KQED Profile: Flemming Flindt

Born in Copenhagen in 1936, dancer and choreographer Flemming Flindt is one of dance world's most distinguished artists. Trained at the Royal Danish Ballet School, Flindt joined the main company at the age of 19, quickly rising to the rank of international star. One of the most courtly and gifted premier danseurs of the 1950s, he was made etoile at the Paris Opera Ballet, starred at the Royal Ballet and the London Festival Ballet, and in 1950 he danced at the celebrations of Grace Kelly's wedding.

By 1963, his attention had turned to choreography with his highly regarded balletic adaptation of Eugene Ionesco's "The Lesson," and in 1966, at the age of 29, Flindt was appointed director of the Royal Danish Ballet, a post he held for twelve years.

Like many of the dancers of the Danish tradition, Flindt himself was as at home interpreting the characters of the 19th century narrative ballets of August Bournonville as he was in contemporary work of Birgit Cullberg and Roland Petit. And during his tenure at the Royal Danish Ballet, he was credited with carefully shepherding the historical heritage of the company while expanding the repertoire to include the work of modern choreographers such as Paul Taylor, Murray Louis and Glen Tetley.


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KQED Profile: Healy Irish Dance

Beneath all the smoke and lights of popular stage shows like Riverdance and Lord of the Dance lies the precise and fleet-footed drama of Irish step dancing, a traditional folk dance with a history hundreds of years old, that continues to be passed down from generation to generation.

With its lively and intricate music - jigs, hornpipes, reels - and a scrupulously unbending carriage of the torso, Irish dancing is uniquely demanding, requiring both a high level of skill and of concentration to create the right combination of mesmerizing rhythms and graceful movement.


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KQED Profile: Rasta Thomas

Gifted with movie star good looks, prodigious talent and a youthful ambition, dancer and actor Rasta Thomas could be thought of as the epitome of the dance world's perfect star - a mercurial action hero as at home in the ballet classics as he is in Broadway musicals.

Born in San Francisco in 1981, Thomas displayed a phenomenal natural affinity for movement early on, studying martial arts, swimming and gymnastics from the age of 3 on. He won his first dance competitions at 9, and made a splash in the ballet world at Varna, Bulgaria in 1996 when he won the gold medal in the Junior Division, and then again in 1998 when he won the gold medal in the Senior Division at the International Ballet Competition in Jackson, MS -- the first 16-year old to do so.


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