Dutch National Ballet: 47 Pictures That Capture Performing Dancers in the Netherlands During the 1960s

These photos from faun070 that captivate moments of performances and rehearsals during the later years of Sonia Gaskell's 'reign,' the charismatic lady who first founded the Nederlands Ballet, which in 1961 merged with other companies to become the Dutch National Ballet. Ballet dancers include Olga de Haas, Simon André, Maria Koppers, Toer van Schayk, Ellen Brusse, Yvonne Vendrig, Sylvester Campbell, Sonja Marchiolli, Rudolf Nureyev,...

Apart from ballet masters from Leningrad and Moscow the company then worked with legendary people like Lifar, Lichine and Skibine and Pearl Lang who mounted some of their best known ballets on the company.

According to many this was a most exciting time to be in the company, and to many others it seems an almost mythical time.

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29 Stunning Photos of Dancefloor Styles That Defined the '70s Disco Fashion

Disco looks began in the 1970s and was memorable for its hot pants look and Spandex tops. Shiny clinging Lycra stretch disco pants in hot strident shiny colors with stretch sequin bandeau tops were often adaptations of professional modern dance wear that found itself making an impact in discos as disco dancing became serious.

Gold lame, leopard skin and stretch halter jumpsuits and white clothes that glowed in Ultraviolet lights captured the '70s Disco fashion perfectly.

These stunning photos show what Disco fashion looked like in the 1970s.

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57 Incredible Found Pictures of Lovely Dancing Girls in the First Half of 20th Century

Here is an incredible found photo collection from Sam Salt that show lovely dancing girls from between the 1910s and late 1950s.

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Music, Entertaining, Mini Skirts: 27 Vibrant Photos of Retro Girls on the Dancefloors in the 1960s

Dance, move, rhythm, music, entertainment, style, costume, fashion, twist, jive, miniskirt, energy,... All create a vibrant atmosphere. These images are typical of one of the most energetic generations. The Swinging Sixties.

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Learn How to Dance Disco With Åke Blomqvist

Arthur Åke Blomqvist (1925-2013) was a Finnish dance instructor, active since 1940, and Judge of the tango market in Seinäjoki. Together with his wife Leena, he ran dance schools in Helsinki, Tampere and Lahti. Even the couple’s two children are dance teachers.

Åke Blomqvist was the host of a dance program that went on Saturday in Finnish TV. In 1980, he showed how to dance disco. A video of one of Åke’s disco lessons from the 1980s began to spread through the internet in the early 2000s, when the world suddenly became aware of this dance teacher's amazing ability to take Afro-American, gay and Latino moves, and remove all style, energy and panache, for the consumption of Finnish audiences.

51 Amazing Photos of Ballet Dancers of the Paris Opéra in the Early 1860s

Most of the portraits in this set from The Library of Nineteenth-Century Photography that show ballet dancers of the Paris Opéra in the early 1860s. They were taken by French photographer, and inventor of the carte-de-visite André Adolphe Eugène Disdéri (1819-1889).

Aléxandrine Simon, a dancer with the Paris Opéra

Amalia Ferraris (1830 - 1904)

Amalia Ferraris (1830 - 1904)

Amalia Ferraris (1830 - 1904)

Amalia Ferraris and Louis Mérante

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Two Drunken Geisha Break Dancing in Old Japan

This grainy photo was taken during a wild Geisha party over in the Gion district of Kyoto.

The Mama-san Proprietress of the Geisha House was shocked to discover that a customer had broken the NO CAMERAS rule by secreting a small "Detective camera" under his kimono to capture the normally-disciplined Geisha doing the dances they really wanted to do for their customers.

These Geisha were immediately stripped of their Obi's, and sent back to Maiko School for remedial training as punishment for their drunken lapse of judgment.

THE TRUTH: The dancing game you see in the photo is still carried on today, and can be seen here... although one of the geisha is a bit too tipsy to pull it off completely: Kin no Shachihoko.

The photo above is scanned from a 1920s collotype of a 1880s-90s silver-print by Flickr member Okinawa Soba.

Fascinating Photographs of Robin Williams as a Cheerleader for the Denver Broncos Football Team in 1979

Ever the comedian, Robin Williams was never one to be afraid of doing something new, here he can be seen debuting as the first male cheerleader for the Denver Broncos in 1979.

