Write 300-500 words minimum to answer the following prompts. Be sure to include detailed evidence and examples from the course content and from the NY Post Article to support your ideas and conclusions.
Grammar and Spelling will not be graded.
Prompts – (Please do not include these questions in your response 🙂
1. In the content from Weeks 7 & 8, we studied two significant people in Broadway dance history: Jack Cole and Agnes de Mille. Who do you feel contributed the most to the legacy of Broadway dance? Why?
2. Compare the temperaments of Cole, de Mille and Robbins. Use lecture content and evidence from the NY Post article to describe and connect your deep conclusions and original ideas. Use examples!
3. Consider what you learned about Jerome Robbins:
1. How do you feel artistic genius correlates to “temperamental” behavior? Is it necessary or permissible if the end result of “questionable” social behavior is a rare work of art? Connect your ideas to experiences and to our course content. Give at least 2 detailed examples from the course and 1 from the NY Post article to support your conclusions.
2. Would you be willing to work with a “genius” if it meant you would be treated “badly”? Why?
3. Which story about Robbins’ behavior to his cast–in the article–impacted you the most?
1940s: The Golden Age of Broadway
Copyright © 2010
The 1940s saw a revolution in choreography for the Broadway stage. Visionaries such as Balanchine, Jack Cole and Agnes DeMille infused Broadway dancing with a combination of dance training and artistic vision that had not been seen before. These choreographers—and those that would soon follow—had a goal of transporting the audience rather than merely entertaining them. The 1940s and 50s were aptly titled “The Golden Age of Broadway.”
Of the choreographers from the world of concert dance, Agnes de Mille would make the most dramatic mark on the future of Broadway dance. But de Mille’s successes were preceded by the powerful and devastating impact of World War II.
World War II
Though Americans tried to stay out of the foreign war that began in 1939, the Japanese Army brought the war to their back door with the December 7, 1941, attack on the U.S. military base at Pearl Harbor. United States soil had been violated, and Americans wanted revenge. Over 2,400 men were killed and four naval battleships were sunk in the attack.
President Roosevelt had almost full national support for his decision to join the war. Once Congress approved the declaration of war, American military branches combined forces with their British, French and Russian allies to fight two common enemies: Japan and Nazi Germany. The era of World War II saw unprecedented war tactics, war crimes and death tolls. Television, radio and newspapers fed war stories daily to the American public, bringing the realities of the war up their sidewalks and into their homes.
The era also represented huge social and financial changes across the globe. These changes were evident in America, where the Depression had taken a huge toll on America’s economy and morale.
World War II ended the Great Depression and returned prosperity to the United States. In March 1940, seven months after Britain and France declared war on Germany, over eight million Americans were still out of work, but by 1944 most of the jobless of 1940 were working again, bringing unemployment to an all-time low of about 800,000. The wartime demand for every employable American created seventeen million new jobs in the military or in manufacturing. (Jones, 2003, p. 123)
Millions of women worked in the U.S., either in jobs vacated by fighting troops or in defense industries. In addition, over 100,000 women served in the armed forces (Jones, 2003).
Hollywood, Tin Pan Alley [the music production center of the country] and Broadway all responded to the one subject that was on the mind of every American: war.
Back to Broadway
Though the war inescapably affected Broadway musicals, it did not appear directly on the stage. Instead, Broadway reflected America’s thoughts and responses to the war. Author Raymond Knapp examined the Broadway musical in terms of its role in establishing national identity. He had this to say about shows during World War II:
During this period, several important musicals provided reassuring accounts of who “we” are (that is, who Americans are, the presumed “we” of the principal audience for these musicals), and how we have–deservedly, of course–emerged as a secure nation and a model for how a better world might function. (2005, p. 119)
Musicals also served to define who we are not, helping to distance America from enemies whose relationship to our roots we preferred not to claim during the war. Mythologies forwarded by musicals provided reassurance. Just as the stereotypes displayed in minstrelsy served to reassure whites about blacks, musicals during this period affirmed a national identity of America as a mighty, protective, proud nation. On Broadway, soldiers were portrayed as handsome, confident, and invincible. Rousing, marching melodies erased all thoughts of bullets and blood. In
This is the Army (1941)–the sequel to
Yip! Yip! Yaphank (1918)–three hundred enlisted men performed skits, songs and dances (Maslon, 2004).
American identity has at its core the ideal of inclusiveness (Knapp, 2005). Though we may see individual evidence to the contrary, as a nation, America strongly identifies with its melting pot [every citizen is treated the same] and salad bowl [every diverse American contributes individually to the whole] ideals. Both of these ideals are based on inclusiveness that implicitly criticizes European nationalist beliefs that embrace—or used to embrace—pure strains of citizenry.
American musicals, especially during and after World War II, presented these inclusive ideals. According to Knapp, American musicals during this period endeavored to show that diverse groups of people could get along. Knapp examined three Broadway musicals that he believes demonstrated the myth of American inclusiveness:
Oklahoma! (1943),
Guys and Dolls (1950), and
The Music Man (1951). Says Knapp:
In each case, the issues raised and resolved have a similar profile, as each show presents a community threatened by something either within or outside the group, which grows wiser and more secure through pursuing an initially resisted approach to community-formation that is more inclusive than exclusive…Marriage [is]…placed squarely at the center of the conflict and its resolution. And the settings are in some ways more alike than different, for all three shows are peopled by very white, very mainstream Euro-Americans, whose musical idiom projects a particularly “American” innocence; jazz styles and related musical inflections are thus downplayed, conservatively present but not obtrusive.
That race is scarcely an issue in these musicals…speaks to a smugness endemic to mythologies created, as these seem to have been, to reassure a nation of its own essential goodness. (Knapp, 2005, p. 122)
How true!
Oklahoma! reconciles the territorial bickering of the cattlemen and farmhands that work the same ranch. It ends with the Farmer’s niece and head cowman’s betrothal. In
Guys and Dolls, Save-a-Soul mission leader, Sarah Brown, converts a beguiled gambler named Sky Masterson, at the same time that he helps her to literally and figuratively let her hair down. In
The Music Man, the same thing happens with a con man who changes his ways while bringing fun and optimism to an uptight town in Indiana. All three presented white America and the struggles and sunny resolutions of “diverse” people trying to get along. [I’ll mention, here, that multicultural casting on Broadway has been in effect for many years. Although it was certainly not present at the debut of these musicals, it is currently not uncommon to see a rainbow of residents in Gary, Indiana. More about multiculturalism on Broadway in a later unit.]
Combining these attempts at moral lessons in peacemaking with the new narrative dances gave musicals the opportunity to teach audiences lessons beyond “love conquers all.” But the Broadway dances of Weidman, Humphrey, Balanchine and Dunham, although narrative, did little to further the plot. It wasn’t until Agnes de Mille came on the scene that dance took its place as an essential contributor to the musical storyline.
