On February 11 from 6:00 p.m.-2:00 a.m., New York City’s dance community will come together for one night in the “Wave of Humanity” dance concert and event to aid in the tsunami relief effort. Proceeds will go to Action Against Hunger (www.actionagainsthunger.org). Co-presented by Dance Space Center, Broadway Dance Center, and Steps on Broadway, the event will be a 4-part, 8-hour marathon of 40 dance groups. Space is limited to 200 people per part. Parts 1-3 are $20 each, Part 4 is $15, and the entire event is $60. VIP tickets cost $100, including all performances and open bar all night. (The first 20 people to present ticket stubs from Ron Brown’s Feb. 11 performance at BAM’s Harvey Theater will be admitted free into Part 4.)

Choreographers include Gina Gibney, Miguel Gutierrez, Noemie Lafrance, and Arthur Aviles; see www.dancespacecenter.org for a complete schedule. “Wave of Humanity” will take place at Dance Space Center’s “new” location, 280 Broadway at Chambers Street. Take the R, W, 4, 5, 6, J, M, Z, A, C, E, 1, 2, 3, or 9 to City Hall. Call (212) 625-8369, ext. 55, for reservations. To volunteer for the event, contact MiRi Park immediately at (212) 625-8369, ext. 17.

Eight new inductees into the Theater Hall of Fame were chosen in October 2004: Actors Estelle Parsons, Brian Murray, Len Cariou, the late Gregory Hines, and Sir Ian McKellen; playwright A.R. Gurney; set and costume designer Santo Loquasto; and producer Elizabeth Ireland McCann. Inductees are chosen according to the recommendations of the American Theater Critics Association, and must have five major theater credits over at least 25 years to be considered. The induction ceremony, in which the names of the inductees will be revealed enshrined in gold on the lobby walls of the Gershwin Theater, took place on January 24, 2005. (Back Stage)

After a four-month search, Performance Space 122 announced in November that it has engaged Australian director Vallejo Gantner as its next artistic director. His predecessor, Mark Russell, announced his resignation in December after two decades with the avant-garde theater and dance space. Only 30, Gantner has held jobs booking international theater with the Melbourne Festival and the Dublin Fringe Festival, which last he is credited with turning into the fastest-growing arts festival in Ireland. He says that building audiences will certainly be a goal in his new job. P.S. 122 struggled financially after 9/11, according to executive director Anne Dennin, but has recently secured $5 million in financing from the city to renovate its converted schoolhouse on East Ninth Street. (New York Times)

In November New York City Opera named Jane M. Gullong as its new executive director, promoting her from director of development, a post she held for ten years. Gullong previously directed the cultural exchange organization Arts International, was administrative director of the Municipal Arts Society, and fundraised for the New York Shakespeare Festival and Lincoln Center. She replaces Sherwin M. Goldman, who has been assigned full time to the task of finding the opera’s new home, a project that had become extremely time-consuming. “To make a deal is a very long job,” said artistic director Paul Kellogg. “You have to deal with agencies in the city and community interests and so on. It just takes forever.” (New York Times)

Choreographer Twyla Tharp was one of eight artists selected to receive the 2004 National Medal of the Arts, presented by President George W. Bush in an Oval Office ceremony on November 17. The other recipients were the science-fiction author Ray Bradbury; opera composer Carlisle Floyd; the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the philanthropic organization based in New York; architectural historian Vincent Scully; wildlife artist John Ruthven; the late sculptor Frederick Hart; and the late poet Anthony Hecht. The medal rewards those who have made extraordinary contributions to the arts in the United States. (New York Times)

