Stevie’s Hidden Talent: 16 Rare Vintage Photographs of Stevie Nicks Doing Ballet

“I’ve always been fascinated by flight, ballet, high jumps, big movements, big, big hand gestures. I’m just a person who likes to go on stage and entertain people.” – Stevie Nicks

Ever wonder where the Fleetwood Mac singer gets her mad twirling skills? It may be shocking to find out that her first love isn’t Rock ‘n’ Roll after all! It’s ballet. Yup, tip-toe prancing, tutu-wearing, prim-and-proper classical ballet. In another life, Stevie Nicks said she would have been a ballerina! The practiced twirling queen can do up to 20 twirls during a guitar solo, incorporating her vast background in ballet dancing to her performances.

At four years old, Stevie’s love of dance came about when she started pretending to be 19th Century dancer Isadora Duncan, dancing around to only her family. However, she didn’t get to attend formal ballet classes right away as a child. Still, she wanted to figure out her own way to improve her dancing skills, which lead to her creating routines to songs by The Beach Boys. It all came together when she started singing along to the songs she was dancing to. And that’s how ballet birthed to the rock legend’s vocal prowess.

In her late 20s, Stevie started to take Russian ballet lessons four times a week. She would work out ballet plies and stretches while on tour. She eventually built her own ballet studio in her Phoenix home.

Another interesting fact is that in the cover of Fleetwood Mac’s 11th studio album Rumours released in 1987, Stevie was wearing black pointe shoes in what is an obvious dancing pose with drummer Mick Fleetwood, alluding to her love of ballet.

Her fashion style roots even hails from dance. She once said in an interview with the Rolling Stone:

“I always wanted to work the dancing in. The reason I wear the ponchos and the big shawl-y chiffon things is because I realized from a very young age, if you were 5 foot 1, and you wanted to make big moves and be seen from a long way away [ ], you needed something that was gonna make you show up… If you’re gonna dance, you gotta really dance.”

No wonder Stevie’s got the moves! She could pass as the coolest ballerina on the planet.

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Dancing Master Photographed by Louis Fleckenstein, 1930

Louis Fleckenstein (1866–1943), was an American photographer. His first camera was a birthday gift from his wife around 1895. Eight years later, after participating in numerous local and Midwest exhibitions as an amateur, he entered a national competition, expecting to receive only an illustrated catalogue of the prize-winning images. Instead, to his surprise, he won the first-place prize of 150 dollars instead.

Shortly thereafter Fleckenstein and a colleague organized the Salon Club of America, which was devoted to the nationwide promotion of the various regional Pictorialist photographers’ clubs. By the time he moved from Montana to Los Angeles, where he opened a portrait studio in 1907, he had exhibited at the Royal Photographic Society in London and become an internationally known photographer.

In 1914 Fleckenstein, along with a young Edward Weston and others, formed the Camera Pictorialists of Los Angeles. He later moved to Long Beach, where he continued to exhibit and publish his work while he worked as the city’s first art commissioner.

Dancing Master, 1930

Apache Dance, 1930

The Contortionist, 1930

Bogey Man of the Desert, 1930

Audrey Hepburn Ballet Dreams of Becoming a Prima Ballerina, Here Are Some Rare Pics of Her Early Years

Audrey Hepburn was born to an English father and Dutch mother in Belgium, May 4th, 1929. Her father’s job as an insurance agent meant the family often moved between England, Holland and Belgium. In 1935, her parents divorced; one reason for this was that her father was a Nazi sympathizer. The divorce was very traumatic for six-year-old Audrey; she would later say it was the most traumatic incident of her life.

After Britain declared war on Germany in September 1939, Hepburn’s mother, Baroness Ella van Heemstra, relocated her daughter back to Arnhem in the hope that, as during the First World War, the Netherlands would remain neutral and be spared a German attack. While there, Hepburn attended the Arnhem Conservatory from 1939 to 1945. She had begun taking ballet lessons during her last years at boarding school, and continued training in Arnhem under the tutelage of Winja Marova, becoming her “star pupil”.

After the war ended in 1945, Hepburn moved with her mother and siblings to Amsterdam, where she began ballet training under Sonia Gaskell, a leading figure in Dutch ballet, and Russian teacher Olga Tarasova.

Later in 1948, Hepburn moved to London to take up a ballet scholarship with Ballet Rambert, which was then based in Notting Hill. After she was told by Rambert that despite her talent, her height and weak constitution (the after-effect of wartime malnutrition) would make the status of prima ballerina unattainable, she decided to concentrate on acting.