Agnes de Mille (1905 – 1993)
The Woman
Agnes de Mille [last name spelled with a lower case “d”] was born into a highly cultured theatre family, which included her uncle, film director Cecil B. De Mille [capital “D”]. She grew up on Hollywood sets, read literature and played piano. When she was thirteen, de Mille saw Anna Pavlova perform and decided she wanted to be a concert dancer. De Mille spoke of her father’s reaction: “My father, like all educated men, considered dancing at best exhibitionistic acrobatics, and certainly a field that offered neither intellectual nor spiritual challenge” (de Mille, 1987, pp. 59-60). Devoted to her father and his opinion, de Mille spent her lifetime trying to overcome her father’s prejudice. Fortunately, young Agnes’ sister Margaret was diagnosed with fallen arches, and the orthopedist prescribed ballet class. Both girls were enrolled at the Theodore Kosloff School of Imperial Russian Ballet.
De Mille struggled at the school. Her mother limited her lessons to two a week, while other dancers danced for hours daily.
Agnes was quickly stung by Kosloff’s initial assessment of her suitability as a dancer. He told her that her knees were weak, her spine was curved, she was a bit heavy for her age, and she was rather old to begin training…[But] the shortcomings of Agnes’s physical makeup were more than compensated by an incredible endurance…Agnes insisted on practicing at home…All her life, Agnes had believed she was destined for greatness. (Hasday, 2004, pp. 48-51)
With her body–unsuitable for a traditional ballet career–and her family’s assumption that she would continue her education, de Mille followed an unusual path for a professional dancer: she went to college. Though she danced and choreographed, de Mille graduated cum laude from UCLA with a degree in English.
In 1927, she moved with her mother and sister to New York City, where she again began ballet classes and produced her own series of dance concerts featuring herself as the star. “From her earliest solo recital pieces… her choreography was narrative, theatrical, and humanistic.… her legitimate theater debut … was a 1929 revival of
The Black Crook staged in Hoboken, New Jersey. Her first Broadway choreography assignment was the 1932 revue
Flying Colors, but she was fired during out-of-town previews and replaced by Albertina Rasch” (Grant, 2004, p. 261). Throughout her career, de Mille was hired to choreograph for Broadway shows and Hollywood films but her refusal to adjust her artistic and aesthetic vision often resulted in her being fired. De Mille’s theatrical authenticity often collided with the director’s desire for commercial success, and the strong willed de Mille was not one to compromise.
De Mille had a rocky personal life. Love didn’t come as soon as she had hoped. Her senior year in college, she fell for a student whose feelings didn’t go beyond platonic friendship. The day after she graduated, she learned that her parent’s marriage was over (Easton, 2000).
In 1932, she moved to London where she studied under Marie Rambert and alongside future choreographic luminary Antony Tudor. Tudor had a lasting impact on de Mille.
In 1939, both de Mille and Tudor—on de Mille’s recommendation— became choreographers for the newly founded Ballet Theatre (later named American Ballet Theatre) back in New York City. De Mille’s “ballet
Three Virgins and a Devil for ABT in 1941 was a great success” (Grant, 2004, p. 262).
A change of fortune came rather suddenly for de Mille. Asked to choreograph a new, American piece for the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, de Mille reworked a concert dance piece into a full-length work called
Rodeo. She incorporated simple American flavor into this iconic piece. The ballet’s theme, about an independent cowgirl and her desire to be both wrangler and receiver of male attention, reflected de Mille’s struggles with her own authority in dance and love.
Rodeo premiered “at the Metropolitan Opera House (de Mille herself danced in both
Three Virgins and
Rodeo) to twenty-one curtain calls. Among those in the audience were Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein. A few days later they hired her to create the dances for
Oklahoma!” (Grant, 2004, p. 262).
Oklahoma! (1943)
[Note: The exclamation point is a part of the title, not my excitement about the musical, though it is a great show!]
Oklahoma! thrust de Mille into the Broadway spotlight. The show has been universally recognized as the musical that revolutionized Broadway dance, bringing the final creative element into the first wholly integrated show. For centuries, ballet dancers had told stories through movement. Without words, dancers communicated love, despair, heavenly ideals and hellish deeds. “All the great ballet companies prior to Balanchine’s own established the fusion of dance and drama in performance as a major artistic priority.
Oklahoma! brought that fusion to the popular stage” (Kislan, p. 77).
Although de Mille has been widely credited with integrating dance into
Oklahoma!, author Mark Grant asserts that it was director Rouben Mamoulian who finally realized the emotional potential of dance on the Broadway stage and Mamoulian who was responsible for the show’s full integration. “It was Mamoulian, shattering Broadway precedent, who directed the songs in
Oklahoma! and
Carousel, not the choreographer. His proportionate share in creating the stylistic revolution of the integrated musical… remains strangely unappreciated…In
Porgy and Bess,
Oklahoma!, and
Carousel, Mamoulian took the downstage footlights out of the musical comedy song, integrating its performance within the total canvas of narrative” (Grant, 2004, p. 242). Proclaimed Mamoulian:
Teamwork is impossible in directing a play…In 1942, the Theatre Guild had a play script, “Green Grow the Lilacs,” which they wanted to transform into a musical comedy. They offered me a contract just to direct. I refused. From the Rochester days, I’d dreamed of an integrated production—music, dancing, dialogue, action and singing—a truly American theatre… In “Green Grow the Lilacs,” I saw my opportunity. I persuaded the Guild to let me do the job my way. To my usual one-paragraph contract, another was added: I would “direct the whole production in all its elements.” (cited in Grant, 2004, p. 239)
Regardless of where the impetus for full integration began, the de Mille/Mamoulian relationship should have been a match made in heaven. De Mille was committed to authentic expression through dance to forward character, and Mamoulian was committed to fully integrated creative elements. But there were power struggles from the start. In his autobiography, Richard Rodgers—who wrote the music for
Oklahoma!—said:
Initially, both Rouben Mamoulian and Agnes de Mille were determined to maintain their authority within their respective domains. One of their battles was over three girls whom Agnes brought in—Tammy Lynn, Joan McCracken and Diane Adams—who were all brilliant dancers and strikingly attractive. For some reason Rouben strongly objected to their being in the show. Agnes got her way, but Rouben retaliated by preempting the stage of our rehearsal theater for the book rehearsals and forcing Agnes to use whatever other space she could find. (Rodgers & Rodgers, 1995, p. 223)
In one of her books of memoirs,
Dance to the Piper, de Mille spoke of Mamoulian and the ways in which she dealt with the stress of working with him on
Oklahoma!:
Our director, Rouben Mamoulian, provided daily challenge. He was used to complete, unquestioned authority and total obedience. As a choreographer in a ballet company, I was used to the same. But here I was no longer Madame the choreographer. I was the dance director in the basement, and although I began work with a respect for him that amounted to hero worship, we immediately ran head on in jurisdictional disputes. I think I can confidently say I would have gone down under the conflicting opinions if [composer] Richard Rodgers had not lent me his incomparable knowledge and authority as running interference. Due to his jealous care, my work came shining through for whatever it was worth.
But we all got increasingly nervous. I lost my temper at every thwarting. And when [producer] Terry Helburn started interrupting rehearsals to show unfinished work to prospective backers in her frantic efforts to raise money, I blew the fuse I had. Hurling my pocketbook at her head, I shouted and denounced and was dragged off screaming…and held under a faucet of cold water until I quieted down.
