Dancers Posters, Prints & Photographs, “D...-E...-”
for performance arts, music, social studies and language arts classrooms, & theme decor.

Sammy Davis, Jr.
Carmen De Lavallade
Agnes de Mille

Devi Dja
Isadora Duncan
Katherine Dunham

Sammy Davis Sr., Sammy Davis Jr., and Will Mastin, Dancing on Stage at Ciro's Photographic Print

Sammy Davis, Jr.
b. 12-8-1925; Harlem, NY
d. 5-16-1990; Beverly Hills, CA

Entertainer Sammy Davis, Jr. started his show business career as a vaudevillian, singing and dancing with his father and “uncle”, Will Mastin.

Davis' solo career included nightclubs, movies, tv, and recording. Davis' most repeated quote is a reply he gave Jack Benny on a golf course after Benny inquired about his handicap - “Talk about handicap — I'm a one-eyed Negro Jew.”

Among the dancers Sammy Davis mentored are Lola Falana.

Carmen De Lavallade, Photographic Print

Carmen De Lavallade
b. 6-3-1931; Los Angeles, CA

Dancer, choreographer, professor and actress Carmen De Lavallade danced with Lester Horton, Alvin Ailey and Agnes de Mille. She is married to Geoffrey Holder.

Agnes de Mille Making Notes for New Dance Book at Table in Drugstore, Photographic Print

Agnes deMille
b. 9-18-1905; New York City, NY
d. 10-7-1993

Agnes de Mille was the choreographer of such notable works as the ballet Rodeo and the musical Oklahoma!.

De Mille was from a theatrical family (she was the niece of Hollywood director Cecil B. DeMille) and wanted to be an actress, but was told she wasn't pretty enough.

• No Intermissions: The Life of Agnes de Mille

Devi Dja, Photographic Print

Devi Dja
b. 8-1-1914; Java
d. 1-19-1989

Temple dancer Devi Dja, who saw Anna Pavlova dance in Java, was inspired to continue dancing past the age of twelve and formed a troupe of retired temple dancers. Devi Dja was known as the “Balinese Pavlova”.

• Standing Ovations... Devi Dja! Woman of Java

Isadora Duncan and Her Pupils from The Grunewald School, 1908, Giclee Print

Isadora Duncan
b. 5-26-1877; San Francisco
d. 9-14-1926

• more Isadora Duncan posters

Katherine Dunham
b. 6-22-1909; Joliet, IL
d. 5-21-2006; NYC

Katherine Dunham was a noted dancer and choreographer who brought the dance styles of black people of the Caribbean and the United States to the attention of America at large. She attended university in Chicago and majored in anthropology. Doing a year of field work in the West Indies helped give her the insight she needed to develop innovative dance forms expressing Caribbean cultural styles.

Dunham choreographed and performed in a number of stage productions and films during the 1930s and '40s. She also founded the first black dance troupe – the Katherine Dunham Dance Company. But she was most proud of the Perfoming Arts Training Center, which she founded in East St. Louis, Illinois, in 1967 – and where, in her later years, she continued to teach and offer her guidance. Her school was an oasis in the middle of the poverty-stricken city that offered hope and a way out for countless numbers of troubled youth. It is here where her legacy continues, and where many young lives are changed. (based on a no longer available poster published before 2006)

FYI - actress and singer Eartha Kitt began her career in Dunham's company, and Alvin Ailey was one of her students.

• women and music posters

Duval, Swododa, Giclee Print

Paulette Duval
b. 1-15-1900; Buenos Aires, Argentina
d. returned to Europe after silent era film period

Paulette Duval, who was raised in France, was called the most beautiful woman in Paris. She became a Ziegfeld Follies dancer, and a fixture in Hollywood films of the 1920s.

• Without Lying Down: Frances Marion and the Powerful Women of Early Hollywood

Jeanne Eagels
née Amelia Jeannine Eagles
b. 6-26-1890; Kansas City, MO
d. 10-3-1929; NYC

Jeanne Eagels, most noted for her role of ‘Sadie Thompson’ in the long running Broadway play Rain, and in several motion pictures such as The Letter (1929), was once a dancer in the Ziegfeld Follies.

• Thanhouser - Jeanne Eagels

Buddy Ebsen
b. 4-2-1908; Belleville, IL
d. 7-6-2003; Torrance, CA

Buddy Ebsen, who is most remembered for his role of Jed Clampett in the television program The Beverly Hillbillies, started his show business career as a dancer. He was cast as the Tin Man in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz but had to be replaced because the aluminum powder used as make-up made him very ill.

• The Other Side of Oz