Anton BRUEHL
Australia 1900 – United States of America 1982
United States from 1919

Ray Bolger and Tamara Geva in the 'Slaughter on Tenth Avenue' ballet sequence in the Rogers and Hart musical, 'On Your Toes’. 1936
half tone
image 24.3 (h) x 25.9 (w) cm

Bruehl’s remarkable and complex panoramic shot is of a rehearsal scene from the 1936 musical On your toes. The show featured a jazz ballet sequence, Slaughter on Tenth Avenue, and in Bruehl’s image it is not clear whether we are seeing the real performance of this sequence, or Bruehl’s re-creation of a scene backstage.

Ray Bolger (1904–1987) was an American entertainer of stage and screen. He won a Tony Award for Where’s Charlie in which he introduced the song ‘Once in Love with Amy’. He was the scarecrow in the film The Wizard of Oz. Tamara Geva (1907–1997) was the first wife of choreographer George Balanchine and her career moved from ballet to musical comedy to serious drama including plays by Euripides, Shaw and Sartre.