Once, when my ballet was unnecessarily interrupted, not by Miss Helburn this time, during a run-through, I gave a scream of anguish and hurled myself on [lyricist] Oscar Hammerstein’s bosom. He was taken quite unaware and looked down startled at the hysteria on his waistcoat, but it was the comment from the rear rows that really surprised him. “Agnes,” said Mother peremptorily, “control yourself.” (1952, pp. 324-5)
Struggles continued throughout the rehearsal process, but the result of the combative Mamoulian/de Mille collaboration was an integrated musical, the likes of which Broadway audiences had never seen.
Choreography
With the intellectual de Mille came an innovative approach to choreography. Extensive research into the setting, story and period of the musical, with its attached social mores, movement qualities and emotions provided a palette from which the choreographer painted every stroke of the dance. No longer were the same steps rearranged to suitable music. De Mille developed an original movement “vocabulary” to match the setting and story of the musical. Ballet-trained dancers playing cowboy characters moved in a way that evoked a feel of open prairies and horseback riding. She also used open positions and open spacing between dancers to increase the feel of the great outdoors (Kislan, 1987). By using dancers and choreography to define the setting as well as the story, de Mille pulled audiences into the scene, allowing them to empathize deeply with the feelings of the characters.
De Mille’s dream ballet “Laurey Makes Up Her Mind” added emotional depth to a character that would have otherwise seemed a typically sweet musical comedy heroine. The dream ballet also solved the problem of finding a singer/actress who could dance. Elite dancers were used to fully express the warring emotions and nightmare quality of Laurey’s subconscious thoughts. Using separate people for scenes and dream dances also enhanced the separation between the character that everyone sees and the secret thoughts and feelings—the “me no one knows”—that the character keeps inside. De Mille transformed…
…musical comedy…from mere entertainment to a genre of drama… Dream ballets [were]…disconnected from the through line, or connected only through humorous fantasies. Now they spoke the dark Freudian terrors of sunny worlds. (De Mille… had gone through psychoanalysis.) Suddenly musical comedy characters weren’t cutouts: they had ids, egos, and super egos. Gone forever were the pastoral sylphs of
The Black Crook, the Ziegfeld
Follies, and Albertina Rasch. De Mille discovered that psychologized ballet in dramatic musicals could function like Shakespearean soliloquy, illuminating not just the action but the consciousness of the characters. (Grant, 2004, pp. 262-3)
In the following video, Agnes de Mille talks about
Oklahoma! and the dances she created for the show. Included are excerpts from the dream ballet, performed by the American Dance Machine. [The American Dance Machine was a jazz dance company founded by Lee Theodore “created to build a living archive of American dance” (Gruen, 1978). Company members learned original choreography for Broadway dance numbers from the choreographers or from 1st generation dancers who had learned the dances from the original choreographers.]
Video: Agnes de Mille discusses
Oklahoma!
(2013)
De Mille’s success with
Oklahoma! …
…secure[d] for the choreographer the status of coequal to playwright, composer, and lyricist in the making of a musical show. It also began a trend that would litter the show dance landscape of the 1940s with integrated ballets. Within eight years of the advent of George Balanchine and
On Your Toes, ten of the dance makers for those shows listed themselves as choreographers, while only two held on to the growingly obsolete title of dance director. Of the seventy-two musicals produced during the next three and a half years, forty-six included ballet, and twenty-one offered dream ballets, often with “staggering ineptitude” (Kislan, 1987, p. 75)
Whether or not Kislan’s claim of the new equal status of the choreographer in the creative team was, in fact, true after
Oklahoma!, it certainly was not the case at the beginning of the production. Agnes de Mille was paid $1500 for the entire job and $50 week for the run of the show in New York City. Her contract included no royalties and nothing for subsequent productions. In contrast, Mamoulian was offered “$3,500 payable in installments of $500…and 1 percent of the gross, plus travel expenses in New York City; there were also clauses covering revivals under a different director (one-half of one percent of gross) and by different companies” (Carter, 2007, p. 43).
The Broadway Dancer
The lives of Broadway dancers changed drastically.
Dance directors worked for audience approval; choreographers work for audience enlightenment. The new aspirations of show choreography brought with them additional responsibilities for its dancers…Agnes de Mille set her dancers the task of projecting characters, not themselves…The new show dancing demanded that the choreographer provide the dancers with as much direction borne out of script analysis and character motivation as do stage directors rehearsing actors. (Kislan, 1987, p. 78)
De Mille’s dancers were characters in the show, advancing the plot and deepening the emotional connection of the story to the audience. The action and emotional journey of the musical was continued and deepened through the language of dance, giving audiences a physical, empathetic experience of the storyline. “Dancers under de Mille’s supervision attest to her uncanny ability to sense a dramatic nature in their performance personalities, to draw out those expressive qualities, and then to integrate them into choreographic sequences through trial-and-error…” (Long, 2001, p. 83). This method was highly effective for the original production, but incoming dancers found it difficult to live up to the original cast members’ characterizations, since the parts had been created with and for those original dancers.
Social Commentary
In addition to new dimensions expressed through dance,
Oklahoma! had many social implications. As de Mille mentioned in the video, the show’s opening during the middle of World War II meant that audience members arrived for the show with deep, personal emotions regarding their national identity.
Oklahoma! was a slice of musical apple pie. According to Knapp, the main storyline—Oklahoma’s getting ready to join the Union—offered a guide to Americans, a visual portrayal of America’s growth and its rise to a world power.
Even if
Oklahoma! had not launched an important chapter in the history of the American musical, it would have been historically important for the role it played in providing America with a strongly embodied sense of the central national myth. We might call this particular strand of American mythology its “frontier brinkmanship”: its ability to manage the threshold of its domain, to extend its purview carefully, wisely, and inclusively, and thereby negotiate the transition from wilderness to civilization, from lawless to law-abiding, from frontier to community, from territory to state, from fledgling nation to world power…
In
Oklahoma!–with its vital images of people cheerfully and energetically “making do,” overcoming conflicts and adversity, forging and enduring larger community, and offering homespun folk-wisdom in common, direct, everyday language–America saw itself in a microcosm and acquired a vision of what it could offer the rest of the world” (Knapp, 2005, p. 123-4).
Knapp also points out the blind irony of
Oklahoma! Set in 1906, the show celebrates the joining of Oklahoma as the 46th state in the union, while conveniently erasing the expropriation of property from of the Native Americans who lived there.
Oklahoma! with its white-washed state history emerged even as our country deplored similar racial cleansing in Europe.
Oklahoma! endeavored to demonstrate the importance of “diverse” groups’ working together to achieve a goal—unionization—while conveniently forgetting the actual history of its own union.
To compound the irony…we may note that Lynn Riggs, the author of
Green Grow the Lilacs, the play on which
Oklahoma! was based, was himself part Cherokee…Yet, despite the fact that in Riggs’s play (which takes place, specifically, in Indian territory, not Oklahoma territory), many of the characters claim Indian heritage and defiantly assert their separateness from the United States, this dimension has been completely effaced in
Oklahoma!, where there is not a single Indian to be seen, and where joining the union is joyfully anticipated by all” (Knapp, 2005, p. 125).
Knapp saw the “Box Social” in Act II as an illuminating guide to peacemaking:
In this extended number, social dance…serves as a rather obvious metaphor for social order, and its disruption through uncontrolled conflict (itself choreographed, of course) gives both social order and what threatens it a vividly embodied presence that could happen only through the medium of dance. (Knapp, 2005, p. 129)
This clip is from the 1955 movie. De Mille is credited with “dances staged by” though it is clear that her work extends far beyond that role. Apparently, movies had not yet caught on to the new title. Also noteworthy in the credits for imdb.com (the internet movie database): choreographers/dance directors are always listed under “Other Crew” waaaaaaaay at the bottom of the credits. What’s up with that?!
