Mississippi Today

Mississippian wins International Ballet Competition gold medal. Surely Thalia Mara would smile.

Published

2 years ago

June 26, 2023

Hattiesburg’s Alexei Orohovsky became the first Mississippian to win the gold medal at the International Ballet Competition at Thalia Mara Hall. Credit: Richard Finkelstein

Thalia Mara, for whom Jackson’s magnificent municipal auditorium is named, was the daughter of Russian immigrants, grew up in Chicago, studied classical ballet in Paris, toured the world as a dancer, and founded and directed the National Academy of Ballet in New York City in 1963.

But that’s not all…

Mara moved to Jackson in 1976 at the age of 65, and when most folks think of retiring, she began to make ballet matter in, of all places, Mississippi. From all accounts, Mara was a boundless force of nature, who somehow brought the International Ballet Competition (IBC) to Jackson in 1979 — the first time the competition had been held in the Western Hemisphere.

Why Jackson? Mara told writer Bettye Jolly in a 1977 article for Jackson Magazine she saw first-hand that Jackson was a sports town, and that she was “searching for a way to stimulate a similar interest in ballet.”

Competition, she surmised, was what she needed. “Mississippians love athleticism and they love a competition,” she said. The IBC is the Olympics of ballet, awarding gold, silver and bronze medals to top competitors across the globe. The dancers most certainly are amazingly athletic, as we will discuss. So, Mara enlisted community support and parleyed her connections in the international ballet community to bring the IBC to Mississippi.

Mara died in 2003, but most assuredly her spirit pervaded the auditorium these past two weeks when the IBC welcomed 99 dancers from 17 different countries. And wouldn’t Mrs. Mara have loved it last Saturday night when Alexei Orohovsky, a 16-year-old from 90 miles down U.S. 49 in Hattiesburg, won the gold medal in the juniors competition?

You know she would have. And you may wonder, as I did, how a soft-spoken, incredibly graceful and athletic 16-year-old named Orohovsky, born and raised in Mississippi’s Pine Belt, could win a worldwide ballet competition. We will get to that as well…

First, let’s tackle the age-old question: Are ballet dancers athletes? You only needed to sit through one performance of the two weeks of IBC competition to know the answer. Hell yes, they are athletes — amazingly graceful athletes, men and women, boys and girls. I don’t know a pas de deaux from pass interference, but I know an athlete when I see one. These dancers are tremendously strong and limber with the ability to leap and seemingly suspend themselves in air. At times, it is as if they are flying. The boys and men can lift the girls and women above their heads, while gracefully dancing. The girls and women can stand on the toes of one foot and spin themselves round and round until you, the spectator, become dizzy. Great athletes have stamina; these dancers do, too.

In Mississippi, some wise coaches have long known the benefits of ballet training for their football and basketball players. Back in the 1960s, about the time Mara was founding the National Academy of Ballet, a basketball coach named Fred Lewis was winning and winning big at Mississippi Southern College. Lewis, who later created a powerhouse basketball program at Syracuse, was searching for ways to improve his Southern players’ footwork and leaping abilities. And so he put them in ballet classes at the college’s School of Dance. Did it work? You decide. Lewis’s Golden Giants, as they were then called, were 23-2 and 23-3 in back-to-back seasons.

In 1974, Granville Freeman, a fireball of a young football coach at Lake High School in Scott Country, was looking for an edge. And so he brought in a ballet teacher from Jackson that summer to train his Lake Hornets twice a week. Heresy? Some of his players probably thought so, but years later Freeman told a sports writer, “Ballet is all about footwork, about core strength, about flexibility. I thought it was perfect training for football. We called ourselves the Twinkletoe Hornets. People laughed at us before the season; they weren’t laughing after it.”

No, the Twinkletoe Hornets won every game they played, and what’s more, no opponent so much as scored a point. “Undefeated, un-tied, un-scored upon,” Freeman said. “People around here now refer to us as the un-team.”

