fame, attracting large audiences to such venues as the Royal Albert Hall. He has a characteristically unorthodox approach to flamenco, as he often dances with a bare torso and rounded shoulders, but there is no doubt that his theatrical approach and personality, his use of Giorgio Armani as costume designer, and his choice of loud amplified music have captured the imagination of a younger dance generation. His productions include "Cibayi" in 1992 and "Gipsy Passion" in 1994, the latter toured Europe and the United States.
Cortes has also appeared in films, including "Le Flor de mi Secreto" (1995; The Flower of my Secret), and "Flamenco" (1996).

Answer: Martha Graham

Martha Graham was born on May 11, 1893, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She received her early training as a dancer under Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn in the Denishawn school. After two years of dancing in Broadway productions, she became director of the dance department at the Eastman School of Music in New York and turned to creating dances of her own. She gave her first recital in 1926.
In her early work, Graham rejected the fancy styles of Denishawn productions, preferring sparse staging. Her preference for austere costuming and staging, as well as the angularity and severity of her movements caused initial bewilderment, although she also captured immediate recognition. As her highly individual and expressive style developed, she became one of the leading figures in contemporary dance. She trained young dancers for her company, developing a modern technique that included the contraction and release of different parts of the body, close relation of breathing to feeling and movement, angular body lines; and close contact with the ground.
In her later works Graham made full, often symbolic, use of the traditional resources of the theatre, including lighting, stage sets and properties, and costuming. Her stage settings which were often abstract and sculptural were designed and made by notable artists like the American sculptor Isamu Noguchi. Graham's works vary in mood from the witty "Every Soul Is a Circus" (1939) to the frenzied "Deaths and Entrances" (1943), based loosely on the Brontė family with Emily as the heroine. Graham's concerns ranged from American themes, in "Letter to the World" (1940), a study of the life of the poet Emily Dickinson, to psychologically interpreted Greek mythology, in "Clytemnestra" (1958). She retired as a dancer in 1970.
In 1984, at the age of 90, she choreographed "Rite of Spring" and died in New York on April 1, 1991.

Answer: Alwin Nikolais

Alwin Nikolais was born in 1912 in Southington, Connecticut, and he worked as a theatre pianist and puppet master before studying modern dance. In 1948 Nikolais became director of the Henry Street Playhouse, New York, where he produced children's theatre and then established his own dance theatre and foundation. Nikolais's background in puppets influenced his choreography, especially "Tensile Involvement" (1953), in which the dancers had puppet strings attached to their heads.

In works such as the latter or "Masks, Props, and Mobiles" (1953), in which the dancers wore bags as costumes, Nikolais dehumanised his dancers in order to distract the audience's attention from personal matters and allow them to focus on cosmic issues.

He choreographed the dances, designed the set, composed the music, and engineered the lighting for such works as "Structures" (1970), "Cross-Fade" (1975), and "Talisman" (1981).