While Ella worked in menial jobs to support them, Hepburn appeared as a chorus girl in the West End musical theatre revues High Button Shoes (1948) at the London Hippodrome, and Cecil Landeau’s Sauce Tartare (1949) and Sauce Piquante (1950) at the Cambridge Theatre. During her theatrical work, she took elocution lessons with actor Felix Aylmer to develop her voice. After being spotted by a casting director while performing in Sauce Piquante, Hepburn was registered as a freelance actress with the Associated British Picture Corporation.

In 1953 she was cast in her first major supporting role in Thorold Dickinson’s The Secret People (1952), as a prodigious ballerina, performing all of her own dancing sequences.

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Stunning Portraits of Modern Dance Pioneer Ruth St. Denis Taken by Arnold Genthe From the 1920s

Ruth St. Denis (1879–1968) was an early modern dance pioneer. Her exotic, oriental-inspired dance interpretations opened new possibilities for dancers and stimulated a wave of creative experimentation in modern dance.

She and her husband, Ted Shawn, founded the influential dance school and company, Denishawn, in 1915. One of her most famous pupils was Martha Graham. Doris Humphrey and Charles Weidman also studied at Denishawn. Graham, Humphrey, Weidman, and the future silent film star Louise Brooks all performed as dancers with the Denishawn company.

St. Denis founded Adelphi University's dance program in New York State in 1938, which is credited as one of the first dance departments in an American university. It has since become a cornerstone of Adelphi's Department of Performing Arts.

Ruth St. Denis was the first American dancer to incorporate the traditions and practices of the vaudeville stage into the world of serious concert dance. Her solo "translations" were unique combinations of dramatic mise en scene and contemporary dance steps that successfully combined theatrical and concert dance traditions. Eastern religion also heavily influenced her choreographic style.

For many years, Denis taught dance at a studio in Hollywood, California, just north of the Hollywood Bowl. In 1963, she teamed with Raymond DeArmond Bowman to bring the first full-length Balinese Shadow Puppet play to the United States. Her later years were largely devoted to exploring the relationship between spirituality and dance.

Below are some amazing portraits of Ruth St. Denis taken by photographer Arnold Genthe from the 1920s.

(Photos by Arnold Genthe)

Ballet Swan Lake Fouetée: Nureyev and Fonteyn, 1967

This 1967 clip from Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake, legends Rudolf Nureyev and Margot Fonteyn give a very brief glimpse of the incredible athleticism involved in ballet. So. Many. Spins.

In 1961, Nureyev was invited to make his London debut at the annual gala organised by Margot Fonteyn for the Royal Academy of Dancing. He asked to dance Spectre de la Rose with her but she was already committed to do this with John Gilpin, and anyway was not sure how well she and “this young Russian” would suit each other. Nureyev therefore danced Black Swan with Hightower and a solo, Poème tragique, made for him by Frederick Ashton.

The gala led the Royal Ballet to invite him to dance Giselle with Fonteyn the next season, also Swan Lake, the Don Quixote pas de deux, Les Sylphides and Sleeping Beauty with guest ballerinas Sonia Arova and Yvette Chauviré. Between whiles, Nureyev also danced with Bruhn, Arova and Hightower in Cannes and Paris, performing pieces created or staged by the two men, and he made his New York debut on television (substituting for the injured Bruhn in Bournonville’s Flower Festival at Genzano duet with Tallchief), then on stage with Ruth Page's Chicago Opera Ballet.

Thus was laid the groundwork for his subsequent career: a lasting link with the Royal Ballet, frequent appearances with other companies, the beginning of his activities as producer and choreographer, and perhaps above all his partnership with Fonteyn. Both of them danced with many other partners who almost always looked better in consequence, but they were most proud of what they achieved together. He at 23 gave her at 42 a new burst of energy and understanding; she inspired him and helped him settle down.

Each learned a lot from the other and danced at their very best together. He greatly wanted to dance with her in Leningrad and show what they achieved (unfortunately by the time he was allowed to dance there she had retired and he was far past his best). His explanation of their extraordinary success was “It’s not her, it’s not me, it’s the sameness of the goal.”

People were so eager to see them together that their agent charged far more for them as a pair than the sum of their already high individual fees. They remained lifelong close friends too.

