AstroDataBlog: Performer

Showing posts with label Performer. Show all posts

Thursday, 16 July 2015

Kate Bornstein (American author, playwright, performance artist, gender theorist)

* Having been designated male at birth and then received sex reassignment surgery in 1986, Kate Bornstein identifies as gender non-conforming, saying "I don't call myself a woman, and I know I'm not a man", and prefers the gender neutral pronouns "ze/hir" in place of "she/her" or "he/him".

Bornstein has written about having anorexia, being a survivor of PTSD and being diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. Bornstein has chronic lymphocytic leukemia and in September 2012 was diagnosed with lung cancer.

Bornstein and partner Barbara Carrellas live in New York City with three cats, two dogs and a turtle.

NATAL DATA and ASTROLOGY CHART

BIRTH DATA: born Albert Bornstein, 15 March 1948, about 06:00 (6 AM) EST (+5), Neptune, New Jersey, USA (40n13, 74w02). ASC: Pisces. RR: C. SOURCE: Sy Scholfield quotes from My Gender Workbook: How to Become a Real Man, a Real Woman, the Real You, Or Something Else Entirely by Kate Bornstein (Psychology Press, 1998), p. 121: "I'm a double Pisces with a Taurus Moon. I was born in 1948, the Year of the Rat;" and Bornstein on Twitter: "I'm Pisces with Pisces rising and Taurus moon."

If you're enjoying these posts, please consider making a donation by Paypal toward the upkeep of this blog and the further acquisition of birth records. Thank you for supporting astro-data collecting.

Monday, 29 July 2013

Daisy & Violet Hilton, 1908–1969, (English conjoined twins, jazz musicians, performers)

* Daisy & Violet, the conjoined Hilton sisters, had Pluto on the MC in the sign of The Twins and a Sun-Chiron conjunction in the Gemini decan of Aquarius. The Ascendant is around the last degree of Virgo quincunxed by Mercury in Pisces: unwanted by their mother, an unmarried barmaid named Kate Skinner, the sisters were brought up by her boss, Mary Hilton, who trained them to sing and dance, and toured them across the globe while privately subjecting them to abuse. The twins were exploited ruthlessly throughout much of their lives (Neptune on the North Node is ruled by Moon in Aries), but they continually struggled for their dignity and autonomy (Saturn and Pluto are angular while Uranus conjoins the South Node).

WIKIPEDIA BLURB

Daisy Hilton and Violet Hilton (5 February 1908 – ?? January 1969) were a pair of conjoined twins or Siamese Twins who toured in the U.S. sideshow and vaudeville circuit in the 1930s. They were the first to be born in the United Kingdom conjoined and to survive for more than a few weeks.

The Hilton sisters toured first in Britain at the age of three as "The United Twins". Their mother Mary Hilton took them on a tour through Germany, Australia and to the USA. In true sideshow manner, their performance was accompanied by an imaginative "history". Their controllers kept all the money the sisters earned. In 1926 Bob Hope formed an act called the Dancemedians with the Hilton Sisters, who had a tap dancing routine.

When Mary died in Birmingham, Alabama, her daughter and her husband took over. They kept the twins from public view for a while and trained them in jazz music. They lived in a mansion in San Antonio, Texas until the early 1930s.

In 1931, the sisters gathered enough courage to sue their managers, gaining freedom from their contract and US$100,000 in damages. They left the sideshows and went into vaudeville as "The Hilton Sisters' Revue". Daisy dyed her hair blonde and they began to wear different outfits so they could be told apart. They had numerous affairs, failed attempts to get a marriage license and a couple of short marriages. In 1932, the twins appeared as themselves in the film Freaks. In 1951 they starred in Chained for Life, an exploitation film loosely based on their lives.

The Hiltons' last public appearance was in 1961 at a drive-in cinema in Charlotte, North Carolina. Their tour manager abandoned them there, and with no means of transportation or income, they were forced to take a job in a nearby grocery store. On 4 January 1969, after they failed to report to work, their boss called the police. The twins were found dead in their home, victims of the Hong Kong flu. According to a forensic investigation, Daisy died first; Violet died between two and four days later.

Read more from their Wikipedia biography.

NATAL DATA and ASTROLOGY CHART

BIRTH DATA: Daisy Hilton and Violet Skinner, 5 February 1908, 21:00 (9 p.m.) GMT (+0), Brighton, England, UK (50n50, 0w08). ASC: 29 Virgo. RR: AA (from birth record). SOURCE: Sy Scholfield (©) quotes the report of the doctor attending the girls' birth: Dr. James A. Rooth, "The Brighton United Twins," British Medical Journal, vol. 2 , no. 2647 (Sep. 1911), pp. 653-654: "The twins were born a few minutes before I arrived at the case, about 9 p.m., and the placenta had been expelled." The article is available online: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2332195. Date and place from records cited in Dean Jensen, The Lives and Loves of Daisy and Violet Hilton: A True Story of Conjoined Twins (Berkeley, CA: Ten Speed Press, 2006).

If you're enjoying these posts please consider making a donation by Paypal toward the upkeep of this blog and the further acquisition of birth records. Thanks.

These blog posts and emails are for private recipients only. If it comes to your attention that these posts are being transferred to public media such as a mailing list or website then please notify us.

Saturday, 20 July 2013

Charles Blondin, 1824-1897 (French tightrope walker and acrobat)

* In the chart of Charles Blondin - called the "Chevalier Blondin", or more simply "The Great Blondin" - we find a classic bucket shape with bold-and-brave Mars in Libra (the sign of Balance) as the handle. Blondin was the most famous tightrope walker of the 19th century. The first to walk a rope across the Niagara, he performed around the world: in London, Dublin and Sydney. For his signature act he would cook an omelette midway along the tightrope and then eat it (or offer it to his audience) while drinking a glass of champagne. How very French! How very death-defying Pluto in the 8th at the apex of a T-square (ruled by a daredevil Mars bucket-handle in sextile with an Ascendant in show-off Leo)!

WIKIPEDIA BLURB

Charles Blondin won worldwide acclaim when he crossed the Niagara Gorge (located on the American-Canadian border) on a tightrope, 1,100 ft (340 m) long, 3.25 in (8.3 cm) in diameter and 160 ft (49 m) above the water, on 30 June 1859, and a number of times thereafter, always with different theatrical variations: blindfolded, in a sack, trundling a wheelbarrow, on stilts, carrying a man (his manager, Harry Colcord) on his back, sitting down midway while he cooked and ate an omelet and standing on a chair with only one chair leg on the rope.

In 1861, Blondin first appeared in London, at the Crystal Palace, turning somersaults on stilts on a rope stretched across the central transept, 70 feet (20 m) from the ground. The same year, he performed in Edinburgh, Scotland at the Royal Botanic Gardens, and at the Royal Portobello Gardens, Dublin. In 1874 he performed in Australia.

During his lifetime, Blondin's name was so synonymous with tightrope walking that many employed the name "Blondin" to describe others in the profession. For example there were at least five people working with variations of the Blondin name in Sydney in the 1880s, the most famous of whom was Henri L'Estrange - "the Australian Blondin".

Charles Blondin died of diabetes at his "Niagara House" in Ealing, London on 22 February 1897, aged 73.