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Aaron Boucher
Biography
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Aaron Boucher is a self-taught software engineer, game developer and entrepreneur most widely known as the co-creator of Endless Ages, a first person shooter MMOG combined with elements of role playing; thus making it the world's first MMOFPSRPG (massively-multplayer-online-first-person-shooter-role-playing-game), as it was heralded in its day. Despite this seemingly significant accomplishment Boucher has remained a virtual unknown, if not reclusive figure in the spheres of gaming culture and industry.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Aaron Boucher, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
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Malin Levanon
Biography
Malin Vulcano Levanon (born 12 November 1977), also known as Malin Vulcano, is a Swedish actress.
She grew up in Gagnef in Dalarna, where she already at the age of eight made her acting debut in the annual summer plays that were made in her village.
Levanon was awarded a Guldbaggen award in the category Best female lead role for 2016, for her lead role as the character Minna in the film Tjuvheder. The same year she also played the character Mamman in the film Flockan, for which she won the Filmpublicisternas award for "Film couple of the Year" along with colleague Eva Melander. Levanon has also acted in the film Återträffen with Anna Odell, which won the Kritikerpristet and Best Debut Film at the Venice Film Festival in 2013.
Levanon played the leading role as the singer in the Italian film Pornodrome - Una storia dal vivo.
In 2011, Levanon acted in the SVT TV series Anno 1970, and in the TV series The Bridge she played the character Filippa. In 2016, she acts in the TV series Black Widows opposite Cissi Forss and Peter Stormare.
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Ghislaine Thesmar
Biography
Ghislaine Thesmar (born 1943 in Peking, China), a ballerina, who studied at the Paris Conservatoire. In 1968, she married the dancer and choreographer Pierre Lacotte. Companies she danced with include Ballet du Marquis de Cuevas (1961), Lacotte's company, then the Paris Opera Ballet from 1972 to 1985; unusually, she joined the company directly as an étoile (principal). She led the Ballets de Monte Carlo with Lacotte from 1986 to 1988. She danced as a guest for the Rambert Ballet, the Grands Ballets Canadiens and the New York City Ballet. She has taught for the Paris Opera Ballet. She was frequently partnered by Michael Denard. Her most celebrated roles include Odette/Odile in Swan Lake and Giselle in Giselle. The ballet film La Sylphide (1972) has been released twice on DVD/video and features Thesmar and Denard in the principal roles of the Sylph and the Scotsman, James.
Source: Article "Ghislaine Thesmar" from Wikipedia in english, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.
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Yu Hyun-mok
Biography
Yu Hyun-mok (July 2, 1925 – June 28, 2009) was a South Korean film director. Born in Sariwon, Hwanghae, Korea (North Korea today), he made his film debut in 1956 with Gyocharo (Crossroads). According to the website koreanfilm.org, his 1961 film Obaltan "has repeatedly been voted the best Korean film of all time in local critics' polls." Yu attended the San Francisco International Film Festival in 1963, where Variety called Obaltan a "remarkable film", and praised Yu's "[b]rilliantly detailed camera" and the film's "probing sympathy and rich characterizations."
His dedication to the intellectual side of film and interest in using film to deal with social and political issues led him to have difficulties both with box-office-oriented producers, and with Korea's military government during the 1960s and 1970s. Korean critics have said his directing style is "in the tradition of the Italian Neorealists," yet "the terms 'modernist' or 'expressionistic' [are] just as applicable to his works."
Besides his directing activities, he has taught film, and made a significant contribution to Korean animation by producing Kim Cheong-gi's 1976 animated film, Robot Taekwon V. A retrospective of Yu's career was held at the 4th Pusan International Film Festival in 1999.
Yu died from a stroke on June 28, 2009.
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Eleonora Abbagnato
Biography
Eleonora Abbagnato began her dance training in 1990 at the Formation à l'Académie Princesse Grâce in Monaco and then at the Centre Rosella Hightower in Cannes. In 1992 she entered l'Ecole de danse de l'Opéra. She entered the POB Corps de ballet in 1996, became coryphée in 1999, sujet in 2000 and finally in 2001 première danseuse. Repertoire includes: Princess Florine in Sleeping Beauty, Gamzatti in La Bayadère, Henriette and Clémence in Raymonda(Nureyev), Marie in Clavigo, Esmeralda in Notre-Dame de Paris (Petit), Titania in Midsummer Nights Dream, title role in Sylvia (Neumeier), Anastasia in Ivan le terrible (Grigorovitch), Myrtha in Giselle and Kitri in Don Quixote (Nureyev).
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Arto Lindsay
Biography
Arthur Morgan 'Arto' Lindsay (born May 28, 1953) is an American guitarist, singer, record producer and experimental composer. He first achieved recognition as part of New York no wave group DNA in the late 1970s.
He has a distinctive soft voice and an often noisy, self-taught guitar style consisting almost entirely of extended techniques, described by Brian Olewnick as "studiedly naïve ... sounding like the bastard child of Derek Bailey". His guitar work is contrasted frequently with gentler, sensuous Brazilian music themes.
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Sean Connery
Biography
Sir Thomas Sean Connery (August 25, 1930 – October 31, 2020) was a Scottish actor and producer. He won an Academy Award, two BAFTA Awards (one being a BAFTA Academy Fellowship Award), and three Golden Globes, including the Cecil B. DeMille Award and a Henrietta Award. Connery was the first actor to portray the character James Bond in film, starring in seven Bond films (every film from Dr. No to You Only Live Twice, plus Diamonds Are Forever and Never Say Never Again), between 1962 and 1983. In 1988, Connery won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in The Untouchables. His films also include Marnie (1964), Murder on the Orient Express (1974), The Man Who Would Be King (1975), A Bridge Too Far (1977), Highlander (1986), Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), The Hunt for Red October (1990), Dragonheart (1996), The Rock (1996), and Finding Forrester (2000).