Take particular note of the role played by the women in this dance. How is movement used to express the emotions of the song? What are the movements of the women meant to do?
Video: The Farmer and The Cowman
More Musicals by de Mille
“When
Oklahoma! became a hit of staggering dimensions, and she bounded into choreographing
One Touch of Venus (1943) and
Bloomer Girl (1944), de Mille was suddenly the most powerful woman on Broadway” (Grant, 2004, p. 263). Balanchine was apparently jealous of her success and told his ex-wife Vera Zorina not to audition for the title role in
One Touch of Venus because de Mille was choreographing it” (Grant, 2004, p. 263).
One Touch of Venus
For
One Touch of Venus, de Mille choreographed another dream ballet called “Forty Minutes for Lunch.” It stole the show.
Bloomer Girl
De Mille’s commitment to dance integration, truth in the message of the storyline and her deep understanding of dance’s potential to contribute to that message, often put her at odds with producers and other creative staff members. Dance historian Richard Kislan said de Mille was asked to choreograph a ballet for the 1944 musical
Bloomer Girl. The ballet was meant to transition the audience from the start of the Civil War to the ending of the show. As
The New Yorker reported the story:
Miss de Mille, whose husband was just then involved in the liberation of the Continent, thought she knew exactly what was indicated. She went home to her apartment, stayed there four days, and emerged with a complete ballet, one of the three she did for the show. It opened with some girls saying goodbye to their men, who were going off to war. Then the body of a dead soldier was brought onstage, and after a ballet sequence, the widow of the soldier was left standing alone beside the body. Ms. de Mille was pleased with her effort (“a rushing, running thing, with a steady beat that sounded like the wind,” she has since called it), but when…she showed it to E. Y. Harburg, who staged the show and wrote the lyrics for it, he shook his head and told her it was too stark for a musical. “I’m not going to do an
Oklahoma! barn dance about a war, if that’s what you have in mind,” Miss de Mille said sharply. Harburg said that, no, he didn’t want that, either, and proceeded in a soothing voice to suggest some changes, the foremost being the elimination of the dead soldier. Harburg’s proposal called for the ringing of victory bells and was, in Miss de Mille’s words, “all very Fourth of July—war was over, nobody died, and peace was declared in ten minutes.” She refused to accept it, and for a while it looked as if a stalemate might result…Finally, Miss de Mille, after composing four versions in four weeks, was persuaded that the soldier’s body wasn’t an essential part of a somber scene, Harburg agreed that the Fourth of July touches should be toned down, and the compromise ballet struck several of the critics as the best part of
Bloomer Girl. (Kislan, p. 81-2)
Why did de Mille battle? Why was she consistently driven to fight for her artistic vision? Said de Mille:
What every choreographer looks for is an opportunity to do what he wants without grave interference and curtailment. In our theater, it’s not possible, if you are just a choreographer. You run afoul of the director and the author and the composer, except in unusual circumstances—such as
Oklahoma! where all of us seemed to breathe with the same pair of lungs. (Cited in Kislan, 1987, p. 82)
Carousel (1945)
Rodgers and Hammerstein assembled the creative team of
Oklahoma! for their new musical,
Carousel.
Carousel was based on a play called
Liliom written by Ferenc Molnár.
Molnár had opened his play with a carnival scene, without dialogue but with a crowd rhubarbing; Rodgers and Hammerstein [who wrote the music and lyrics for
Carousel] decided to forgo a conventional overture and adapt Molnár’s opening into an extended pantomime set to music…Mamoulian created a masterpiece, the seven-minute “Carousel Waltz” prologue…
Mamoulian built up massive pictorial compositions bit by bit from the psychological truth of each individual in the stage tableau. One of
Carousel’s original cast members, Jan Clayton, recalled, “His direction is a very personal thing because to him each member of the cast is an individual performer. He handles large groups magnificently because he acknowledges no ‘chorus’ per se. The each performer, whose name he knows early on, is directed specifically to have a personality and purpose on his own.” (cited in Grant, 2004, p. 240)
Mamoulian’s approach to teaching the chorus very much paralleled de Mille’s belief in the importance of individual characters for her dancers, whatever their role in the show
The two production numbers, “It Was a Real Nice Clambake” and “June Is Bustin’ Out All Over,” were happy dances that celebrated youth and spring.
The “June” dance was light and airy; little touches, as subtle as the sound of the girls hitting their wrists together, conveyed the sense that the girls were intoxicated with the thick, rich aura of spring. Agnes told the dancers to think about feeling “ripe—ready for love, life, fruition, as though you are smelling wet earth, wet grass, the sun on wet leaves, after rain. The palms of your hands are very sensitive…Your fingers tremble, hands and feet seem to be shaking off the droplets of rain. Everything presses upward, toward the sun. There is an impulse like a sharp breath, and then you just dissolve into numinous air.”
“Blow High, Blow Low” was eight minutes of walking, skipping, sidesteps, runs, lifts…The dance … includes the lightning-swift steps of an eighteenth-century jig.
The ballet that ended the show was one of Agnes’s finest theatrical achievements. It was Hammerstein’s idea to show, in ballet and pantomime, the first fifteen years of Louise’s life. The girl, who lived on the wrong side of the tracks and was the daughter of a thief, was another lonely outsider with whom Agnes could identify. The role required acting as well as dancing. Agnes created it for Bambi Linn, who excelled at both. (Easton, 2000, p. 243)
Linn at 16 years old had danced in the ensemble of
Oklahoma! and played a child in the dream ballet. The original Louise ballet lasted an hour and fifteen minutes and began with a birthing scene. It was cut down in out of town tryouts, then it was cut again before reaching Broadway. When the show opened, the forty-minute “Louise Ballet” began with Billy watching from heaven as his teenage daughter is..
…playing on the beach but rejected by others of her age for being a thief’s child. A wandering carnival troupe dances on, attempts to get her to join them, and leaves. One of the young roustabouts remains behind and tries to seduce her; as they dance together he awakens in her the passion of first love, but then suddenly leaves. The next passage in the ballet recapitulates the first. A group of girls dressed for a party pass by, and once again Louise attempts to join them but is rejected. As the ballet ends, she is alone on the beach. (Long, 2001, pp. 43-4)
Bambi Linn became a star. De Mille spoke of Linn’s success:
At the conclusion of the
Carousel ballet, the actors four times tried to resume dialogue before they were permitted to be heard, and when minutes later Bambi, having changed costume, made her next appearance, she was greeted with such a roar that she had to step forward and bow…The sound [of applause] on Broadway is sharp, instantaneous and important. Behind this clapping is the noise of thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars, of telegraph wires humming, radio stations broadcasting, recording machines turning over, agents telephoning, reporters typing. The roar from a Broadway audience opens every door in the theater world. Immediately. That night Bambi woke up to find herself famous. (Cited in Long, 2001, p. 44)
Brigadoon (1947)
A fanciful musical was set in both Scotland and New York City. De Mille immersed herself in Scottish culture and studied Scottish Highland dance before choreographing the show, and she tied for the first ever Tony award for Best Choreographer with Michael Kidd for
Finian’s Rainbow [in the next section.]
