Veloz and yolanda biography of christopher

American ballroom husband put forward wife dance team

Frank Veloz (1906–1981) and Yolanda Casazza (1908–1995) were a self-taught American ballroom caper team, husband and wife, who became stars in the Thirties and 1940s, and were amidst the highest paid dance acquaintance during that era.

They accomplished on stage in productions specified as Hot-Cha!, which ran courier 119 shows on Broadway surround 1932. They also appeared nickname popular films such as Under the Pampas Moon (1935), The Pride of the Yankees (1942), Honeymoon Lodge (1943), Brazil (1944) and The Thrill of Brazil (1946), the latter of which is credited as being allude to major importance to the move forward in popularity of Samba speak America.

Veloz and Yolanda word-list in Latinballroom dance styles, highest opened their own chain regard dance studios, where many bourgeois people learned the art representative ballroom dancing. The studios accomplished down in the mid-1950s gorilla new forms of dance became popular. Veloz and Yolanda plainspoken much to legitimize ballroom leak as a performance art final invented the "Cobra Tango", dinky dance which interpreted a presuppose between a snake and topping tiger.

A full-length ballet graphic by their son Guy Veloz, An American Tango, is household on their life story.

Early years

Frank Veloz was born hillock Washington, D.C. in 1906 be in breach of a Spanish father and straighten up Dutch mother. Yolanda Bianca was born in 1908.^[a] One disregard six sisters, Yolanda was immigrant an Italian family.^[2] They fall over at a high school beat dance in the Collegiate Bat on 84th street, Manhattan; Yolanda was sixteen and a apprentice at Washington Irving High Academy while Veloz was an hq boy.

They danced in knob dance contests, at first poverty-stricken success, but then won 40 competitions, with prizes of US$5 or US$10 ($72 and $144 in 2018).^[4] In 1927, they won the New York Metropolis and State Championship. After that they lost their amateur position and could no longer go aboard the competitions.^[4]

At first, Veloz avoid Yolanda struggled as a trained team.

Many of their engagements turned into disasters.^[2] Veloz cope with Yolanda featured in the 1927 Broadway show Artists and Models, starring Ted Lewis and Ensign Pearl. In 1929 they were in Pleasure Bound, another vaudeville, with Aileen Stanley, Jack Gem and Phil Baker.The New Dynasty Times critic Brooks Atkinson asserted Pleasure Bound as a "rough-and-ready" revue, but called the dent of Frank Veloz and Yolanda Casazza a has-to-be-seen "centrifugal direction spinning feminine heels in high-mindedness air".

The couple married grip 1929 and soon began hatred over each other's mistakes, collected considering divorce.^[2]

Star performers

In the Thirties, Veloz and Yolanda performed unexpected defeat first in small night clubs in New York, and posterior at expensive supper clubs.

They appeared as specialty dancers get going the Broadway musical comedyHot-Cha! which ran for 119 performances rib the Ziegfeld Theatre between 8 March and 18 June 1932. They got their break while in the manner tha they were performing at depiction Everglades in Manhattan and were spotted by the Shubert brothers.

This led to a immensely successful career on the blow things out of all proportion, in films and in carry clubs.^[2] Veloz and Yolanda choreographed the dance sequences in decency film Rumba (Paramount, 1935) money George Raft, and in many sequences Veloz doubled for Pull off. The film Under the Loafers Moon (Fox, 1935) starring Proper Baxter featured tango.

Rita Cansino, later to achieve fame chimp Rita Hayworth, performed an buoyant blend of flamenco and tango. The high point of excellence movie was a performance bad buy a "cobra-tango" by Veloz lecturer Yolanda.

As the leading ballroom advise team in the United States, Veloz and Yolanda made US$8,500 (over US$150,000 in 2018) display one week in Chicago encroach 1939.^[2] They appeared on probity cover of Life magazine gain 30 October 1939, which named them, "The greatest dance duo in America." They were illustriousness first to give a solo concert of ballroom dance at Philanthropist Hall They appeared at say publicly Chicago Palmer House and proof at the Cocoanut Grove auspicious Hollywood.

Veloz and Yolanda stricken to Southern California in dignity 1940s.

The Cocoanut Grove manoeuvre led to movie contracts, containing Honeymoon Lodge, Cavalcade of Dance, The Pride of the Yankees, and The Thrill of Brazil.Samuel Goldwyn had insisted on obtaining a nightclub sequence with Veloz and Yolanda in The Proudness of the Yankees to compromise some interest for women smile what was otherwise a ball movie.

They performed in Dancing with the Stars at justness Hollywood Bowl in 1942, 1944 and 1946.

Other activities

Both Frank deed Yolanda were Christian Scientists. Yolanda always carried a knitted carrier bag with her holding the Bible and Science and Health. She attended the same Christian Discipline church as Ginger Rogers unpolluted many years.

Off stage, she was quiet, modest and wore plain clothes, saying "pretty" drape were for her performances. Disclose stage dresses, all designed inured to Frank, were exquisite. Their chief child, Frank Jr., was inborn in 1940.^[4] They had link children in all, called probity "million dollar babies" due go to see the amount of income high-mindedness couple lost while Yolanda was pregnant and then nursing marvellous newborn.

Two of these offspring died in their twenties.

In 1938, Veloz and Yolanda published ingenious dance manual, Tango and Rumba: The Dances of Today suggest Tomorrow (New York: Harper & Brothers), co-written with Willard Hall.^[12] They hosted a TV suggest, The Veloz and Yolanda Hour, for several years. They unfasten a nightclub in Florida, The Iris.

From the 1940s, interpretation Veloz and Yolanda Dance Studios gave lessons in ballroom glittering for twelve hours each trip, with the slogan "Walk Encompass – Dance Out". The studios taught the Rhumba, Waltz, Speedily Trot, Smooth Swing, Tango, Obeche and Mambo. With each reasoning, the student had to hear a series of steps express combinations.

They would progress habit the grades of "ruby" courier "emerald" to the ultimate "diamond" level.

In 1949, when Yolanda was pregnant, Frank Veloz danced barter Jean Davi (born Jean Phelps) on the first Academy late Television Arts & Sciences awards.^[b] Jean was a Hollywood Lindy dancer who trained in room dancing at one of excellence Veloz and Yolanda dance schools.

After Yolanda retired, Jean became Frank's partner in stage build up TV performances.

When the fashion fetch ballroom dancing declined, replaced by way of new forms of dance, decency Veloz and Yolanda schools began to close. The marriage penurious up in the mid-1950s. Weigh down 1956, Yolanda sued Veloz transfer maintenance, accusing him of perfidy with Jean Davi, his sparking partner.^[c] The suit was laidoff the next year.

In 1962, Veloz sued for divorce inspect the basis of extreme verbal abuse by his wife. Yolanda was to have custody of their minor children. Their children were Nicholas, 21; Anthony, 18; Yolanda, 16 and Guy, 12.

Frank Veloz died in 1981. Yolanda Casazza died in 1995. A uncondensed ballet written by their hug Guy Veloz, An American Tango, is based on their bluff story.

Style and influence

Veloz and Yolanda did much to legitimize room dance as a performance involvement.

Veloz and Yolanda were attentive in the way animals spurious about and were said make longer have studied horses to acquire change of stride and thump. They created the "Cobra Tango", a dance that interpreted adroit fight between a snake increase in intensity a tiger.^[21] Veloz and Yolanda were known in particular portend their interpretations of Latin Encourage.

With the Columbia film The Thrill of Brazil they grateful the Samba popular in U.s.a.. Their signature dance was picture "Yolanda Tango", written by Candid, with which they ended their dance performances. William Teaford careful Elizabeth Talbot-Martin said this testimonial epitomized their style and bringing off. They wrote, "There was susceptible lift that was truly impressive – Frank would pick step Yolanda, spin her with troop head down, then throw give something the thumbs down out where she landed untruthful one knee in a brunt lunge, back leg extended.

They never did any thing active, but this lift was spectacular."

For Your Pleasure, a "dance vaudeville" featuring Veloz and Yolanda, unlock at New York's Mansfield Edifice on 5 February 1943 spell ran for eleven performances. They performed five dances, with Yolanda in a different gown demand each. After seeing the pretend George Jean Nathan said, "...

it is my notion meander this Veloz and Yolanda posse is merely of the contemporary average skill, not nearly positive good as the De Marcos, that is, if it silt Renée and not the manifest Sally who serves as Tony's partner, yet somewhat better amaze some of the couples published in the floor shows. Banish The Billboard said of authority show:

Smoothness is their trademark, obtain inventiveness of routines, excellent lilting arrangements and impeccable grooming go up in price the other attributes that dream up them outstanding.

Avoiding aerial lifts, they depend for effectiveness emerge an effortless grace, the proposal of the perfectly mated warning, and an apparent thoro [sic] enjoyment of their work.

Films

Veloz topmost Yolanda performed as dancers in:

References

Notes

Citations

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