Topic: Theater & Dance
The irrepressible and brash Gracie Hansen -- best remembered for presenting shapely showgirls in her glamorous Las Vegas-style burlesque nightclub at Seattle's Century 21 Exposition (Seattle World's F...
Glenn Hughes, director of the drama program at the University of Washington for more than 30 years, gained international fame as the pioneer of "theater in the round." His experiments in a friend's pe...
Intiman Theatre is a professional not-for-profit resident theater company in Seattle. From its inception in 1972 in a tiny 70-seat theater in Kirkland to its present operation in the 480-seat Playhous...
This People's History was contributed by John Keene, president of the Irish Heritage Society. Besides playing Gaelic football, Irish dancing had been one way that people born in Ireland could pass on ...
Burton W. James and Florence Bean James, founders of the Seattle Repertory Playhouse, played a central role in the city's theatrical life for nearly 30 years. They arrived in 1923, coaxed west from Ne...
Robert Joffrey (1928-1988) was a dancer, choreographer, and founder of the eponymous ballet company. He is credited with bringing a distinctly American approach to dance and with reviving experimental...
For more than 50 years, a community center named for Harlem Renaissance luminary Langston Hughes (1902-1967) and housed under the dome of a former synagogue has played a role in the artistic, cultural...
Seattle-born Rose Louise Hovick had her first brush with fame at age one, winning a healthy baby contest. As Gypsy Rose Lee, she became famous in burlesque as a classy and witty strip tease artist. Sh...
The Moore Theatre, Seattle's oldest existing entertainment venue, stood as one of the finest houses on all the West Coast when it opened in December 1907. Located on 2nd Avenue and Virginia Street, th...
The Negro Repertory Company served as the African American unit of Seattle's Federal Theatre Project. Congress had created the Federal Theatre Project in 1935, under the auspices of the Works Progress...
Martha Nishitani was a Seattle modern dance teacher and choreographer, and one of the leading proponents of modern dance in the Pacific Northwest. Her University District studio was a fixture of Seatt...
Fondly remembered as a fixture of Seattle's downtown, the Orpheum Theatre at 5th Avenue and Stewart Street opened on August 28, 1927. Originally designed to showcase vaudeville and film, the venue was...
Pacific Northwest Ballet, founded in 1972, is consistently ranked among the leading professional ballet companies in the United States. Since its inception, the company has performed at Seattle Center...
Alexander Pantages was a theatrical entrepreneur who had a considerable impact on the development of popular stage entertainments in the Puget Sound region in the early twentieth century. He created a...
Built in 1928 at 9th Avenue and Pine Street in downtown Seattle, the Paramount Theatre (originally called the Seattle Theatre) has over its long history brought to town some of the most diverse entert...
In 1978 Cornish Institute (now Cornish College of the Arts) Dance Director Karen Irvin (1910-1999) invited Patricia Hon (b. 1945) to teach Graham technique and Spanish dance classes for one semester. ...
Pioneer Square Theater was founded in 1980 by Anna Marie Collins, Billy Ontiveros, Grant Walpole, and Nick Flynn as a 501-C nonprofit organization in Washington state. Between 1980 and its closing in ...
J. Willis Sayre was a longtime resident of Seattle -- a journalist, arts promoter, and local historian whose work spanned more than five decades during the city's most explosive period of growth and d...
In an era when show-business impresarios often were caricatured as homburg-hatted men wielding large cigars, Seattle had Cecilia Augspurger Schultz, a woman of august ancestry with her own taste in ha...
Seafair, the gala annual Seattle-King County water festival, began in August 1950 and continues to this day. The festival erupts all over King County and has included hydroplane speed competitions, li...
The Seattle Arts Commission was formed in 1971. The commission evolved out of the Municipal Arts Commission, founded in 1955 with the aim of integrating artistic experiences into Seattleites' daily li...
Seattle Children's Theatre dates its birth to 1975, but it actually got its start in 1971 when the City of Seattle and the fundraising organization PONCHO together built Poncho Theatre at Seattle's Wo...
This is a snapshot history of the Seattle Office of Arts & Culture's leadership in providing quality arts education to students in Seattle public schools. The Office of Arts & Culture was established ...
Since its earliest decades, Seattle has been staging theatrical plays and other musical and dramatic entertainments. Plenty of theaters and their associated troupes have come and gone, but only one --...