Broadway Dance

The move away from modern dance and ballet to jazz dance as the prominent movement lexicon employed on Broadway is explored. I examine Katherine Dunham and Jack Cole’s influence on a generation of choreographers and Bob Fosse’s fusion of the dominant paradigms established by de Mille and Robbins. I give special attention to Fosse’s choreographic influences, including his early exposure to nightclubs and strip joints, comic/eccentric dancer Joe Frisco, Fred Astaire, and Jack Cole. Beginning with his work in The Pajama Game (1954) under the mentorship of Robbins and examining selected works from Damn Yankees (1955) and Sweet Charity (1966), I study Fosse’s choreographic development. My close reading of the musical number “Big Spender” reveals Fosse’s dramaturgical process. I examine the number in relation to the 1960s sexual revolution; representations of the female dancing body in both commercial theater and concert venues; and in relation to de Mille’s “Postcard Girls” from her Oklahoma! dream ballet, “Laurey Makes Up Her Mind.” I also consider Fosse’s post-Sweet Charity objectification of the female body; his late career disregard for the precepts of time and place in relation to character, and his formulation of a distinctly identifiable movement lexicon—the “Fosse Style.” The chapter closes with three more influential director-choreographers: Gower Champion, with his innovative cinematic approach to stage musicals and his standard use of showbiz dance lexicons undisturbed by modernist methods; Michael Bennett, a strict proponent of Robbins methods and the inheritor of the Robbins’ mantle; and Donald McKayle, one of the only African American director-choreographers working in the late twentieth-century Broadway arena.

Oklahoma!

Agnes de Mille’s dance innovations in Rodgers and Hammerstein’s groundbreaking musical Oklahoma! (1943) altered the function of dance on Broadway. This chapter will consider de Mille’s project in relation to Broadway dance in the 1930s and her role as a proponent of Americana dance. A reassessment of her contributions as a modernist, women’s advocate, and a dramaturgically astute dance maker who manipulated librettos to convey her point of view will be offered. De Mille’s early Broadway failures, her tenacity, and how she made Broadway a place to present expressive, narrative dance are considered. Her employment of modern dance methodologies primarily taken from techniques developed by Martha Graham and Louis Horst, with whom she was closely associated, made the commercial theater a venue for dance innovation.

Performing the Role of Playwright: Jia Zhongming's Sanqu Songs in the Supplement to The Register of Ghosts

This article investigates how sanqu composition modifies the social contract of poetic composition in how a text is mediated between authorship and social identity, through a close analysis of Jia Zhongming's sanqu songs written in the supplement to The Register of Ghosts. It challenges the conventional reading of Jia's songs as reliable sources of biographical information on individual playwrights to whom those songs are dedicated and argues instead that, if read together as a whole, they represent a catalog of various personas Jia constructs for the social role of playwright. The authorial figure that plays a central role in more polite poetic genres is reduced to a faceless and easily replaceable mannequin with a name tag on it—be it Guan Hanqing, Wang Shifu, or any other name—in Jia's sanqu songs, only to foreground the fashioning of the playwright's social role from his particular perspective. The role Jia Zhongming constructs for the playwright displays the imprint of urban commercial theater as well as the influence of the state and elite values. Therefore, the true value of Jia's songs lies in how they help us better understand the condition of playwrights in Jia's time. Moreover, a proper interpretation of Jia's songs also helps us better understand the performativeness of sanqu as a genre.

Transoceanic Animals as Spectacle in Early Modern Spain

Animal spectacles are vital to a holistic appreciation of Spanish culture. In Transoceanic Animals as Spectacle in Early Modern Spain, Beusterien christens five previously unnamed animals, each of which was a protagonist in a spectacle: Abada, the rhinoceros; Hawa’i, the elephant; Fuleco, the armadillo; Jarama, the bull; and Maghreb, the lion. In presenting and analyzing their stories, Beusterien enriches our understanding of the role of animals in the development of commercial theater in Spain and in the modern bullfight. He also contributes to growing scholarly conversations on the importance of Spain in the history of science by examining how animal spectacles had profound repercussions on the emergence of the modern zoo and natural history museum. Combining scholarly content analysis and pedagogical sagacity, the book has a broad appeal for scholars of the early modern Spanish Empire, animal studies scholars, and secondary and postsecondary instructors looking for engaging exercises and information for their Spanish language, culture, and history students.

“All’uso di Venezia”

The first commercial theater in Rome, the Teatro Tordinona, opened in 1671, and during its short first phase of activity saw the massive import of Venetian operatic repertory for the first time in the history of the city. This chapter explores the contribution of the Colonna to the activities of this theater. More than any of their contemporaries, the Colonna knew the commercial theaters of Rome and contributed to importing not only repertory, but also the system of production of the Venetian models. The production system of the Teatro Tordinona also saw the consolidation of a new type of “collective patronage” of the Roman aristocracy.

How to Dismantle a [Theatric] Bomb: Broadway Flops, Broadway Money, and Musical Theater Historiography

The Broadway musical, balancing as it does artistic expression and commerce, is regularly said to reflect its sociocultural surroundings. Its historiography, however, tends for the most part to emphasize art over commerce, and exceptional productions over all else. Broadway histories tend to prioritize the most artistically valued musicals; occasional lip service, too, is paid to extraordinary commercial successes on the one hand, and lesser productions by creators who are collectively deemed great artists on the other. However, such a historiography provides less a reflection of reality than an idealized and thus somewhat warped portrait of the ways the commercial theater, its gatekeepers, and its chroniclers prioritize certain works and artists over others. Using as examples Ain’t Supposed to Die a Natural Death (1971), Merrily We Roll Along (1981), Carrie (1988), and Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark (2011), I will suggest that a money-minded approach to the study of musicals may help paint a clearer picture of what kinds of shows have been collectively deemed successful enough to remember, and what gets dismissed as worthy of forgetting.