Encore for Ruby
written and produced by Margot Jones

Encore for Ruby is a whimsical tour through the memories of Ruby Asquith Christensen, whose colorful career as a ballerina embodies the history
of Dance in America. Her recollections reach from
the early days of vaudeville, traveling across the United States in a 1934 Cadillac with the Christensen Brothers, to association with Eugene Loring, George Balanchine, The Metropolitan Opera Ballet, and the formation of the San Francisco Ballet. Her memories and portrayals of Alicia Alonzo, Anges De Mille and Ezio Pinza are a fascinating encounter with and enchanting storyteller.

WCAF's 60 minute documentary, "Encore for Ruby", the story of an American Ballerina and the San Francisco Ballet, directed by Margot Jones, can still be seen on PBS stations throughout the nation.

For your copy please send a check or money in the amount of $25.00 to:
West Coast Arts Foundation
Margot Jones, Founder and Director
1554 Fourth St.
San Rafael, CA 94901
(415) 453-0552

 

The Evolution of Black Dance in America
written and produced by Margot Jones
The Evolution of Black Dance in America, narrated by film stars like Sydney Portier and Mya Angelou, embraces the history of American social dance and music. Its inception is traced to the first slaves of record to dance in New Orleans at Congo Square. Buck contests, black medicine shows, black minstrel shows, black Vaudeville, the emergence of New York's rising phoenix, Harlem, the Harlem renaissance period and concert dance are successive, creating a spectacle of entertainment and history.

Unlike many documentaries our production will fall into the category of a dynamic Broadway show / mini series with highly theatrical and well documented re-enactments, dance and drama.

Most all of America's popular dances began with the rhythm, the pulse and the music of impromptu slave dances as early as 1619 in Virginia, New Orleans and other parts of the South.

We move visually through ritualistic voodoo dances in the dark woods of Virginia, to the festive, high step-in Cake-Walk and other plantation dances.  Re-enactments and excerpts from the first black stage shows like Shuffle Along, The Creole Show, Black Birds, Clorindy and their stars; Buck n' Bubbles, Josephine Baker, Florence Mills, Dora Dean, Ethel Waters, Bo jangles, Williams and Walker and numerous others. Sultry bordellos (the birth place of many new dance styles) rich with black entertainers on the rise.

We trace the migration of some black entertainers like black vaudeville's Florence Mills, Mable Whitman and the Dixie Boys, Ada Overton and Josephine Baker to lucrative careers Overseas.

We document the emergence of jazz dancing; jazz music and black jazz musicals permeating into white society. Florence Ziegfield and Buzz be Berkeley's hunger for hip-swinging, syncopated tap routines from Harlem's black musicals.

We trace the desegregation of American social dance and concert dance stage - its evolution from the plantations, minstrelsy shows, vaudeville, Black Broadway via Harlem, theater and films.

This is the evolution of American dance from blacks to whites as depicted in our stunning, historical, musical drama.