Elvis Presley Promoting the Film “Jailhouse Rock”, 1957

Penned by the legendary Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, "Jailhouse Rock" became another No. 1 record for Elvis. It entered the British charts at No. 1, making it the first single ever to do so. The rock 'n' roll songwriting duo was commissioned to write most of the songs for the movie Jailhouse Rock, though they were less than enthusiastic about the assignment.

Prior to "Jailhouse Rock," Elvis had recorded a handful of songs from Leiber and Stoller, including "Hound Dog," "Love Me," and a couple of tunes from Loving You. The two songwriters were not impressed with Elvis' interpretation of their material. Leiber and Stoller had a tendency to write hard-driving, R&B-flavored tunes with satiric or tongue-in-cheek lyrics that could be understood at more than one level.

Elvis Presley promoting Jailhouse Rock

Elvis, on the other hand, performed most of his material straight, as when he recorded the duo's "Love Me," which they had originally intended as a lampoon of country-western music. Leiber and Stoller also felt that Elvis' foray into R&B territory was a fluke, and they were suspicious of his interest in blues and rhythm-and-blues.

When the three met during the April 1957 recording session for "Jailhouse Rock," Leiber and Stoller quickly changed their minds about Elvis. They realized he knew his music and he was a workhorse in the studio. The pair took over the recording sessions, serving as unofficial producers of "Jailhouse Rock," "Treat Me Nice," "(You're So Square) Baby, I Don't Care," and other tunes. Their collaboration with Elvis and his musicians on "Jailhouse Rock" resulted in the singer's hardest-rocking movie song. D.J. Fontana said of his drum playing, “I tried to think of someone on a chain gang smashing rocks.”

The short period of time that Leiber and Stoller worked with Elvis proved beneficial to both sides. The irony and ambiguity in the lyrics of "Jailhouse Rock" gave Elvis one of his most clever rockers, while the singer's sincere and energetic delivery prevented the song from becoming too much of a burlesque -- a tendency with some of the Leiber and Stoller songs written for the Coasters. These songwriters hung with Elvis long enough to contribute to the King Creole soundtrack, among other projects, but eventually they ran afoul of Elvis' management for trying to introduce him to new challenges.

With its combination of hard-rocking tunes and romantic ballads, the Jailhouse Rock EP ably supported the film of the same title. King Creole boasts a powerful cast and a skilled director, and Blue Hawaii features slick production values, but the gritty, low-budget Jailhouse Rock remains Elvis Presley's best film. If Elvis the rock 'n' roll rebel liberated a generation from the values, tastes, and ideals of their parents, then Jailhouse Rock is the only Presley film that speaks directly to the feral, sensual, and unruly nature of rock 'n' roll music.

Elvis' musicals belong to that genre known as the "teenpic" or the teen musical, in which rock 'n' roll performers were showcased in musical vehicles designed to cash in on the immense popularity of youth-oriented music. From Rock Around the Clock, featuring real-life rocker Bill Haley, to Rock, Pretty Baby, starring actors pantomiming to ersatz rock tunes, producers and studios pandered to the teenage audience by combining teen fashion, teen jargon, and teen idols with a healthy dose of generational conflict.

Released in 1957, Jailhouse Rock offers more than a superficial rundown of the latest fads and fashions, however, and it excludes the standard clash between generations. The plot features an insider's look at the rock 'n' roll record business (as interpreted by Hollywood) through the character of Peggy Van Alden, a record exploitation "man" (1950s title for a record promoter) who helps ex-con Vince Everett (Elvis' character) launch a singing career.

Because the audience sees the business through Peggy's point of view, the film's treatment of rock music differs from other teenpics. For example, rock 'n' roll is an established, accepted style of music when the story begins, and there is no organized resistance to it by authority figures. In general, the attitude toward the music in the script is both knowing and respectful, serving to validate rock 'n' roll as a popular art form -- an important consideration to teenagers of the era.

14 Fabulous Photos That Defined Dancing Fashion Styles of the 1960s

There was nothing like the 1960s, and the same goes for 1960s costumes. Whether you're into flower power, the Go-Go lifestyle, rock and roll or mod culture, you can find a deluxe '60s costume set that fits in more ways than one.

So how about dancing fashion in this period? Check out these color photos to see what young dancers wore in the Swinging Sixties.

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24 Amazing Photographs of Burlesque Dancers in the 1950s

A burlesque is a literary, dramatic or musical work intended to cause laughter by caricaturing the manner or spirit of serious works, or by ludicrous treatment of their subjects. The word derives from the Italian burlesco, which, in turn, is derived from the Italian burla – a joke, ridicule or mockery.