Dame Alicia Markova, a star of Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes and co-founder of the English National Ballet, died December 2 in Bath, England, aged 94. Famous for her delicacy and classical purity as a dancer, Markova was best known for her Giselle, the acme of 19th-century Romantic ballet. Born Lillian Alicia Marks in London in 1910, as a child Markova performed in pantomimes as “Little Alicia: The Miniature Pavlova,” because of her extraordinary natural ability. In 1924 she joined the Ballets Russes, the most important ballet company of the day. The company’s non-Russian dancers were expected to change their names, and Diaghilev himself gave Markova her professional name. After Diaghilev’s death in 1929, Markova returned to London, where she became involved with the emerging British ballet movement, lending her prestige to the Ballet Rambert and the Vic-Wells Ballet (later the Royal Ballet). In 1934 she formed the Markova-Dolin Ballet with British dancer Anton Dolin, the partner with whom she was associated for much of her dancing career. In 1938 she joined the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, and in 1941 she and Dolin moved to Ballet Theater (later ABT) in New York. After the war, Markova and Dolin returned to England and made their troupe the basis of the London Festival Ballet, today’s English National Ballet. Markova danced with the company until 1952, after which she appeared only in guest performances until retiring in 1963, also the year the Queen named her a Dame of the British Empire. Markova then surprised the dance world by taking over the Metropolitan Opera Ballet, then a little-regarded troupe. In her six years as director, Markova raised the dancers’ technical level and made it possible for the troupe to present programs of its own. From 1970-74 she held a position as a distinguished lecturer at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, the home school of the Cincinnati Ballet; after that she continued to give occasional master classes for many organizations, such as the Royal Ballet School, and to stage revivals of ballets in which she had starred. (New York Times)

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Rachael Dunaven Yocom, a dance educator and writer, died Nov. 14 in Tucson, AZ, aged 88. Born in Corvallis, OR, Yocom received her doctorate from NYU in 1951, after which she taught dance at schools and universities in Oregon, Idaho, and Utah. For nearly two decades, 1954-1972, she chaired the dance department at New York City’s High School for the Performing Arts (immortalized in the movie Fame). Yocom trained many important New York dancers, including Jacqulyn Buglisi, Laura Dean, Eliot Feld, Arthur Mitchell, Eleo Pomare, Ben Vereen, Edward Villella, and Dudley Williams. She also wrote several books, including Modern Dance Techniques and Teaching (1946), written with Graham dancer Gertrude Shurr; wrote songs; and photographed dance. (New York Times)

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Movie-musical leading man Howard Keel died November 7 in Palm Desert, CA, aged 85. Born Harold Leek in Illinois, Keel had a difficult childhood. But “Music changed me completely.” He started out as a singing busboy in Los Angeles, and during World War II he sang in Douglas Aircraft plants to raise morale. In 1946 Oscar Hammerstein II hired Keel to play Billy Bigelow in the Broadway production of Carousel. Keel spent two years with Rodgers and Hammerstein, starring as Curly in the London opening of Oklahoma! But Hollywood beckoned, and in 1950, Keel signed a contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. His first film, Annie Get Your Gun (1950), opposite Betty Hutton, made the handsome Keel, with his rich baritone, an instant star. Show Boat followed in 1951, and two years later, Kiss Me Kate, both opposite Kathryn Grayson. His best-known film (and personal favorite) was the 1954 Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. As the studio system faded, Keel began doing dramas, and he acted in several westerns, including The War Wagon with John Wayne and Kirk Douglas. He also returned to the stage, touring in many different productions, including, in 1977, a record-breaking national tour of South Pacific opposite Jane Powell. In 1981, Keel reinvented himself once again: as the oil tycoon Clayton Farlow on the television soap opera Dallas. But music remained Keel’s passion. He continued to perform after leaving Dallas, playing Atlantic City for the first time at age 80. (New York Times)