Tony Awards
The Tony Awards were created by the American Theatre Wing to honor exceptional talent in the Broadway industry. The first ceremony in 1947 awarded honors in seven categories. Since that time, new categories as well as sub-categories have been added. Plays, musicals and revivals are—for the most part—considered separately.
Cast members and creative staff individuals are nominated by a Nominating Committee of approximately 30 theatre professionals. Voting members from just about every professional theatre organization in New York vote by secret ballot. Votes are counted up by a select group of people at an accounting firm, and winners are announced on the night of the Tonys.
Still More de Mille Musicals . . .
Allegro (1947): De Mille began as the director/choreographer of the show, but was demoted to just choreographer. The show required a tremendous amount of staging. There were almost 100 dancers, singers, and soloists. De Mille kept the chorus of singers on stage for the entire show.
Gentleman Prefer Blondes (1949): The show included dances that were “reminiscent of the Charleston era” (Long, 2001, p. 51), but, according to songwriter Jules Styne, they were not right for the show. [Jack Cole choreographed the well-known film with Marilyn Monroe.]
Paint Your Wagon (1951): The show took de Mille back to a genre of musical in which she thrived – Americana. Her dances were a highlight of the show.
Tortured Spirit
In addition to being a talented choreographer, de Mille was a prolific author. She wrote several successful books of her memoirs including
Dance to the Piper (1951) and
Reprieve: A Memoir (1981) as well as several books about various subjects in dance.
De Mille’s meteoric successes were equally matched with failures. Her later efforts at choreographing and directing didn’t come close to running as long as the musicals listed above.
Her last attempt to choreograph for Broadway illustrates the impact of world events on musicals. The 1969 musical,
Come Summer, was mismatched with the times. American troops were in Vietnam and the old-fashioned feel of
Come Summer did not entice potential ticket buyers, who felt restless and filled with passion over contemporary concerns.
Epilogue
De Mille was never completely satisfied. She said:
The work wasn’t good enough. All changed, all passed. There was no way of ensuring lasting beauty…I spoke to Martha Graham on the pavement outside of Schrafft’s restaurant. She bowed her head and looked burningly into my face. She spoke from a life’s effort. I went home and wrote down what she said:
“There is a vitality, a life-force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open. As for you, Agnes, you have a peculiar and unusual gift and you have so far used about one third of your talent.”
“But,” I said, “when I see my work I take for granted what other people value in it. I see only its ineptitude, inorganic flaws, and crudities. I am not pleased or satisfied.”
“No artist is pleased.”
“But then there is no satisfaction?”
“No satisfaction whatever at any time,” she cried passionately. “There is only a queer divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others. And at times I think I could kick you until you can’t stand.” (1952, p. 335)
De Mille suffered a stroke in 1975, but continued to choreograph ballets, and she reworked her dances from musicals into evenings of concert dance. She died in 1993 at the age of 88 (Grant, 2004).
Agnes de Mille (1905-93) was in fact the single most important transitional figure in Broadway dance history…The integrated musical only really happened when de Mille’s use of ballet transformed the art. For the first time, movement assumed parity with book, music, and lyrics as a carrier of the dramatic through-line of a show…She refashioned ballet for Broadway into an eclectic theatrical language, narrative-driven and character-interpreting, that combined elements of classical ballet, interpretive modern dance, and occasional hoofing…Because of de Mille, the typical Broadway hoofer changed from tapper to dancer trained in all forms; those who could only tap dance were in effect thrown out of employment. She taught an “Acting for Dancers” class, and it was no doubt partly her influence that led many dancers in the 1940s to take acting classes, unheard of in the Ned Wayburn-George White chorus line era. The influence of de Mille’s Broadway ballets was so potent that it stimulated the conception and writing of more dramatically ambitious musicals, not just the dancing of them. (Grant, 2004, p. 259)
De Mille was also responsible for the permanent addition of dance music arrangers to the creative team (Grant, 2004). With dance an integral element of the musical, choreographers had the clout to ask for music that supported the dancing rather than adjusting their dances to fit the composed music.
Honorable Mention: The Nicholas Brothers
Though they quickly defected from Broadway to Hollywood, Fayard and Harold Nicholas must be mentioned in any serious talk of Broadway dance. First documented as performing in the Ziegfeld
Follies of 1936, the brothers’ acrobatic athleticism, syncopated tap dancing, and classy performance style challenged the finest of the hoofers who followed in their footsteps. The brothers also danced in the musical
Babes in Arms (1937), choreographed by George Balanchine. The lack of spectacle in the show may have been the reason that this musical enjoyed only a modest success. A
Variety review of the show read: “No nudity, no show girls, no plush or gold plate may mean no sale” (cited in Hyland 1998 p. 110).
Here is a sample of their dancing from the film,
Stormy Weather. [Also seen at the beginning of the clip is bandleader Cab Calloway]:
[P.S. If you turn it off before the end, you’ll have missed some of the most amazing dancing of all time!]
Video: The Nicholas Brothers in
Stormy Weather
(2015)
Postwar America
Postwar America began to see more tours of Broadway productions. This practice gave shows a wider audience and producers more return on their ever-increasing investments. Motion pictures were still competing for audience attention, but a not-so-new invention was ready to take America by storm.
Television – Friend or Adversary?
Although versions of television existed for years prior to World War II, the prototypes were of fairly poor quality and were not widely available. When World War II broke out, RCA—who had been developing television for public use—switched its focus to defense contracts. When the war ended, RCA resumed its experimentation with television.
Interestingly, it was song and dance variety shows that were aired in the dawning of the television era. (Can anyone say “Vaudeville”?) Short news shows were also popular. Ed Sullivan, who often featured Broadway performers on his show, would become one of the best known TV personalities in American history.
Musicals were also broadcast on TV. “Early television often turned to Broadway when it sought high-powered musical talent. ‘Spectaculars’ were all the rage, with as many stars and under-rehearsed production numbers as the networks could muster. 1950 brought a short-lived NBC series called
Musical Comedy Time, presenting hour-long versions of famous musicals” (Kenrick, 1996-2003, “Musicals on Television”).
The revue continued successfully into the Great Depression, but those that survived had a greater discipline or a stronger theme to unite all the various acts…After the advent of the narrative musical, so beautifully rendered by
Oklahoma! in 1943, it was harder to engage audience interest in a disconnected show. Television put the final nail in the coffin of the revue in 1948 by offering topical material, comedy, and dancing with a speed and economy that the Broadway stage could no longer match. (Educational Broadcasting System, 2004, p. 2)
Minority Report
Musicals continued to reflect the waves of change in American society.
Finian’s Rainbow (1947) foreshadowed the civil rights movement. The show was quite progressive for its time. “The musical posted the first fully integrated chorus (white and black singers and dancers in the same ensemble) in Broadway history” (Hischak, 2008, p. 243). It also had a “humorous subplot about a bigoted southern senator who accidentally turns black when he mangles one of his magic wishes” (Woll, 1989, p. 200).