Left to Right actresses and burlesque entertainers Margie Hart, Lili St. Cyr, and Gypsy Rose Lee were all were showcased at Boston’s Old Howard Theater on November 25, 1953. (AP Photo)

Burlesque has historic roots in America’s minstrel culture, dating as far back as the 1840s. However, the version we know today — a marriage of vaudevillian humor and striptease — became popular in the early 1900s, when (mostly women) performers took to clubs and Broadway venues with their own brand of music, dance and provocative nudity.

The era of Prohibition took a toll on the burlesque industry, as teetotaling politicians and authority figures took issue with both the performers and club owners that made burlesque possible. Thankfully, the genre bit back in the 1950s, as women like Sally Rand, Gypsy Rose Lee, Tempest Storm, Lili St. Cyr, and Blaze Starr emerged as boundary-pushing icons.

We dove into the photographic archives to showcase a visual taste of burlesque in the 1950s.

Bikini-clad burlesque dancer Brenda Conde shows some moves backstage at the Tivoli Theatre, Mexico City circa 1950. (Photo by Three Lions/Getty Images)

Burlesque dancer Gloria Knight in a two-piece stage outfit, circa 1950. (Photo by Diaz & Rogers/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Burlesque dancer Lonnie Young in a bikini decorated with flowers, circa 1950. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Burlesque dancer Mary Mack reclining on a chaise longue, circa 1950. (Photo by Bruno/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

American actress and burlesque entertainer Gypsy Rose Lee (1914-1970), circa 1950. (Photo by Pictorial Parade/Archive Photos/Getty Images)

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The Dancer in Birkenau: Meet the Polish-Jewish Ballerina Who Shot Nazis on Her Way to the Gas Chamber

More a certainty than a legend, a woman killed a Nazi guard at Birkenau while she was ordered to strip en route to the gas chambers. But who was she?

On October 23, 1943, a transport of around 1700 Polish Jews with foreign passports were transported out of the Special Camp at the Bergen-Belsen Exchange camp in Germany; they arrived on passenger trains at the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp, although they had been told that they were being taken to a transfer camp called Bergau near Dresden, from where they would continue on to Switzerland to be exchanged for German POWs.

One of the passengers was Franceska Mann, a beautiful dancer who was a performer at the Melody Palace nightclub in Warsaw. She had probably obtained her foreign passport from the Hotel Polski on the Aryan side of the Warsaw Ghetto. In July 1943, the Germans arrested the 600 Jewish inhabitants of the hotel and some of them were sent to Bergen-Belsen as exchange Jews. Others were sent to Vittel in France to await transfer to South America.

According to Jerzy Tabau, a prisoner who later escaped from Birkenau and wrote a report on the incident, the new arrivals were not registered at Birkenau. Instead, they were told that they had to be disinfected before crossing the border into Switzerland. They were taken into an undressing room next to one of the gas chambers and ordered to undress. The beautiful Franceska caught the attention of SS Sergeant Major Josef Schillinger, who stared at her and ordered her to undress completely. Suddenly Franceska threw her shoe into Schillinger's face, and as he opened his gun holster, Franceska grabbed his pistol and fired two shots, wounding him in the stomach. Then she fired a third shot which wounded another SS Sergeant named Emmerich. Schillinger died on the way to the hospital.

(Illustration by Władysław Siwek)

According to Tabau, whose report, called “The Polish Major's Report,” was entered into the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal as Document L-022, the shots served as a signal for the other women to attack the SS men; one SS man had his nose torn off, and another was scalped, according to Tabau's report which was quoted by Martin Gilbert in his book entitled The Holocaust: A History of the Jews During the Second World War.

Reinforcements were summoned and the camp commander, Rudolf Höss, came with other SS men carrying machine guns and grenades. According to another report, called “Jewish Resistance in Nazi-occupied Europe” written by Ainsztein and quoted by Martin Gilbert, the women were then removed one by one, taken outside and shot to death. However, Eberhard Kolb wrote in his book about the history of Bergen-Belsen that they were all murdered in the gas chamber.

In 1944, two more transports of the Polish Jews at Bergen-Belsen were sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau, leaving only about 350 prisoners in the Special Camp who had papers for Palestine, the USA or legitimate documents for South American countries, according to Eberhard Kolb.

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