Musical Theater Dance Training and Choreography in the 1920–1930s

This chapter provides an examination of how Broadway dancers were trained, the introduction of jazz dance to Broadway, the 1920s gradual move away from unison line dancing in favor of the individuated chorus, and how a few dance directors began to consider dance in musicals in relation to the libretto as an integrated and meaningful addition to the musical play. The common practice of Black choreographers being pushed aside while white choreographers claimed credit for their work and the essential role Black dance teachers and coaches played in training white dancers for Broadway is discussed here. Examinations of choreographic works by dance directors Buddy Bradley, Charlie Davis, Seymour Felix, Sammy Lee, Albertina Rasch, and George Balanchine establish a historical basis in preparation for the radical innovations to be discussed in subsequent chapters.

Making Broadway Dance

Musical theater dance is an ever-changing and evolving dance form, egalitarian in its embrace of any and all dance genres. It is a living, transforming art developed by exceptional dance artists requiring dramaturgical understanding; character analysis; knowledge of history, art, design; and, most importantly, an extensive knowledge of dance, both intellectual and embodied. Its ghettoization within criticism and scholarship as a throw-away dance form, undeserving of analysis—derivative, cliché ridden, titillating and predictable, the ugly stepsister of both theater and dance—belies and ignores the historic role it has had in musicals as an expressive form equal to book, music, and lyric. The standard adage, “when you can’t speak anymore sing, when you can’t sing anymore dance,” expresses its importance in musical theater as the ultimate form of heightened emotional, visceral, and intellectual expression. Through in-depth analysis author Liza Gennaro examines Broadway choreography through the lens of dance studies, script analysis, movement research, and dramaturgical inquiry offering a close examination of a dance form that has heretofore received only the most superficial interrogation. This book reveals the choreographic systems of some of Broadway’s most influential dance-makers, including George Balanchine, Agnes de Mille, Jerome Robbins, Katherine Dunham, Bob Fosse, Donald McKayle, Savion Glover, Sergio Trujillo, Steven Hoggett, and Camille Brown. Making Broadway Dance is essential reading for theater and dance scholars, students, practitioners, and Broadway fans.

The Choreomusical Page-to-Stage Approach: Visual Representations of Musical Modernism Through the Works of Igor Stravinsky and George Balanchine

<p>The musical developments of the Modernist period provided a new understanding and approach to composition. These developments are also seen in ballet, branching into several styles, with many choreographers providing their unique take to staging musical works. In this study, the modernist choreomusical relationship is examined with respect to the possibility of a page-to-stage approach in dance. This thesis examines how this approach is manifested in the complex relationships between the composer, and the choreographer. Drawing on nine examples of modernist era ballets categorised in to three styles (classical, neoclassical, and contemporary ballets), discussion of historical context, analysis of the musical and choreographic relationship, and other ideas surrounding adapting music for a visual medium are explored. This thesis also examines changing attitudes to music/dance relationships. Two lines of enquiry are followed, the first assesses, through the example of Stravinsky, Balanchine, and several other contemporaries, whether a page-to-stage approach exists for ballet. A supplementary enquiry explores how such an approach is manifested within different methods of choreography. This study finds that there are difficulties in applying the choreomusical page-to-stage approach to analysing changing attitudes to music/dance relationships. At another level, this study points to the benefit of incorporating the concept of diegesis in analysing the changing attitudes to music/dance relationships.</p>

The Choreomusical Page-to-Stage Approach: Visual Representations of Musical Modernism Through the Works of Igor Stravinsky and George Balanchine

<p>The musical developments of the Modernist period provided a new understanding and approach to composition. These developments are also seen in ballet, branching into several styles, with many choreographers providing their unique take to staging musical works. In this study, the modernist choreomusical relationship is examined with respect to the possibility of a page-to-stage approach in dance. This thesis examines how this approach is manifested in the complex relationships between the composer, and the choreographer. Drawing on nine examples of modernist era ballets categorised in to three styles (classical, neoclassical, and contemporary ballets), discussion of historical context, analysis of the musical and choreographic relationship, and other ideas surrounding adapting music for a visual medium are explored. This thesis also examines changing attitudes to music/dance relationships. Two lines of enquiry are followed, the first assesses, through the example of Stravinsky, Balanchine, and several other contemporaries, whether a page-to-stage approach exists for ballet. A supplementary enquiry explores how such an approach is manifested within different methods of choreography. This study finds that there are difficulties in applying the choreomusical page-to-stage approach to analysing changing attitudes to music/dance relationships. At another level, this study points to the benefit of incorporating the concept of diegesis in analysing the changing attitudes to music/dance relationships.</p>