New opportunities opened for black performers in the 1940s. Chorus dancers and singers, formerly restricted to working in all-black musicals began to be integrated into “white” musicals (Woll, 1989). In addition, black performers were given starring and supporting roles. Historically, black performers had appeared in “white” shows, but their acts were largely segregated from the white performers. [Remember Bert Williams in Ziegfeld’s
Follies?]
By the late 1940s, integrated casts and chorus lines evoked hardly any surprise from critics or audiences.… By the early 1950s, Langston Hughes, who had written the longest-running play by a black author to that date [
Mulatto (1935)], began to celebrate the new look of the “black” theater in the pages of
The New York Age:
“The results were seen in the mixed dancing chorus of
On the Town, the colored and white ensembles of
Finian’s Rainbow and
My Darlin’ Aida, and the complete integration of singers, dancers, and actors and interracially written and interracially produced Beggars Holiday…In Gian-Carlo Menotti’s
The Medium, the gypsy boy was played by Katherine Dunham dancer, Leo Coleman, who made love to a white girl.” (Woll, 1989, pp. 210-11)
Show integration, however, had its downside. The spirit of integration was so strong that it shut out the need for black musicals, and the era of plenty for black stories and black creative contributions to the Broadway stage was stilled (Woll, 1989).
The identity of female characters also evolved. Musicals and plays began to feature female characters who were bolder and more sexually forward than in shows of the past. This new sexual confidence reflected the times. During World War II, women were working while the men were at war, and there were many more women in America than men. This situation forced women to be more blatant in their bid for male attention.
“By the time of de Mille’s breakthrough in the 1940s, a new group of young choreographers were beginning to emerge, almost all of whom had backgrounds in ballet or modern dance” (Long, 2002, p. 60). One of the most famous Broadway choreographers in history was Jerome Robbins.
The Man
Jerome Robbins was born October 11, 1918 as Jerome Rabinowitz. (He tried out several variations of his name before settling on “Jerome Robbins” as his professional name.) As a child, Robbins studied piano, violin, painting and drawing. Said Robbins, “I grew up in the Jewish tradition that children must get all the culture possible” (cited in Long, 2002, p. 62). After graduating from high school, he briefly attended New York University, but had to quit when the Great Depression took its toll on his family’s finances.
The Dancer
Robbins’ performance experiences up to that time consisted of comic roles in summer camp musicals. Robbins began his formal dance training in ballet and modern dance. He studied at the New York Dance Center. “Senia Gluck-Sandor, a concert dancer in the late 1920s and 1930s, established the New York Dance Center, where he choreographed and produced dance programs for his wife, Felicia Sorel, and Jose Limon [who would establish his own modern dance style and modern dance company, and who is now one of the most well-known dancer/choreographers in modern dance history]. Gluck-Sandor also trained students in ballet and modern dance and presented them to the public in workshop recitals.
A rapid learner, Robbins was soon appearing in the Dance Center programs. Gluck-Sandor’s recollections of the teenage Robbins are vivid and revealing. ‘He was eighteen or nineteen at the time,’ he recalls. ‘I needed a copy of Hamlet and borrowed his. Beside his notes, the margins were full of music he had composed. He was always writing stories. He did wood carving and also drew. He had what you might call a photographic memory. Once he saw something [performed], he could do it backward…He was sensitive and he was musical. I spoke to his parents and said, ‘Why not let the boy become a dancer?’” (Long, 2002, p. 62). [“Thirty years later, Robbins would gratefully repay his one-time mentor by hiring him to play the Rabbi in
Fiddler on the Roof” (Grant, 2004, p. 268).]
But Gluck-Sandor was not Robbins’ only teacher. Robbins’ training in dance was as extensive as his other cultural pursuits. His teachers:
· Ella Daganova – Classical Ballet. Robbins cleaned her windows in exchange for lessons three times a week.
· Alyce Bentley – Interpretative dancing
· Helene Veola – Spanish dancing
· Yeichi Nimura – Japanese concert dance
· Bessie Schonberg [2 dots over the “o”] – Choreography
Robbins’ first professional performance was a one-line speaking role in the Yiddish Art Theater’s production, The Brothers Ashkenazi (1937). Gluck-Sandor got him the part. Robbins then moved on to chorus dance jobs in
Great Lady (1938),
Stars in Your Eyes (1939) and
Keep off the Grass (1940).
Keep off the Grass was a short-lived revue that featured dancers Jose Limon and Ray Bolger and was choreographed by George Balanchine. This job introduced Balanchine and Robbins and was the small beginning of a relationship that would eventually change Broadway dance and explode the traditional definition of “ballet” in the world of concert dance.
Meanwhile, Robbins was still spending his summers at camp. He spent five summers at Tamiment, a camp in the Poconos that was known for its high quality entertainment. The camp offered weekly Saturday night revues and Friday night cabaret shows. During these summers, Robbins developed as a performer and had his first opportunities to choreograph. “Talent scouts and professionals from the New York entertainment industy were often in the audience…making Tamiment a venue where talented if not-as-yet well-known perormers could be, and were discovered…When Robbins went there in 1937, Tamiment was already an exciting way station to fame” (Long, 2002, p. 63).
The Musicals
Robbins’ choreography first appeared on Broadway by way of Tamiment. Max Liebman, who was in charge of entertainment at the camp, convinced the Shuberts to bring the Tamiment Players to Broadway in a show called
The Straw Hat Revue (1939). The show featured the best numbers from the 1939 summer season at Tamiment, including two numbers, “Piano and Lute” and “Our Town” that Robbins had choreographed for the company. Robbins “received no credit for having choreographed them, [but] he did manage to have his choreographic work presented on a Broadway stage by the time he was twenty” (Long, 2002, p. 63).
As if all of this wasn’t enough, Robbins was accepted into Ballet Theatre (which would later be renamed American Ballet Theatre). He performed for many prestigious choreographers and danced his first solo as a devil in Agnes de Mille’s ballet
Three Virgins and a Devil. It was also in Ballet Theatre that Robbins met Nora Kaye, a dancer known for her dramatic, expressive performances.
Robbins first credited choreography was for his ballet
Fancy Free, created for Ballet Theatre. Robbins conceived of an American ballet, that incorporated the natural, exuberant movement of social dances like the boogie-woogie and the lindy hop, with the athletic jumps, turns and training of ballet. He recruited young, unknown Leonard Bernstein to compose the music, and Oliver Smith to create the scenery and costumes. All three men were just twenty-five when
Fancy Free premiered at the old Metropolitan Opera House.
Video:
Fancy Free
[If you do not have time to watch the entire video–which is AMAZING!–start at 2:04 to see Mikhail Baryshnikov, one of the most iconic, skilled dancers of all time.]
Fancy Free
Links to an external site.
So what does
Fancy Free have to do with Broadway? Well, the story—three World War II sailors on a one day leave for the first time in New York City—the dancing and the music were later expanded to become
On the Town (1944).
On the Town also included a dream ballet, in which sailor Gabey falls asleep on the subway and meets up with Miss Turnstiles.
As mentioned earlier, female characters were stronger in the 1940s.
On the Town featured three strong female leads. It was the quintessential American show.
Robbins continued to choreograph for Ballet Theatre, creating a diverse array of ballets, while simultaneously forging ahead with Broadway stage projects. Jerome Robbins collaborated with some of the most well-known and successful composers, directors and lyricists, yet for show after show, it was Robbins’ choreography that received critical attention.
Billion Dollar Baby (1945)
Billion Dollar Baby was a “satire of the excesses of the 1920s, with its prohibition and bathtub gin, marathon dances, beauty contests at Atlantic City, and gangster killings—the era of the underworld and the bull market that would culminate in the Great Depression” Long, 2003, p. 77). The show included a comedy ballet called “Charleston” and a big production number in which the showgirls impersonated birds. Like many musicals of the time, it also included a dream ballet, “Life with Rocky,” in which the heroine, Maribel, envisioned her life with a member of the mob (Long, 2002).
Abbott and Robbins were singled out for praise. For Robbins, it was a learning experience. In preparing the dances he had to know earlier period styles, and from that point forward he was fanatical about doing in-depth research into the backgrounds of his shows. “I went to the Museum of Modern Art and looked at all possible movies of the period to find out what the people wore, thought, felt, said… I wanted my dances to portray the kind of people who were typical of the time” (Robbins, cited in Long, 2002, p. 77).
High Button Shoes (1947)
High Button Shoes was set in New Brunswick, New Jersey, in the year 1913. Robbins’ dances included a soft shoe, “I Still Get Jealous” and a polka “Papa Won’t You Dance with me?” as well as a “Charleston”.But the great number in the show, and one of the most celebrated pieces in Robbins’s stage work, was his “On a Sunday by the Sea” sequence, often called the “Mack Sennett Ballet.” [Sennett was a silent movie director who often incorporated comic chase scenes.] It was inspired by the fact that Atlantic City in 1913 was the very time and setting of Sennett’s silent comedies, often involving his famous “bathing beauties.” To prepare for this sequence, Robbins acquainted himself with the original
Life, a humor magazine of the 1910s, and books providing the scores that accompanied the silent movies. Most particularly he studied the silent movies made by Sennett’s Keystone Studio, spending days with his cast at the Museum of Modern Art, viewing Sennett’s shorts.
Robbins had set designer Oliver Smith construct a long row of bathhouses, from which frenzied characters would suddenly appear from a doorway and disappear into another, with the hurried movement of characters in a Mack Sennett chase scene. A bathing beauty would enter one of the bathhouses, closing the door behind her; seconds later the same door would open to reveal a crook in flight, followed by a Keystone cop who would open another door from which a gorilla would appear. Crooks would tumble out of a door to a bathhouse too small to have held them all; and the door would butt a Kop in the face and he would keel over. On and on it went at a fast tempo and with the most ingenious variations—Keystone cops in hot pursuit who suddenly change course and enter a bathhouse from which feminine screams are then heard. (Long, 2002, p. 78)
[“Mack Sennett…won a lawsuit against the show for Robbins’s unauthorized use of his and ‘Keystone Kops’ names” (Grant, 2004, pp. 268-9).]
Robbins was committed to expanding his craft. When the Actor’s Studio was founded in 1947, Robbins was one of the first students to enroll. One of the founders, Richard Lewis, said, “Jerry’s performing experience was rooted in a sense of form. He was a superb young dancer now wishing to explore what the difference was in the source of expression for acting as opposed to dancing” (cited in Long, 2002, pp. 81-2).
Meanwhile, Robbins continued to dance and choreograph for the Ballet Theatre until 1948, when he joined Balanchine’s new ballet company, the New York City Ballet as a dancer and choreographer. The following year he became its associate artistic director (Long, 2002).
The King and I (1951)
The
King and I was set in the palace of the King of Siam in the 1860s. The show reflected the new power of American women and the growing concern for women’s rights. Based on a true story, the musical’s exotic Siam setting allowed the audience to absorb the musical’s lessons about these issues deeply or shallowly, depending on the individual’s inclination. Raymond Knapp points out the opposing forces playing for power in the musical (2005):
1. Eastern views of female role vs. Western views
2. The civilizing female vs. the primitive male
3. Inherent U.S. superiority vs. global diversity
There were also cultural issues that played out regarding the production of the musical. Knapp criticized the creative team for using generalized “oriental” elements rather than Siamese or Thai characteristics.
The musical profile is deliberately not authentic, but trades in generically “oriental” musical devices,…and Jerome Robbins’s choreography in a similar way gives the show a generalized oriental texture through a stylized manner of movement that extends throughout…The most glaring failure of the show in this regard—and the reason all versions of the story have been banned in Thailand—is how blatantly wrong it is about Siam’s history, and about the character of the King and historical role he actually played. (2005, p. 261-2).
Robert Emmett Long inadvertently validates the above in his description of Robbins’ preparation for the show: “Robbins prepared for the
King and I with his usual thorough research into the cultural background of the characters. He went to see Oriental sculpture and read books on Oriental art and theater. He sought out East Asian dancers, who held classes for the company. Two dancers in the show, Michiko and Yuriko, were trained in Tokyo, and with their expert knowledge of both Far Eastern dance and the Kabuki theater served as consultants” (2002, p. 85).
Though
The King and I received worldwide critical acclaim, Knapp’s criticisms about the show’s lack of authenticity in its representation of Thailand culture are well founded. Tokyo and Kabuki theater are both Japanese treasures, and Japan is 2800 miles and several cultures away from Siam [now known as Thailand.] The term “oriental” was a blanket phrase used to represent a very limited American perception of Asian life—our views on Asian food, behavior, values and art–which were then applied to peoples of all Asian countries as if there were no cultural distinctions among the 50+ countries!
An interesting note: all 3 Broadway revivals of the
The King and I used the original Jerome Robbins choreography, a testament to the strength of its story integration. Yuriko, mentioned above, directed and restaged the choreography for the first revival (1977) in which her daughter, Susan Kakuchi performed and was dance captain. Susan Kakuchi later supervised the restaging of Robbins’ choreography and was dance captain for the third revival (1996). Rebecca West, who also performed in the first revival, reproduced the choreography for the second revival (1985). In this way, the choreography made its way intact from the original production.
According to Knapp, the casting of
The King and I reflected an inherent theme in the musical: American superiority. In the show, we are taught to appreciate another culture, even as we are shown that our ways, of course, are better. This superior attitude was held even in casting, when Western actors, rather than Asian were given all the leads. Yul Brynner who played the king for over 4500 performances on stage and recreated the role for the movie was Russian. The actors who played the King’s head wife, Lady Thiang, and lovebird lead characters Tuptim and Lun Tha were also Caucasian.
Although Robbins did not direct the show, he directed the dance and musical numbers (Grant, 2004).
“March of the Siamese Children” was a marvelous bit of staging in which the numerous children of the King are first presented to Anna. With little more than walking as a movement vocabulary for the “dance”, each group of children was given characteristic movements that set them apart as individuals among the masses. These subtle distinctions, especially the bit when one of the children does not follow the organized plan and is simultaneously admonished and admired by the King, also served to create a defining moment in the musical, showing the audience that not all was perfectly ordered in the palace and the King was also not as fierce as he seemed.
In
“Getting to Know You,” Anna gets to know the King’s many wives, who are fascinated with her. At one point in the musical number, one of the wives does a fan dance, showing off Eastern culture. Then, four wives join hands around the waist of the wife to make a human hoop skirt, demonstrating their interest in learning about what it means to be a Western woman.
