"The Snow Queen" is an original fairy tale by Danish author Hans Christian Andersen. It was first published 21 December 1844 in New Fairy Tales. First Volume. Second Collection. The story centers on the struggle between good and evil as experienced by Gerda and her friend, Kai.
Radio City Music Hall is an entertainment venue and theater at 1260 Avenue of the Americas, within Rockefeller Center, in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City. Nicknamed "The Showplace of the Nation", it is the headquarters for the Rockettes. Radio City Music Hall was designed by Edward Durell Stone and Donald Deskey in the Art Deco style.
In the Christian tradition, a nativity scene is the special exhibition, particularly during the Christmas season, of art objects representing the birth of Jesus. While the term "nativity scene" may be used of any representation of the very common subject of the Nativity of Jesus in art, it has a more specialized sense referring to seasonal displays, either using model figures in a setting or reenactments called "living nativity scenes" in which real humans and animals participate. Nativity scenes exhibit figures representing the infant Jesus, his mother, Mary, and her husband, Joseph.
The Nutcracker is an 1892 two-act "fairy ballet" set on Christmas Eve at the foot of a Christmas tree in a child's imagination. The music is by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, his Opus 71. The plot is an adaptation of E. T. A. Hoffmann's 1816 short story The Nutcracker and the Mouse King. The ballet's first choreographer was Marius Petipa, with whom Tchaikovsky had worked three years earlier on The Sleeping Beauty, assisted by Lev Ivanov. Although the complete and staged The Nutcracker ballet was not as successful as had been the 20-minute Nutcracker Suite that Tchaikovsky had premiered nine months earlier, The Nutcracker soon became popular.
The Main Street Electrical Parade is a nighttime parade, created by Robert Jani and project director Ron Miziker. It features floats and live performers covered in over 600,000 electronically controlled LED lights, and uses a synchronized soundtrack triggered by radio control along key areas of the parade route.
Susan P. Stroman is an American theatre director, choreographer, film director and performer. Her notable theater productions include The Producers, Crazy for You, Contact, and The Scottsboro Boys. She is a five-time Tony Award winner, four for Best Choreography and one as Best Director of a Musical for The Producers. In addition, she is a recipient of two Laurence Olivier Awards, five Drama Desk Awards, eight Outer Critics Circle Awards, two Lucille Lortel Awards, and the George Abbott Award for Lifetime Achievement in the American Theater. She is a 2014 inductee in the American Theater Hall of Fame in New York City.
The Rockettes are an American precision dance company. Founded 1925 in St. Louis, they have, since 1932, performed at Radio City Music Hall in New York City. Until 2015, they also had a touring company. They are best known for starring in the Radio City Christmas Spectacular, an annual Christmas show, and for performing annually since 1957 at the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York.
The Little Prince is a 1974 British-American sci-fi fantasy-musical film with screenplay and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner, music by Frederick Loewe, arranged and orchestrated by Angela Morley. It was both directed and produced by Stanley Donen and based on the 1943 classic children-adult's novella, The Little Prince, by the writer, poet and aviator Count Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, who disappeared near the end of the Second World War some 15 months after his fable was first published.
A musical fountain, also known as a fairy fountain, prismatic fountain or dancing fountain, is a type of choreographed fountain that creates aesthetic designs as a form of entertainment. The displays are commonly synchronised to music and also feature lighting effects that are refracted and reflected by the moving water. Contemporary multimedia fountains can include lasers, video projection and three-dimensional imagery.
Pantomime is a type of musical comedy stage production designed for family entertainment. It was developed in England and is performed throughout the United Kingdom, Ireland and in other English-speaking countries, especially during the Christmas and New Year season. Modern pantomime includes songs, gags, slapstick comedy and dancing. It generally combines gender-crossing actors and topical humour with a story more or less based on a well-known fairy tale, fable or folk tale. Pantomime is a participatory form of theatre, in which the audience is encouraged and expected to sing along with certain parts of the music and shout out phrases to the performers.
The Tiller Girls were among the most popular dance troupes of the 1890s, first formed by John Tiller in Manchester, England, in 1889. In theatre Tiller had noticed the overall effect of a chorus of dancers was often spoiled by lack of discipline. Tiller found that by linking arms the dancers could dance as one; he is credited with inventing precision dance. Possibly most famous for their high-kicking routines, the Tiller Girls were highly trained and precise.
The Roxy Theatre was a 5,920-seat movie palace at 153 West 50th Street between 6th and 7th Avenues, just off Times Square in New York City. It was the largest movie theater ever built. It opened on March 11, 1927 with the silent film The Love of Sunya starring Gloria Swanson. It was a leading Broadway film showcase through the 1950s and also noted for its lavish stage shows. It closed and was demolished in 1960.
World of Color is a nighttime show at Disney California Adventure in the Disneyland Resort in Anaheim, California. Conceived by Vice President of Parades and Spectaculars Steve Davison, and designed by Disney Live Entertainment, the show has 1,200 water fountains and includes lights, fire, lasers, and fog, with high-definition projections on mist screens. The show is inspired by Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color anthology television series, as evidenced by the use of its eponymous theme song written by the Sherman Brothers.
Wonderworld is a musical with lyrics by Stanley Styne and music by Jule Styne written specifically for presentation at the 1964 New York World's Fair's huge 11,000-seat amphitheatre. The large-scale "aqua-stage spectacle" used 250 performers and starred Chita Rivera. The expensive show filed for bankruptcy after two months.
Dave Pierce is a Canadian songwriter, composer, producer and arranger. Pierce was the music director for the opening, closing, and victory ceremonies of the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, for which he received an Emmy Award for Outstanding Music Direction in 2010, arranger for Twyla Tharp's Frank Sinatra musical, Come Fly Away in New York at the Marquis Theatre on Broadway and later that year opening as Sinatra Dance With Me at the Wynn Las Vegas; and music director of the Calgary Stampede Evening Grandstand Show. Pierce was also the musical director of the 2009 Gemini Awards television show in Canada. He is the father of two daughters.
Nativity: A Life Story is an African American Christmas-themed musical based on the Black Nativity written by Langston Hughes, that was intended to become a holiday tradition, appearing annually in various venues in New York City since its inception in the mid-1990s. The performances have been sponsored by the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. Bruce Weber of The New York Times called it "a quirky combination of spiritual fervor, showbiz glamour, African-American pride and a celebration of women".
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is a musical with music by Frank Churchill and Jay Blackton, lyrics by Larry Morey and Joe Cook, and book by Joe Cook. Adapted from Walt Disney Productions' 1937 animated musical film of the same name – which in turn had been based on the classic 1812 German fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm – about a princess banished from her kingdom by her vain stepmother, and she comes to live with seven dwarfs in their woodland home.
The Parade of the Tin Soldiers, also known as The Parade of the Wooden Soldiers, is an instrumental musical character piece, in the form of a popular jaunty march, written by German composer Leon Jessel, in 1897.
Jennifer Jones is an American dancer and actress. In 1987, she became the first African American Radio City Music Hall Rockette.
Emilio Sosa is a costume designer for Broadway and is the current Chair for the American Theatre Wing Board of Trustees in New York City. He is a Tony Award nominated costume designer and is best known for his works Topdog/Underdog, Porgy and Bess, and By the Way, Meet Vera Stark.
