John Cranko
John Cranko was born in Rustenburg, North West, South Africa on August 15th, 1927 and is the Dancer. At the age of 45, John Cranko biography, profession, age, height, weight, eye color, hair color, build, measurements, education, career, dating/affair, family, news updates, and networth are available.
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John Cyril Cranko (15 August 1927 – 26 June 1973) was a South African born ballet dancer and choreographer with the Royal Ballet and the Stuttgart Ballet.
Life and career
Cranko was born in Rustenburg, South Africa's former province of Transvaal. He'll use puppet shows as a child as a creative outlet. Cranko began his ballet studies in Cape Town under the leadership South African ballet teacher and director, Dulcie Howes of the University of Cape Town Ballet School. He choreographed his first dance for the Cape Town Ballet Club in 1945 (using Stravinsky's Suite from L'Histoire du soldat). He then migrated to London, where he studied with the Sadler's Wells Ballet School (later called the Royal Ballet) in 1946 and performing his first role with the Sadler's Wells Ballet in November 1947.
In July 1949, Cranko collaborated with designer John Piper on Sea Change, performed at the Gaiety Theatre in Dublin. They founded the Kenton Theatre in Henley in 1952 and on The Shadow, a ballet that opened on March 3, 1953, they collaborated again for Sadler's Wells Ballet on The Shadow. Cranko's life from dancer to full choreographer began at this time, with his last appearance for the Sadler's Wells Ballet taking place in April 1950. He was appointed resident choreographer for Sadler's Wells Theatre Ballet's 1950-51 season at 23 years old.
In 1951, Cranko choreographed Harlequin, a Richard Arnell "pantomine with divertissements" to music, as well as the humorous ballet Pineapple Poll, Arthur Sullivan's music (newly out of copyright) arranged by conductor Charles Mackerras, for the company's Festival of Britain season. Mackerras' collaboration in 1954 with The Lady and the Fool was followed by Verdi's music. Cranko was collaborating with Benjamin Britten to create a ballet in January 1954 Sadler's Wells Ballet. Cranko created a draft scenario for a work he originally called The Green Serpent, fusing elements from King Lear, Beauty, and the Beast (a tale he had choreographed for Sadler's Wells in 1948) and Serpentin Vert's oriental story Serpentin Vert. He began making a list of dances, rather than merely describing the event and announcing a specific time for each of them, then leaving them to Britten and leaving him to compose what eventually became The Prince of the Pagodas.
Cranko wrote and produced a musical revue called Cranks, which opened in London in December 1955, then transferred to a West End theatre and ran for 223 shows. The singers Anthony Newley, Annie Ross, Hugh Bryant, and dancer Gilbert Vernon were all present in this performance at the Bijou Theatre in Broadway. An original cast CD has been released. With a new revue, Cranko opened at the Lyric Theatre Hammersmith on April 26, 1960, but it did not have the same effect as Cranko.
At the Aldeburgh Festival in 1960, Cranko directed the first performance of Benjamin Britten's opera A Midsummer Night's Dream. Cranko was not invited to direct when the work was completed at Covent Garden the following year, and Sir John Gield was brought in.
Cranko left the United Kingdom for Stuttgart, and he was named artistic director of the Stuttgart Ballet in 1961, where he assembled a talented cast of actors, including Marcia Haydée, Egon Madsen, Richard Cragun, Birgit Keil, and Susanne Hanke. Among his ballets were Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare in 1962, a Prokofiev, Onegin version of Shakespeare's Eugene Onegin (mainly The Seasons), and Carmen in 1971, Wolfgang Fortner and Wilfried Steinbrenner, 1975: R.B.M.E. Brahms' music in 1972 and Spuren (Traces) (Traces by Gustav Mahler)
Cranko's contribution to the German ballet's international success began with a guest appearance at the New York Metropolitan Opera in 1969. Kenneth MacMillan was invited by Cranko to work with the company, one of which MacMillan's lifetime and another, Requiem, as a tribute to Cranko's death. In 1971, Cranko's instigation began a ballet school; the John Cranko Schule was renamed in his honour in 1974. Georgette Tsinguirides, his assistant and choreologist, preserved his work in Benesh Movement Notation.
