Turns of ‘fate’: Jack Cole, jazz and Bharata Natyam in diasporic translation

2019 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-21 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rohini Acharya ◽  
Eric Kaufman
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
Cultural Practice ◽  
Musical Theatre ◽  
Indian Culture ◽  
Bharata Natyam ◽  
American Popular Culture ◽  
Film Version ◽  
Mass Audience ◽  
Classical Indian Dance

The musical Kismet opened on Broadway in 1953. This commercially successful play, translated into a film version released two years later, included some of Jack Cole’s most widely viewed and popular choreography, which resulted in the exposure of Bharata Natyam to a mass audience through its incorporation into jazz dance. Cole’s ‘Hindu swing’ continues to confound years later, even as Bharata Natyam has ever-increasing prominence in global theatre. This article considers how the form, in migration from Madras to Manhattan, was (and is) materialized and reinscribed, discussing how exoticism and Orientalism are implicated in the mechanisms of this transmogrification. Exploring Cole’s involvement with ‘Hindu’ dance calls into question a range of issues related to the parallel histories of musical theatre dance in the mid-twentieth century, and classical Indian dance in the period of transition from colonial possession to postcolonial independence. We investigate the ways in which Indian culture in diaspora has been translated in our practice, and the ways in which the reception of dance reflects an ‘invisibilization’ of ‘foreign’ cultural practice in American popular culture. Collaborating on presenting our juxtaposed experience brings embodied reflection into dialogue with dance scholarship, while also exploring the intersection of these distinct and seemingly discrete dance practices.

Black Chicago Pioneers in the Training of Dancers

2020 ◽  
pp. 166-182
Author(s):  
Clovis E. Semmes
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
African American ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
Broad Spectrum ◽  
Black Communities ◽  
Performing Artists ◽  
American Popular Culture ◽  
Cultural Renaissance ◽  
And Performance ◽  
American Society

This chapter examines the life of pioneer dance instructor Hazel Thompson Davis in early twentieth-century Black Chicago. Contextually, diverse venues for live entertainment in the broad spectrum of American society created significant demand for a trained theatrical workforce, of which varieties of dancers were major components. By 1916, Chicago’s Hazel Thompson Davis began to meet this demand through the school she created and the performing artists she trained. A pioneer and innovator in her field, the Chicago tradition in dance instruction and performance initiated by Davis would make Chicago a powerful force in the instruction of an African American theatrical workforce nationally and internationally, in the broader cultural renaissance taking place in Black communities across the country, and in the evolution of American popular culture.

Turn Over for Act Two

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laurence Maslon
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
Popular Music ◽  
Musical Experience ◽  
American Popular Culture ◽  
Turn Over

The ways in which music from Broadway reached listeners were different than most of popular music: show tunes had content, but full scores from Broadway had context as well as content. The act and the art of recovering the musical experience of a Broadway show for home listeners were both complex and challenging; how producers and composers met the technical and aesthetic challenges of capturing a narrative stage experience is the journey of this book. The songs from Broadway were and are an intensely personal and popular aspect of American popular culture; likewise, the cast albums themselves—and the songs from them—were among the most commercially successful recordings of the twentieth century.

Ballet and Popular Culture in America

Ballet Class ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 277-304
Author(s):  
Melissa R. Klapper
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
The United States ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
American Popular Culture ◽  
Cultural Spaces ◽  
The Subject

Ballet’s popularity as entertainment has grown steadily in the United States since the early nineteenth century, and it has appeared in a wide variety of cultural spaces. Three arenas of American popular culture where ballet has consistently been important are movies, television, and the ubiquitous holiday performances of The Nutcracker. Dance was the subject of some of the earliest movies ever filmed and has remained a frequent theme. Millions of Americans have seen ballet on television, and as many have also seen performances of The Nutcracker. Over the course of the twentieth century many Americans have been inspired to take ballet classes or send their children to ballet classes as a result of their engagement with ballet in popular culture.

The Fascinating Moment of Godspell

2019 ◽  
pp. 227-249
Author(s):  
Paul R. Laird
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
Jesus Christ ◽  
York City ◽  
Religious Revival ◽  
American Popular Culture ◽  
Film Version ◽  
Direct Competition ◽  
The Town

This chapter delves into contextual issues on the film version of Godspell, focusing on a small religious revival in American popular culture in the early 1970s. Leonard Bernstein’s Mass, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Jesus Christ Superstar, and Stephen Schwartz’s Godspell appeared on stage within months of one another, and Christianity appeared in other aspects of popular culture at the time, including an image of Jesus on the front of Time magazine in 1971. The producers of Godspell, however, realized that the musical was quickly at the height of its cultural moment and they decided to release it as a movie while the stage production was still in its original run in various cities, thus providing a direct competition between stage and screen versions (normally film adaptations are released after the closing of stage versions). Changes were made to the material for the film version and, like On the Town and Bells Are Ringing, there were challenges related to the location filming in New York City. Reactions to the film were polarized, but it remains an important document of a time when Jesus made more than just a cameo appearance in popular culture.

Espionage and Exile

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Phyllis Lassner
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Literary History ◽  
Political Engagement ◽  
The Political ◽  
International Crises ◽  
Popular Entertainment ◽  
John Le Carre ◽  
The Cold War

Espionage and Exile demonstrates that from the 1930s through the Cold War, British Writers Eric Ambler, Helen MacInnes, Ann Bridge, Pamela Frankau, John le Carré and filmmaker Leslie Howard combined propaganda and popular entertainment to call for resistance to political oppression. Instead of constituting context, the political engagement of these spy fictions bring the historical crises of Fascist and Communist domination to the forefront of twentieth century literary history. They deploy themes of deception and betrayal to warn audiences of the consequences of Nazi Germany's conquests and later, the fusion of Fascist and Communist oppression. Featuring protagonists who are stateless and threatened refugees, abandoned and betrayed secret agents, and politically engaged or entrapped amateurs, all in states of precarious exile, these fictions engage their historical subjects to complicate extant literary meanings of transnational, diaspora and performativity. Unsettling distinctions between villain and victim as well as exile and belonging dramatizes relationships between the ethics of espionage and responses to international crises. With politically charged suspense and narrative experiments, these writers also challenge distinctions between literary, middlebrow, and popular culture.

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