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Robert Merrill, whose smooth, powerful baritone graced the Metropolitan Opera for thirty years, died October 23 in New York, aged 87. Born Moishe Miller in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, in 1917, as a teenager Merrill wandered into the old Metropolitan Opera House and was awestruck by Lawrence Tibbett and Lucrezia Bori in rehearsal for La Traviata. As a young man, Merrill sang on WFOX radio, at bar mitzvahs and weddings, and at hotels in the Catskills. His first Met audition, in 1941, was a failure; but in 1944, having in the interval sung at Radio City Music Hall, with the NBC Concert Orchestra, and made his operatic debut in Newark, he auditioned again and shared first prize. During his first 15 years at the Met, he was overshadowed by the baritone Leonard Warren; but after Warren’s death in 1960, Merrill became indisputably the Met’s leading baritone. Known for the security and strength of his sound, and for his precision and clarity, he sang leading roles in much of the standard repertory, including the title role in Rigoletto, Germont in La Traviata, Figaro in Il Barbiere di Siviglia, Escamillo in Carmen, and Tonio in Pagliacci. Regarded as one of the great Verdi baritones of his generation, Merrill’s career also included radio, television, film, and even appearances in nightclubs and Las Vegas. His recording of the national anthem was used for many years to open Yankees home games. He retired from the Met in 1976. Merrill made many recordings for RCA, and wrote two autobiographies, Once More from the Beginning (1965) and Between Acts (1976), and a novel, The Divas (1978). (New York Times)

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Soprano Renata Tebaldi, whom Arturo Toscanini said had “the voice of an angel,” died December 19 in San Marino, aged 82. Tebaldi, one of the most beloved opera singers of all time, excelled in roles like Puccini’s Mimi and Tosca and Verdi’s Desdemona and Alice Ford. Her rich, deeply expressive voice was arguably “the most sumptuously beautiful lirico-spinto soprano voice (one combining lighter lyrical and weightier dramatic qualities) to emerge from Italy in the 20th century” (Anthony Tommasini, The New York Times). Born in 1922 in Pesaro, Italy, Tebaldi studied piano as a child. When she was 17, her piano teacher persuaded her to study voice at the conservatory in Parma with Ettore Campogalliani; the renowned vocal pedagogue Carmen Melis later became Tebaldi’s most important teacher. Her opera debut, in 1944, as Elena in Boito’s Mefistofele at the regional theater in Rovigo, propelled her to instant success. In 1946 she auditioned for Toscanini at La Scala in Milan, leading to a career-making appearance in a concert to reopen the opera house, heavily damaged during the war. Her much-anticipated Metropolitan Opera House debut came in 1955, as Desdemona in Otello. A vocal crisis in 1963, compounded by exhaustion, caused Tebaldi to take a year off to recuperate and rethink her technique. When she returned to singing in 1964, her voice had lost some of its luster. Still, Tebaldi continued to perform beautifully during what she called her “second career”; but her career faltered in the late 1960s and she retired in 1976 at only 54. She made many recordings with Decca, including classic interpretations of major roles in complete recordings of Otello, La Forza del Destino, Andrea Chenier, La Bohème, Tosca, Madama Butterfly, and Il Trovatore, among others. (New York Times)

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Actor Jerry Orbach, a versatile Broadway performer who played a grizzled detective on television’s long-running Law & Order, died December 28 in New York. Marquee lights were dimmed on Broadway on December 29 in his memory. Born in the Bronx, Orbach landed his first major professional job in the early 1950s, an understudy in the critically acclaimed Off-Broadway production of The Threepenny Opera, which ran for over 2,600 performances; Orbach eventually rose to the role of Mack the Knife. In 1960, he was cast as El Gallo in another Off-Broadway musical, The Fantasticks, the success of which made Orbach a legitimate star. He earned his first Tony nomination for the 1965 revival of Guys and Dolls, and his first Tony for best actor in a musical for the 1969 Promises, Promises. Orbach originated the role of Billy Flynn in Chicago, and played Julian Marsh in the 1980 smash hit 42nd Street. In the early 1990s, Orbach found success in a different medium: He was cast as prickly, streetwise Detective Lennie Briscoe on Law & Order, winning a whole new generation of fans. (Back Stage)

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