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Posts tagged as “Vivian Ayers Allen”

Celebrating Phylicia Rashad and Debbie Allen on #NationalSiblingsDay (LISTEN)

Celebrating Phylicia Rashad and Debbie Allen on #NationalSiblingsDay (LISTEN)

By goodblacknews on April 10, 2022

by Lori Lakin Hutcherson (@lakinhutcherson)

On #NationalSiblingsDay, we celebrate Tony and Emmy award-winning sisters Phylicia Rashad and Debbie Allen in today’s GBN Daily Drop podcast.

To read about them, read on. To hear about them, press PLAY:

[You can follow or subscribe to the Good Black News Daily Drop Podcast through Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, rss.com or create your own RSS Feed. Or just check it out every day here on the main website. Full transcript below]:

Hey, this Lori Lakin Hutcherson, founder and editor in chief of goodblacknews.org, here to share with you a daily drop of Good Black News for Sunday, April 10, 2022, based on the “A Year of Good Black News Page-A-Day Calendar” published by Workman Publishing, also known as Palm Sunday and in the United States as National Siblings Day.

As the daughters of poet Vivian Ayers Allen (who was featured in April 8th’s Daily Drop), sisters Phylicia Rashad and Debbie Allen likely grew up believing the sky was the limit. Both are Howard University graduates and award-winning stars of stage and screen.

Phylicia won the Tony Award for Lead Actress in a Play for the 2004 revival of A Raisin in the Sun, and Debbie won Emmys in 1982, 1983 and 1991 for her choreography on Fame and Motown 30: What’s Goin’ On!

https://youtu.be/ObGtzzLLjlA

In 2001 Allen opened the Debbie Allen Dance Academy in Los Angeles, and in 2008 she directed the all-African American Broadway production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof starring big sis Rashad as Big Mama.

In 2020, Debbie Allen became a Kennedy Center Honoree and in 2021, they kept the sister love going with Phylicia’s guest appearance in a Debbie-directed episode of Grey’s Anatomy.

That same year, Rashad was appointed Dean of Howard University’s Chadwick A. Boseman College of Fine Arts.

And just this week in 2022, Allen was honored by the Dance Theater of Harlem with the Arthur Mitchell Vision Award.

To learn more about these talented sisters, check out the siblings’ conversation from 2020 where they share stories, their history together and life lessons on IG live, posted on the True Exclusives channel on YouTube and check out the links to more sources provided in today’s show notes and the episode’s full transcript posted on goodblacknews.org.

This has been a daily drop of Good Black News, based on the “A Year of Good Black News Page-A-Day Calendar for 2022,” published by Workman Publishing.

Beats provided by freebeats.io and produced by White Hot.

If you like these Daily Drops, please consider following us on Apple, Google Podcasts, RSS.com, Amazon, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Leave a rating or review, share links to your favorite episodes, or go old school and tell a friend.

For more Good Black News, check out goodblacknews.org or search and follow @goodblacknews anywhere on social.

Sources:

GBN’s Daily Drop: Poet and Pulitzer Prize Nominee Vivian Ayers Allen (LISTEN)

GBN’s Daily Drop: Poet and Pulitzer Prize Nominee Vivian Ayers Allen (LISTEN)

By goodblacknews on April 8, 2022

by Lori Lakin Hutcherson (@lakinhutcherson)

Pulitzer Prize-nominated poet Vivian Ayers Allen not only infused the world with her art (her poem “On Status” was recently sampled by Solange on her 2019 When I Get Home album) but also with artists.

This includes famous daughters Phylicia Rashad and Debbie Allen as well as the children she’s inspired on the site of her former alma mater, the historic Brainerd Institute in Chester, South Carolina, via her “Workshops in Open Fields” program to educate preschool children in the arts.

To read about her, read on. To hear about her, press PLAY:

(You can follow or subscribe to the Good Black News Daily Drop Podcast through Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, rss.com or create your own RSS Feed. Or just check it out every day here on the main website.) Full transcript below:

Hey, this Lori Lakin Hutcherson, founder and editor in chief of goodblacknews.org, here to share with you a daily drop of Good Black News for Friday, April 8th, 2022, based on the “A Year of Good Black News Page-A-Day Calendar” published by Workman Publishing.

The words of Pulitzer Prize-nominated poet Vivian Ayers Allen have stood the test of time – and space. Her poem “Hawk,” an allegory of freedom made analogous to space flight, was published in 1957 just before the launch of Sputnik I, the first artificial satellite sent from Earth into orbit.

Enlarged reproductions of select lines were exhibited at NASA’s Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center. In 1997 Allen’s family purchased her alma mater, the historic Brainerd Institute in Chester, South Carolina, and soon began offering “Workshops in Open Fields” to educate preschool children in the arts.

And in 2019, fellow Houstonian Solange Knowles used a sample of Allen’s poem “On Status” as read by her two famous daughters – Phylicia Rashad and Debbie Allen – on Knowles’ acclaimed When I Get Home album.

To learn more about Vivian Ayers Allen, check out Spice of Dawns, her 1952 poetry collection, the Brainerd Institute Heritage website, and links to more sources provided in today’s show notes and the episode’s full transcript posted on goodblacknews.org.

This has been a daily drop of Good Black News, based on the “A Year of Good Black News Page-A-Day Calendar for 2022,” published by Workman Publishing.

Beats provided by freebeats.io and produced by White Hot.

If you like these Daily Drops, please consider following us on Apple, Google Podcasts, RSS.com,Amazon, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Leave a rating or review, share links to your favorite episodes, or go old school and tell a friend.

For more Good Black News, check out goodblacknews.org or search and follow @goodblacknews anywhere on social.

Sources: