Where you can meet all of the ladies and women from the 1920s, '30s, and '40s. All in one room. So come with me to The Cotton Club, to Hollywoodland, to the Folies Bergère. And I will show you the stars. But first, you must follow me into life as it was when Jazz was hot! And live through A Day In The Life Of... "Black Women of the Arts".
Garment worn during the Dorothy Dandridge number for BLACK WOMEN OF THE ART'S: 1920s-50s.
For more sketches and garments drawn and made by Dominque Breckenridge for DOMINIQUE REVUE theatrical productions visit: DOMINIQUE PRIVATE COLLECTION
For more sketches and garments drawn and made by Dominque Breckenridge for DOMINIQUE REVUE theatrical productions visit: DOMINIQUE PRIVATE COLLECTION
And now for your pleasure and entertainment:
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Gain way fellas as the larger-than-life personality known as "The Empress of the Blues", the notorious woman audiences can't get enough of. Known for her packed performances and outstanding record sales. You know her from 1923's biggest selling hit with an astonishing 780,000 copies "Down Hearted Blues", following hits "T'aint Nobody's Bizness If I Do", "Careless Love Blues", and W.C. Handy's "St. Louis Blues" which she will be singing tonight with Louis Armstrong on cornet... Bessie Smith!
Garment worn by Dominique during the Eartha Kitt C'est Si Bon number for BLACK WOMEN OF THE ART'S: 1920s-50s.
You recognize that voice, you've seen her face: in 1933's "Bundle of Blues" singing that haunting melody, "Stormy Weather". She's conquered vaudeville, toured the country as a dancer and vocalist in the Fanchon and Marco Revue and the Shuffle Along Revue. Once a featured vocalist here at The Cotton Club, she toured Australia in 1928 with Sonny Clay. Upon her return, she organized her own show and toured America, soon finding work with Earl Hines in 1930. It was then Ellington first heard her sing and hired her in February 1931. She quickly became a fixture of the orchestra's sound. Considered one of the finest singers of the golden age of jazz known as “The Voice of Ellington” ... Along with Duke Ellington and his Orchestra, Gilroy, California's own Ivie Anderson.
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And now ladies and gentlemen, direct from the satirical all-Black film "Rufus Jones for President" featuring seven-year-old Sammy Davis, Jr., this next lady, next entertainer, comes to you having done such performances as "Dinah", "Sweet Georgia Brown", "Someday Sweetheart", and "What Did I Do To Be So Black and Blue". She has performed and recorded with such notables as Will Marion Cook to Lovie Austin. She's toured with the Black Swan Dance Masters and joined the traditional white audience-based Keith Vaudeville Circuit. Singing from blues to Broadway with such a genius talent as Duke Ellington, she has been signed with Black Swan turned Paramount, Columbia, Decca, and that specialty label "Liberty Music Shops", she's here to perform her signature tune "Am I Blue?" composed by herself and Pearl Wright with the help of Harry Akst, it's none other than Ms. Ethel Waters ...
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Garment, I call BLAKE, inspired by Old Hollywood, worn during the Ethel Waters AM I BLUE? number from my Dominique Private Collection, made by myself.
You know her from the 1947 picture SUN VALLEY SERENADE, featuring the Nicholas Brothers with Glenn Miller and his Orchestra performing the “Chattanooga Choo Choo” and released from Hollywoodland’s greatest studio … Performing "I've Got Rhythm" ... The beautiful Ms. Dorothy Dandridge:
From our DOMINIQUE REVUE YouTube Channel
A lady who needs no introduction, no fancy words, titles, or suggestions. Here to tell her own story, sing her own song: Miss Lady Day ...
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Good evening, this is your host here to bring you a front-row seat at the Folies Bergere. Where performing later tonight will be the sensational beauty headlining the show, Josephine Baker. But first, in true Follies fashion, we bring a show of entertainment, fashion, music, and women. For all you persons at home: sit back, close your eyes, and feast upon the Folies Bergere! C'est Si Bon, no?
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"In 1925, at the height of the jazz era in Paris, a sensational cast of musicians and dancers from Harlem assembled as La Revue Nègre, exploding on the stage of the Théâtre des Champs Élysées.
Opening night, attended by the fashionable café society of Paris, amongst unforgettable performances, a particular young woman was vividly described by New Yorker correspondent Janet Flanner:
Opening night, attended by the fashionable café society of Paris, amongst unforgettable performances, a particular young woman was vividly described by New Yorker correspondent Janet Flanner:
From our DOMINIQUE REVUE YouTube Channel
"She made her entry entirely nude except for a pink flamingo feather between her limbs; she was being carried upside down and doing the splits on the shoulder of a black giant [Joe Alex]. Mid-stage he paused, and with his long fingers holding her basket-wise around the waist, swung her in a slow cartwheel to the stage floor, where she stood . . . She was an unforgettable female ebony statue. A scream of salutation spread through the theater. Whatever happened next was unimportant. The two specific elements had been established and were unforgettable -- her magnificent dark body, a new model that to the French proved for the first time that black was beautiful, and the acute response of the white masculine public in the capital of hedonism of all Europe -- Paris."
This woman would soon be known to the world as:
Josephine Baker."
Josephine Baker."
"Banana Skirt" made personally by Dominique (by hand) to use in my "Black Women of the Arts" theatrical production
Dominique Revue cast backstage
This is our history through entertainment, literature, art, beauty, and fashion of the women who made it, women who lived it, women who inspired it, women who conquered it.
Though battles were fought, and wars aroused, women of that world, in that world, of their time survived. Survived forever through their commitment to themselves as entertainers, educators, people, and will live always through films, music, images, books, generations ... us.
We thank you. So long everybody ... Abeintôt!