The late actor briefly joined the Broncos cheering squad in November 1979, donning a white sequined mini-skirt, go-go boots and an orange neckerchief, then prancing in front of a crowd that the Denver Post pegs at around 74,000 people.

In doing so, Williams became the first male Broncos cheerleader in history, and likely the most entertaining Broncos cheerleader of all time, regardless of gender.

Williams pulled the stunt for the 37th episode of “Mork & Mindy,” a comedy show set in nearby Boulder, Colorado, in which Williams plays Mork, an alien sent to investigate Earth. In the episode, Mork joins the squad at the urging of his adoptive sister’s cousin, Nelson, who believes his political career will be aided by Mork’s new gig.

Perhaps inspired by Williams’ antics on the sidelines, the Broncos beat the Patriots 45-10.

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Seventeen-Year-Old Bianca Passarge of Dresses Up as a Cat and Dances on Wine Bottles, 1958

17-year-old Bianca Passarge of Hamburg dresses up as a cat, complete with furry tail, and dances on wine bottles, June 1958. Her performance is based on a dream and she practices for eight hours every day in order to perfect her dance.

(Photo by Carlo Polito/BIPs/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Dance 'Til You Drop: Vintage Photographs Capture Dance Marathons in the United States During the 1920s and 1930s

Dance Marathons (also called Walkathons), an American phenomenon of the 1920s and 1930s, were human endurance contests in which couples danced almost non-stop for hundreds of hours (as long as a month or two), competing for prize money.

Dance marathons originated as part of an early-1920s, giddy, jazz-age fad for human endurance competitions such as flagpole sitting and six-day bicycle races. Dance marathons persisted throughout the 1930s as partially staged performance events, mirroring the marathon of desperation Americans endured during the Great Depression.

In these dance endurance contests, a mix of local hopefuls and seasoned professional marathoners danced, walked, shuffled, sprinted, and sometimes cracked under the pressure and exhaustion of round-the-clock motion. A 25-cent admission price entitled audience members to watch as long as they pleased.

"When bodies began to demand rest, dancers could often be seen plucking imaginary daisies from the linoleum floors or fleeing the building from hallucinated attackers, a manic state fans came to call “squirrely” behavior."

Dance marathons were held in Spokane, Seattle, Yakima, Wenatchee, Bellingham, and elsewhere. They occupied a slightly disrespectable niche in society, and many towns banned them, finding them disruptive, disturbing, and even repugnant.

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25 Gorgeous Vintage Photographs of Ballet Dancers From Between the 1910s and 1950s

Ballet originated in the Italian Renaissance courts of the 15th century. Noblemen and women were treated to lavish events, especially wedding celebrations, where dancing and music created an elaborate spectacle.

In the late 17th century Louis XIV founded the Académie Royale de Musique (the Paris Opera) within which emerged the first professional theatrical ballet company, the Paris Opera Ballet. The predominance of French in the vocabulary of ballet reflects this history. Theatrical ballet soon became an independent form of art, although still frequently maintaining a close association with opera, and spread from the heart of Europe to other nations.

In the 20th century styles of ballet continued to develop and strongly influence broader concert dance, for example, in the United States choreographer George Balanchine developed what is now known as neoclassical ballet, subsequent developments have included contemporary ballet and post-structural ballet, for example seen in the work of William Forsythe in Germany.

The etymology of the word "ballet" reflects its history. The word ballet comes from French and was borrowed into English around the 17th century. The French word in turn has its origins in Italian balletto, a diminutive of ballo (dance). Ballet ultimately traces back to Italian ballare, meaning "to dance".

A scene from the film Melba, 1953. (Hulton Archive / Getty Images)

Lubov Tchernicheva, Alice Nikitina, Alexandra Danilova, Felia Doubrovska, and Serge Lifar during a production of Apollon Musagetes, 1928. (Sasha / Getty Images)

Madame Lubovska teaching students from the National American Ballet School, 1924. (Hulton Archive / Getty Images)

A performance in London, 1943. (Fred Ramage/Keystone Features / Getty Images)

A scene from the ballet Protee, 1938. (Baron / Getty Images)

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17 Beautiful Photos of American Belly Dancers in 1981

Texas-based photographer Jay Phagan took these beautiful photos of belly dance troupe that performed at the Corpus Christi Museum of Science and History in June, 1981.

 “I think the name of the group was something like "Shireem's Belly Dancers", but I'm not sure. I took these pictures with a Nikon FM and a Vivitar flash on Ektachomre film.”

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