Young Alexei Orohovsky tried soccer, baseball, swimming and other sports growing up in Hattiesburg. He kept coming back to ballet, which, to be sure, was in his blood. His father and mother, Arkadiy and Katya Orohovsky, were accomplished ballet dancers themselves and now teach the discipline at South Mississippi Ballet Theatre in the Hub City. Father Arkadiy grew up in Kyiv, Ukraine, mother Katya in Hattiesburg.

Their talented son began dancing seriously at age 12. He graduated from high school at age 15. His parents taught and trained him until the age of 14. He now trains at world-renowned John Kranko Schule in Stuttgart, Germany. Indeed, Alexei won the gold medal on Friday, danced a solo from The Nutcracker in the IBC Encore Gala Saturday night and flew back to Stuttgart on Sunday.

In Stuttgart, he spends more than six hours a day dancing and training to perfect his art. Besides hours of dancing, he does weight training, stamina workouts, Pilates and pays close attention to nutrition. In his spare time, he studies German. At his level, ballet is a full-time job.

Alexei is nothing if not dedicated. Taseusz Matacz, his instructor in Stuttgart told freelance writer Sherry Lucas, “On stage, Alexei feels like a fish in water. With visible joy, he dances the variations which are peppered with technical difficulties. He has excellent coordination, his explosiveness in the muscles enables Alexei to bring special lightness into the dance. One of Alexei’s specialties are his pirouettes – small or large, great variability in execution, incredible speed – he masters this in a virtuoso manner.”

I couldn’t have put it better myself.

Alexei is just shy of 6-feet tall and still growing. Weight? “I have no idea,” he says, smiling. I don’t know, either, but I can tell you from observation he has roughly the body fat content of a grasshopper and can jump like one, too. He is polite and well-spoken and insanely talented. He told his mother four years ago he would one day dance in the IBC in Jackson. He did not specify he would win the gold medal.

But he won the silver medal last year at Helsinki and then topped that in his home state 90 miles away from his hometown. “Incredible,” he described the feeling. “Huge,” he said about what the gold medal would mean for his career.

This was 44 years after the IBC first came to Jackson, 41 years after Jackson native Kathy Thibodeaux won the silver medal. No Mississippian had won a medal here since — not until this past weekend when Alexei Orohovsky won the gold. Last Friday night, he stood adorned with the gold medal, while The Star-Spangled Banner played and Mississippians stood at attention.

Surely, Thalia Mara would approve.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

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Mississippi Today

On this day in 1945, Sister Rosetta Tharpe hit the R&B charts

Published

13 hours ago

April 30, 2025

Staff Editor

mississippitoday.org – @MSTODAYnews – 2025-04-30 07:00:00

by Jerry Mitchell, Mississippi Today
April 30, 2025

April 30, 1945

Publicity photo of American musician Sister Rosetta Tharpe in 1938.

Sister Rosetta Tharpe, known as the “godmother of rock ‘n’ roll,” made history by becoming the first gospel artist to rocket up the R&B charts with her gospel hit, “Strange Things Happening Every Day.” In so doing, she paved the way for a strange new sound.

“Rock ‘n’ roll was bred between the church and the nightclubs in the soul of a queer Black woman in the 1940s named Sister Rosetta Tharpe,” National Public Radio wrote. “She was there before Elvis, Little Richard and Johnny Cash swiveled their hips and strummed their guitars. It was Tharpe, the godmother of rock ‘n’ roll, who turned this burgeoning musical style into an international sensation.”

Born in Arkansas, the musical prodigy grew up in Mississippi in the Church of God in Christ, a Pentecostal denomination that welcomed all-out music and praise. By age 6, she was performing alongside her mandolin-playing mother in a traveling evangelistic troupe. By the mid-1920s, she and her mother had joined the Great Migration to Chicago, where they continued performing.

“As Tharpe grew up, she began fusing Delta blues, New Orleans jazz and gospel music into what would become her signature style,” NPR wrote.

Her hard work paid off when she joined the Cotton Club Revue in New York City. She was only 23. Before the end of 1938, she recorded gospel songs for Decca, including “Rock Me,” which became a huge hit and made her an overnight sensation. Little Richard, Aretha Franklin and Jerry Lee Lewis have all cited her as an influence.

“Sister Rosetta played guitar like the men I was listening to, only smoother, with bigger notes,” said singer-songwriter Janis Ian. “And of course, personally, any female player was a big influence on me, because there were so few.”

After hearing her successors on the radio, Tharpe was quoted as saying, “Oh, these kids and rock and roll — this is just sped up rhythm and blues. I’ve been doing that forever.”

On the eve of a 1973 recording session, she died of a stroke and was buried in an unmarked grave. In the decades that followed, she finally began to receive the accolades that had eluded her in life.

In 2007, she was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame, and money was raised for her headstone. Eleven years later, she was inducted into the Rock and Rock Hall of Fame.

“She was, and is,” NPR concluded, “an unmatched artist.”

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

The post On this day in 1945, Sister Rosetta Tharpe hit the R&B charts appeared first on mississippitoday.org

Note: The following A.I. based commentary is not part of the original article, reproduced above, but is offered in the hopes that it will promote greater media literacy and critical thinking, by making any potential bias more visible to the reader –Staff Editor.

Political Bias Rating: Centrist

The article is a historical and biographical piece about Sister Rosetta Tharpe, a pioneering musician who influenced the development of rock ‘n’ roll. The content is factual, focusing on her contributions to music and her impact on the genre. The language used does not present any ideological stance or promote a specific political view. It highlights the cultural and musical significance of Tharpe without delving into any political or controversial matters, making it neutral in tone. Therefore, the article can be classified as centrist in its presentation.

Mississippi Today

Ex-MS Coast police officer accused of assaulting 74-year-old female protester

Published

1 day ago

April 29, 2025

Staff Editor

mississippitoday.org – @BobbyHarrison9 – 2025-04-29 15:51:00

by Margaret Baker, Sun Herald, Mississippi Today
April 29, 2025

LONG BEACH — A retired Long Beach police officer arrested Thursday is accused of assaulting a woman holding a protest sign and threatening a second victim, Long Beach Police Chief Billy Seal confirmed Friday.

Police arrested Craig DeRouche, 64, for allegedly assaulting a woman during an encounter on U.S. 90 at Jeff Davis Avenue. He is charged with a second misdemeanor charge of assault by threat for allegedly threatening a man who reported that he saw the alleged attack and tried to intervene, Seal said.

A woman protesting on the Mississippi Coast was allegedly assaulted by a former police officer. Photo courtesy of the Sun Herald.

According to Seal, the protester, identified as a 74-year-old woman, was holding a protest sign supporting the right to due process under the U.S. Constitution for Americans before the assault occurred.

The woman, a Navy veteran, is now in stable condition in a local hospital.

READ THE FULL STORY at the Sun Herald.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

The post Ex-MS Coast police officer accused of assaulting 74-year-old female protester appeared first on mississippitoday.org

Political Bias Rating: Centrist

The article presents a factual account of an incident involving a retired police officer accused of assaulting a protester. The tone is neutral, focusing on the details of the event without engaging in overt political rhetoric or bias. The source, Mississippi Today, is known for providing straightforward news coverage, and there is no clear indication of political framing or partisanship in the language used. The article simply reports the incident and includes basic details about the people involved, including the protester’s age, condition, and the charges against the officer. No ideological perspectives are offered, which supports a centrist assessment.

Mississippi Today

Chris Lemonis had at least earned the right to finish season

Published

1 day ago

April 29, 2025

Staff Editor

mississippitoday.org – @rick_cleveland – 2025-04-29 15:11:00

by Rick Cleveland, Mississippi Today
April 29, 2025

Chris Lemonis speaks to reporters during a press conference at the 2021 College World Series

On April 28, 2022, the Ole Miss baseball Rebels had won 23 games and lost 17 overall. They were 6-12 in the Southeastern Conference. The various Internet message boards were filled with posts calling for head baseball coach Mike Bianco’s dismissal. Yes, and two months later, Bianco and his Rebels won the College World Series.

Contrast that with this: On April 28 of this year, Mississippi State’s Diamond Dogs had a 25-19 record overall, 7-14 in the SEC. The various Internets boards were filled with posts calling for head coach Chris Lemonis to be fired. He was.

In both those situations, the Mississippi teams were six games over the .500 mark overall. In both those situations, the teams had lost twice as many SEC games as they had won. Ole Miss stayed the course, and it paid off, remarkably so. In sharp contrast, Mississippi State pulled the trigger, and we shall see what happens next.

Another big difference in the two situations: Bianco had never won a national championship in his previous 20 years at Ole Miss. Lemonis won the first national championship in State history just four years ago.

You ask me, that national championship, not even four years ago, should have earned Lemonis, at the very least, the right to finish out this season. I don’t see anything to be gained with firing the man with three weeks remaining in the regular season. Most NCAA Tournament projections have Mississippi State listed as one of the first four teams out. The Bulldogs are ranked 45th in RPI against the nation’s 13th most difficult schedule. They are on the NCAA Tournament bubble, just as Ole Miss was three seasons ago.

This is not to say I believe that Lemonis, given the opportunity, would have done what Bianco did three years ago, But it is certainly within the realm of possibility. We’ve seen it happen. In baseball, more than any other sport, teams run hot and cold. State could have gotten hot, gotten on a roll in May and June and at least made it to the College World Series. It happens for someone nearly every year in college baseball. For that matter, it could still happen for State this year with interim head coach Justin Parker calling the shots.

And I know what many of those calling for the dismissal of Lemonis will say. They’ll say that in firing Lemonis now, State can get a head start on hiring a new coach to turn the program around. Not so. Any coach that the Bulldogs would hire is still coaching a team and will be coaching a team through at least May.

Traditionally, Mississippi State baseball is one of the nation’s top programs. State baseball facilities are second to none. Fan support is among the nation’s best.

But it is not, as athletic director Zac Selmon put it “the premier program in college baseball.” It is much more accurate to say State’s is a really good program in the premier conference in college baseball.

LSU, Texas, and Arkansas, all teams in the same conference, have similar fan support, terrific facilities and have enjoyed much more on-the-field success. Tennessee has improved dramatically. Ole Miss, Alabama, Auburn, Georgia, Texas A & M have made huge strides in facilities, fan support and baseball emphasis.

And here’s the deal: Tradition, facilities and fan support, while still important, all have become secondary issues when it comes to ingredients for success in college athletics. You know what really matters most? NIL and the ability to attract players in the transfer portal, that’s what. This is no longer amateur sports. It’s pay-for-play. It’s professional sports in every respect.

The first question recruits ask: What can you pay me? The first question any prospective coach will ask Mississippi State: How much money will I get to pay players? In Monday’s press release announcing the dismissal of Lemonis, Selmon was quoted as saying State’s baseball “NIL offerings” are second to none. There’s no way of knowing for sure, but I have heard otherwise from numerous sources.

I hate that we have reached this point in college athletics, but we most assuredly have. I also hate that Lemonis, a good man and a good coach, doesn’t get the chance to finish the season. I thought he had earned that.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

The post Chris Lemonis had at least earned the right to finish season appeared first on mississippitoday.org

Political Bias Rating: Centrist

The article presents an opinion focused on the dismissal of Mississippi State baseball coach Chris Lemonis, highlighting the contrast between the treatment of Lemonis and Ole Miss’ coach Mike Bianco. The writer criticizes the decision to fire Lemonis prematurely, arguing that his past success, including a national championship, warranted the opportunity to finish the season. The piece does not lean heavily toward any political or ideological position, instead focusing on the dynamics within college athletics and coaching decisions. While the critique of the decision might appeal to readers who value stability and tradition, it does not show a clear partisan or ideological bias.