EGN NEWS DESK
Janice Burgess, a longtime Nickelodeon tv government who sought to advertise kids’s curiosity and sense of play for many years, overseeing widespread exhibits like “Blue’s Clues” and “Little Bill” and creating her personal musical kids’s present, “The Backyardigans,” died on Saturday in hospice care in Manhattan. She was 72.
Her demise was confirmed by Brown Johnson, a longtime good friend and the creator of Nick Jr., who mentioned the trigger was breast most cancers.
In “The Backyardigans,” 5 cartoon animals — Tyrone, Tasha, Pablo, Austin and Uniqua — think about their yard as a spot of journey, traversing deserts, oceans, jungles, rivers and outer area whereas dancing and singing to music.
With the collection, Ms. Burgess hoped to assist kids use their imaginations to have enjoyable. In 2004, Ms. Burgess mentioned in an interview with The New York Times that the thought for the present stemmed from reminiscences of taking part in in her personal childhood yard in Pittsburgh.
“I actually bear in mind it as a beautiful, blissful, secure place,” she mentioned. “You may have these nice adventures simply romping round. From there, you would go anyplace or do something.”
The collection grew to become a favourite of American preschoolers after it premiered on Nickelodeon in 2004. It was tailored right into a reside present, “The Backyardigans Live! Tale of the Mighty Knights,” in 2008.
In 2021, a number of “Backyardigans” songs, together with “Into the Thick of It!” and “Castaways,” discovered a big and nostalgic viewers on TikTok, years after their unique launch in 2005.
“Janice actually taught me about illustration in children’ media and the way essential it was for teenagers to not solely see themselves, however hear themselves,” Ms. Johnson mentioned.
Ms. Burgess made certain to solid kids of shade, and the roles have been recast each few years as their voices modified, Ms. Johnson mentioned. Ms. Burgess needed their voices to sound pure and “not Broadway,” she mentioned. Ms. Burgess, a music lover, included 80 distinct musical genres in “The Backyardigans,” Ms. Johnson added.
“It was like writing a musical each week,” she mentioned.
The music was composed by Evan Lurie, who mentioned in an interview that Ms. Burgess’s “capability to chop to the meat of what wanted to be performed was simply astonishing.”
Janice Burgess was born on March 1, 1952, to John Wesley Burgess and Alma Naomi (Thomas) Burgess. She grew up within the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh and attended the Ellis School, a women’ school preparatory faculty. She graduated from Brandeis University in 1974, in accordance with the college’s web site.
She labored at WQED, the general public tv station in Pittsburgh, and Sesame Workshop earlier than becoming a member of Nick Jr. in 1995. Working at Nick Jr. taught her the whole lot she wanted to find out about making a tv present for younger kids, she mentioned at a National Press Club luncheon in 2006.
At Nick Jr., she oversaw the manufacturing of “Blue’s Clues” and “Little Bill,” which went on to win Peabody and Emmy Awards. She received a 2008 Daytime Emmy Award for excellent particular class animated program for her work on “The Backyardigans.” In an announcement, Nickelodeon referred to as Ms. Burgess “one of many nice architects of Nick Jr.”
Ms. Burgess is survived by her mom and a brother, Jack Burgess.
Ms. Burgess instructed The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in 2006 that she drew on motion films like “Die Hard” and the “Star Wars” and “Lord of the Rings” collection to create “The Backyardigans,” firming down the thrilling high-stakes narratives to a stage that was applicable for preschoolers.
“I’m actually fairly a refined particular person, however there’s nothing I like greater than cops and robbers and gunfights and loopy driving and quick and furiousness,” she mentioned. “When you suppose by way of little children, you don’t need to scare them, and I’m not in favor of displaying any form of violence or aggression, however you’ll be able to definitely have an enormous journey even if you happen to’re 3.”
Ms. Burgess mentioned in her interview with The Times that the music that she danced to as a baby additionally knowledgeable the creation of her present, which took kids on musical adventures along with imaginary geographical ones. The 5 animal buddies sang and danced to jazz, funk, bossa nova, Irish jig, township jive, tarantella and psychedelic soul.
“I beloved musicals, and my mom would put a report on and use that to get me and my brother to maneuver the sweeper round,” she mentioned. “You can leap about and fake to be Fred Astaire or Michael Jackson or whoever your musical idol of the second is.”
The dances on “The Backyardigans” have been tailored from performances by 5 Alvin Ailey dancers, Ms. Johnson mentioned. The dancers have been videotaped and proven to the animators, who used their actions as references for the present’s creatures.
Ms. Burgess hoped these characters would encourage kids’s sense of journey.
“I hope they’ll really feel they will create their very own adventures by seeing what’s on the display screen and taking part in with it the way in which they need to,” she instructed The Times. “If they need to put pirate hats on and go to outer area, that’s OK.”
