SARATOGA SPRINGS – The National Museum of Dance announces a Poster Design Contest in celebration of the upcoming exhibition Art of the Dance: Posters from Hollywood’s Golden Age. Opening May 10, 2019, Art of the Dance will feature more than one hundred dance movie posters from the collection of veteran producer Mike Kaplan. This installation will include American and international posters of Hollywood films ranging in date from 1918 to the 1980s with the majority from the 1930s, 40s, and 50s.
Mike Kaplan considers one of the best dance scenes of all time on film to be from Jezebel (1938) starring Bette Davis and Henry Fonda. However, this dance sequence was not portrayed on any original poster for the film. This is the scene: Set in the Antebellum South – New Orleans circa 1852. Bette Davis as Julie Marsden, headstrong and provocative, decides to wear a red gown to the Olympus Ball, an event to which all unmarried women wear white. She feels humiliated when everyone shuns her, immediately regretting her decision to wear red. Her fiancé, Henry Fonda as Preston Dillard, demands she waltz with him.
http://www.tcm.com/mediaroom/video/492893/Jezebel-Movie-Clip-Pleasant-Evening.html
The contest invites student artists to create a new poster for Jezebel which portrays this key dance sequence in the film and the power of the scene itself. Bette Davis and Henry Fonda should be recognizable and central. The background should include images or representations of the other women in their white ball gowns or just the gowns or whatever your creativity and imagination conceives. Bette Davis won her second Oscar for Best Actress for her performance in Jezebel.
One winning poster will be chosen by Mike Kaplan. The winning design will be professionally printed as a 27” x 41” poster and displayed, and the artist recognized, at the opening reception for Art of the Dance: Posters from Hollywood’s Golden Age at the National Museum of Dance on May 10, at 7 pm.
Guidelines:
– Open to high school and college students age 14 to 22.
– Orientation of the design should be portrait/vertical.
– The film title Jezebeland credits for Bette Davis (starring) and Henry Fonda must be included on the poster, along with the other credits on the original poster. Unlike today, the credits then were used creatively in various configurations, positions, and sizes. Poster designs should follow the approximate credit sizes used on the original poster. Please see attached original 1938 poster for reference.
– The poster design must be in full color.
– Submissions must be in the form of a PDF file. For best print results please use high resolution images or vector graphics.
– Please submit poster designs with artist name, school, and email no later than 5 pm EST on April 15, 2019 to tours@dancemuseum.org
The National Museum of Dance is currently open for winter hours Saturday from 10 am to 4 pm and Sunday from noon to 4 pm. Spring/Summer hours at the Museum will begin Tuesday, April 2. For more information about the National Museum of Dance, visit their WEBSITE or call 518-584-2225.