Connery was polled in a 2004 The Sunday Herald as "The Greatest Living Scot" and in a 2011 EuroMillions survey as "Scotland's Greatest Living National Treasure". He was voted by People magazine as both the “Sexiest Man Alive" in 1989 and the "Sexiest Man of the Century” in 1999. He received a lifetime achievement award in the United States with a Kennedy Center Honor in 1999. Connery was knighted in the 2000 New Year Honours for services to film drama.
On October 31, 2020, Connery died at the age of 90.
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Élisabeth Platel
Biography
Élisabeth Platel (born 10 April 1959) is a French prima ballerina.
After studying at the conservatoire in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, she entered the Conservatoire de Paris in 1971, graduating with First Prize, which allowed her to complete her studies at the École de Danse de l'Opéra National de Paris. Influential teachers of Platel were Pierre Lacotte, who worked with her in the Paris Opera School and Raymond Franchetti, who owned a studio where the budding dancer was able to watch professional artists taking class, among others soloists from the Paris Opera like Noëlla Pontois, or guest stars like Rudolf Nureyev.
Élisabeth entered the corps de ballet of the Paris Opéra Ballet in 1976 as a quadrille at the age of 17. She advanced quickly to successive ranks of the company's hierarchy. The following year she was promoted to coryphée. In 1978 she became sujet and danced her first soloist roles in ballets by George Balanchine, Divertimento No. 15 and The Four Temperaments. In 1979, at nineteen, she was appointed première danseuse.
In 1981 Platel started to prepare her first great classical ballet, La Sylphide with Pierre Lacotte, her former teacher. La Sylphide, a landmark work from 1832 which introduced romanticism in ballet and made Marie Taglioni a world-famous ballerina, became one of Platel's signature roles during her career at the Paris Opera. In that same year she also learned and danced the leading roles in Swan Lake, Paquita, and Giselle. Upon her debut as Giselle on 23 December 1981 she was nominated "étoile".
When Rudolf Nureyev was invited in 1981 to mount his Don Quixote for the Paris Opera, he chose Platel to dance the Queen of the Dryads. For Platel, it meant the beginning of a successful artistic collaboration with Nureyev, who became one of the most important figures in her career, especially when he was director of the Paris Opera Ballet (1983–1989).
In 1983, Nureyev mounted his first full-length ballet as recently appointed director of the Paris Opera Ballet, Marius Petipa's late masterpiece Raymonda. Platel was chosen to dance the title role at the premiere. The following year, she created the roles of Odette/Odile in Nureyev's new version of Swan Lake for the Paris Opera. Swan Lake is her most frequently performed ballet. Nureyev also entrusted her with the creation of the leading roles in his versions of The Sleeping Beauty (1989) and his final work for the Paris Opera La Bayadère in 1992.
Platel has been a guest artist with Royal Ballet (London), Danish Royal Ballet, Hamburg Ballet, Ballet of the Vienna Opera, Ballet of the Berlin Opera, Finnish National Ballet, Bolshoi Ballet, Kirov Ballet, Royal New Zealand Ballet, Les Grands Ballets Canadiens, Municipal Theatre in Rio de Janeiro.
Retirement from the Paris Opéra Ballet
On 9 July 1999, Platel gave her farewell performance as danseuse étoile of the Paris Opera in La Sylphide. At that time, Paris Opéra rules required female étoiles to retire at 40 (male étoiles retired at 45). Now, female and male étoiles retire at 42 and a half. For the occasion she performed with two of her favourite partners, Nicolas Le Riche and Manuel Legris, who danced the role of James Act I and II respectively. ...
Source: Article "Élisabeth Platel" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.
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Laurent Hilaire
Biography
Laurent Hilaire (born 8 November 1962) is a French ballet dancer. Regarded as one of the greatest dancers to emerge from ballet over the past few decades, he was an étoile of the Paris Opera Ballet for 22 years. From 2011, he was the associate artistic director of the Paris Opera Ballet and a ballet master with the company from 2005 to 2014. In 2017, he became the director of dance at Stanislavski and Nemirovich-Danchenko Theatre. He resigned in February 2022 over the Russian invasion of Ukraine. In May, he was appointed the new director at Bavarian State Ballet.
Hilaire joined the Paris Opera Ballet school in 1975 and entered the company's corps de ballet in 1979, aged 17. On 2 November 1985, he was promoted to etoile (a top-billing principal dancer) by Rudolf Nureyev after a performance of Swan Lake.
Laurent Hilaire became a ballet master with the company in 2005, occasionally performing as an etoile until he made his farewell performance on 14 February 2007. For it he performed George Balanchine's Apollo and Maurice Béjart's Song of A Wayfarer, in which he was partnered by Manuel Legris. After his farewell performance Hilaire was awarded Commander of Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, the highest rank of the order.
Source: Article "Laurent Hilaire" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.
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Tõnu Naissoo
Biography
Tõnu Naissoo (born March 18, 1951) is an Estonian composer and jazz pianist.
Tõnu Naissoo was born in Tallinn. He is the son of composer Uno Naissoo. He began studying classical piano at the age of six at the Tallinn Music School, graduating in 1970 with a degree in music theory. In 1982 he graduated from the Tallinn State Conservatory in composition under instruction from Eino Tamberg.
He has played on several musical groups, including Tõnu Naissoo Trio, Optimistid (1967–1968), Collage (1967–1972), Sinilind (1971–1972), Laine (1972–1976), Synthesis (1977–1980), Kaseke (1980–1981). For about 30 years he has been a pianist in the Viru Hotel.
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