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- <text id=93TT0063>
- <title>
- Oct 18, 1993: Died:Agnes De Mille
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1993
- Oct. 18, 1993 What in The World Are We Doing?
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- MILESTONES, Page 33
- </hdr>
- <body>
- <p> DIED. AGNES DE MILLE, 88, dancer and choreographer; in New York
- City. The 1943 musical Oklahoma! was a breakthrough hit for
- composer Richard Rodgers and lyricist Oscar Hammerstein--and
- a choreographer named Agnes de Mille, who overnight transformed
- Broadway dance from a mere ornament to an essential, expressive
- element of theatrical storytelling. It was the perfect assignment
- for a dancer who from the start of her career had choreographed
- character studies and narrative ballets that combined classical
- technique with unmistakably American popular and folk themes.
- At the same time, composer Aaron Copland was forging a similar
- artistic hybrid in classical music, and it was his and De Mille's
- triumphant collaboration in the jaunty 1942 ballet Rodeo that
- brought De Mille to the attention of Rodgers and Hammerstein.
- De Mille's other Broadway successes included the choreography
- for Kurt Weill's One Touch of Venus and Lerner and Loewe's Brigadoon.
- A stroke in 1975 barely slowed down De Mille; she published
- an account of her recovery in Reprieve: A Memoir, the 11th of
- her 12 books, in 1981. She was still creating dances in her
- 80s, including the choreography for an American Ballet Theatre
- production of the Irish Revolution morality tale The Informer.
- </p>
-
- </body>
- </article>
- </text>
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