Introduction

The Introduction juxtaposes the musicals of Tommy Tune during the 1980s with the large-scale British extravaganzas that dominated Broadway in the same decade. These imported “megamusicals,” featured lavish spectacle, special effects, cookie-cutter casting, and booming, pop-rock soundscapes. By contrast, Tune’s shows were simple, elegant, and filled with unique personalities (including Tune himself). The special effects in a Tommy Tune show were ingeniously staged singing and dancing. Tune coined the term “guzzintahs” to refer to the seamless melding of song, dance, and story, as in “this goes into that, and that goes into this.” The Introduction also offers a brief history of the director-choreographer, including George Balanchine, who integrated ballet into Broadway dance and Agnes de Mille, who established her choreographic authorship as of equal importance alongside a show’s book, score, and direction. The creative use of “guzzintahs” by later figures such as Jerome Robbins, Bob Fosse, Gower Champion, and Michael Bennett is explored, pointing the way toward Tune’s especially unified staging concepts.

Nietzsche's Looming Presence in the 1930s Dance Polemics of John Martin and Lincoln Kirstein

Some of the most perplexingly antagonistic comments about the differences between modern dance and ballet can be found strewn throughout the works of two pioneering twentieth-century American dance writers: John Martin (1893–1985) – The New York Times's first permanent dance critic, champion of modern dancers and early supporter of Martha Graham ( Kisselgoff et al. 1988 : 44) – and Lincoln Kirstein (1907–1996), the prodigious author, impresario, and balletomane, who cofounded with George Balanchine the New York City Ballet. Looming behind a significant number of Martin's and Kirstein's appraisals and condemnations of modern dance and ballet are Friedrich Nietzsche's aesthetics, particularly his Apollonian-Dionysian conceptualisations. This essay investigates the reception of Nietzsche in the context of the 1930s writing of these two dance critics, particularly in respect to their treatment of gender. Foundational for this essay's development are the analyses of Nietzsche's reception by earlier twentieth-century dance figures in the works of Susan Jones (2013 , 2010 ), Susan Manning (2006) and Kimerer LaMothe (2006) .

Babes on Broadway

The Broadway and London musicals of the Nicholas Brothers solidified their career, working with the most noted of actors and directors, while distinguishing their individual talents. The Ziegfeld Follies of 1936, the lavish musical revue staged by John Murray Anderson, with dances by George Balanchine, featured the Brothers with Josephine Baker. Lew Leslie’s London production of Blackbirds of 1936 was choreographed by the African-American choreographer Clarence “Buddy” Bradley and featured the Brothers dancing with the Blackbirds Beauty Chorus. The Rodgers and Hart comedy Babes in Arms, which opened on Broadway (1937), was choreographed by George Balanchine, who insisted that the Nicholas Brothers be cast; the ensuing “Egyptian Ballet” featuring the brothers was an enduring hit.

Justin Peck

Justin Peck, barely thirty, not only is the resident choreographer at New York City Ballet (NYCB) but also is in demand by dance companies throughout the United States and in Europe. He received a Tony Award for his choreography for the 2018 Broadway production of Carousel, and Steven Spielberg hired him to choreograph Spielberg’s new film of West Side Story. This chapter focuses on Everywhere We Go, the spectacular “epic” that Peck and indie composer Sufjan Stevens made for NYCB in 2014, including discussions of Peck’s musicality, his composition of duets and use of sneakers in some dances, and influences he acknowledges from the works of George Balanchine and Jerome Robbins. At the end is an essay by Peck from 2008, “How to Become an Artist.”

Alexei Ratmansky’s Abstract-Narrative Ballet

Alexei Ratmansky’s works challenge the way that Western critics and choreographers split ballet into abstract and narrative categories. This chapter explains how Western ballet arrived at the division between abstract and narrative. This developed out of the ideology of absolute music, the understanding that music could not have any meaning other than a purely formal one. During the Cold War, American choreographers such as George Balanchine took up the belief in absolute music in order to push against Soviet models of ballet. The Cold War also encouraged Western ballet experts to conflate abstraction with progress. Within this context, the chapter analyzes Ratmansky’s Russian Seasons (2006), which can appear as both abstract and narrative to its audiences. Ratmansky’s career thus challenges many long-held assumptions in the West about forward progress in ballet.