Robbin’s ballet
“The Small House of Uncle Thomas” shows parallels between the evils of slavery in America (The Civil War was raging during the time that the original Anna first went to Siam), the circumstances of the wives in the palace and the story of Moses–of which the King continually speaks. In the show, Tuptim produces, directs and narrates the story, which was inspired by her reading of
Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Tuptim uses the ballet as a visual protest of her lack of freedom under the King’s rule. Through dance, she is able to express complaints that would not normally be acceptable. The presence of Anna and the dignitaries also provides protection. The performance reflects the new power of women in the palace: It is based on a book written by a woman, and the dance—in its context in the show—is conceived, produced and performed entirely by women, who dare to take the men’s roles too.
Women deliver the messages and subtexts of the
King and I. It is by looking more carefully at the King’s wives that we come to realize that they are educated Easterners rather than merely a beautiful harem. We gain insight into the evolving kingdom, since the education of the wives could not have happened without permission of the king. It is Eastern tradition, not the king that is holding them captive, and the West—through Anna—is there to offer “freedom.” Though Tuptim does not gain freedom—by our definition—she is freed from her traditional role. The price is the destruction of the old order in the palace (Knapp, 2005). The men in the show are ultimately portrayed as simple and pliable; they are a backdrop against which the evolution of women can be distinguished.
“The Small House of Uncle Thomas” was sixteen minutes long, and “the music was composed entirely by Trude Rittmann [a dance music arranger, not the show’s composer]” (Grant, 2004, p. 273).
Interestingly, Robbins chose the genre of Kabuki theater to tell the American story of Uncle Thomas. The wives were sheltered from Western culture, so Tuptim would not have been able to produce an authentic American version. Her use of the ballet as a protest against the Eastern palace system is more easily seen when the American story is viewed through her use of Eastern language and art.
“To make the movement both unique and believable in its context, Robbins borrowed idioms from the Oriental theater like mime, masks, stylized movement, and stylized gesture and then put them to the service of a functional dance entertainment that remains even today as one of the glories of the American musical theater” (Kislan, 1987, pp. 99-100). The use of elaborate props, combined with the unusual movements and the poignant voice of Tuptim narrating her story, displayed a scene reminiscent of a child’s dream, and of a child’s pleading.
The shift of power in
The King and I is often demonstrated through movement. Demonstration of power in the palace is established at once when the King apprises Anna of the palace rule regarding the height of his head in relation to all others in the palace. (The king’s head must always be the highest.)
The film version of
The King and I made
“Shall We Dance” one of the most recognizable Broadway dance numbers in history. The steps are derived from a simple social dance: the European ballroom polka. During the course of the number, power shifts from Anna, who knows the dance, to the King, who demands that they dance together in a ballroom hold. In couple’s dancing the male leads. Then the power struggle ends with in harmony. “East meets West” and “Man meets Woman” as the characters come together and move smoothly in the dance.
Musical deconstructor Scott Miller adds another idea: “The dance becomes a metaphor for monogamy… she [Anna] is metaphorically teaching them [the inhabitants of the palace] how to be monogamous” (cited in Knapp, 2005, p. 266).
More Musicals
Robbins choreographed many Broadway shows and ballets, and after the success of
The King and I, he was often called in as a “show doctor.” A show doctor is an outside creative professional who is brought in to fix specific problems in a show. Robbins was hired by producers to fix dances or give constructive ideas for parts of the shows that were rough. Here is a list of more musicals choreographed by Jerome Robbins:
Look, Ma, I’m Dancin’! (1948) –
Conceived and choreographed by Robbins. He was also codirector of the show’s musical numbers.
Miss Liberty (1949)
– Choreographer.
Call Me Madam (1950
) – Choreographer.
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1951
) – Robbins called in as “show doctor.”
Wish You Were Here (1952)
– Robbins called in as “show doctor” to fix dances.
Two’s Company (1952)
– Revue choreographed by Robbins.
Wonderful Town (1953)
– Robbins called in as “show doctor;” he asked to be uncredited.
Peter Pan (1954):
The first show for which he was director/choreographer. Dance, music and acting were all fully integrated. Characters were given movement themes that identified them.
Pajama Game (1954):
Directed the show, but couldn’t choreograph it because of his commitment for
Peter Pan. He recommended young Bob Fosse for the job, and George Abbott, Robbins’ co-director accepted his recommendation on the condition that Robbins be available for consultation if needed.
Silk Stockings (1955)
Show doctor. [Eugene Loring, who had taught Robbins at Ballet Theatre when Robbins was in his early twenties, was the choreographer!!] Robbins requested that he be uncredited.
Bells Are Ringing (1956):
Choreographed by Bob Fosse; Robbins contributed some numbers.
West Side Story (1957)
Oklahoma! demonstrated the power of dance as an integral element in forwarding story. With
West Side Story, Robbins demonstrated the power of dance to establish character. With few words, the prologue of
West Side Story literally moves the audience through the urban neighborhood in which the show is set, allowing them to physically empathize with the tension and energy of the characters and their relationships before a single sentence has been uttered.
While many shows offered audiences comforting reassurances of a nation united, and displayed easy resolutions to seeded conflicts, others use the medium of musicals to gently open the eyes of audiences to harsh realities, such as racism and violence (Knapp, 2005).
Although de Mille had done much to bring dance to a more important role in Broadway musicals, Robbins “assigned to dance a primary role in the development of the shows
dramatic and theatrical content… in 1957 his work as director-choreographer for West side story so blended the drama, dance, music, décor, and performance into a seamless, homogeneous whole as to establish the movement, conceived musical as the wave of the future and elevate the position of director-choreographer to the status of “most vital constituent” in the evolution of the Broadway musical” (Kislan, 1987, p. 96).
The plot of
West Side Story was loosely based on Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Two teens, Tony (Romeo) and Maria (Juliet), from opposite sides of a bitter gang feud, find love and are torn between their loyalty to their family/gang and their newly found passion. In the end, the feud turns ugly, and members of both sides are killed.
Knapp comments on the creators’ choice of Puerto Rican immigrants as the “others” in the show. He posits that a black/white theme would have been too familiar with too many pre-existing emotional connections for the audience. By choosing Puerto Ricans, a fresh, more universal prejudice was made possible. [I suspect that the choice of Puerto Ricans [and Robbins portrayal of them in the show] also provided the audience with easily identifiable and superficial touchstones for stereotyping the “others”, such as vocal accent, skin color and overt sexuality.
West Side Story evidences the evolution of cultural groups in the U.S. “To repeat the epithets used in the show,
West Side Story sets ‘Spics’ (generically, Spanish Americans) against a composite group who only a short time before would have been regarded as the immigrants, including a ‘Polack’ (Tony) and a mix of ‘Wops’ (Italians) and ‘Micks’ (Irish)” (Knapp, 2005, p. 205).
West Side Story was criticized for its stereotyping of life in Puerto Rico. The show was “seen as either ignorant or shamelessly pandering to the presumed prejudices of its American audience” Knapp, 2005, p. 205). In other words, in their portrayal of Puerto Ricans characters, author Arthur Laurents and Robbins were guilty of extreme stereotyping. Perhaps it was a mistake to assign a specific cultural identity to the Hispanic gang.
Another aspect of this stereotyping was the generalization of the Hispanic community. The Sharks were meant to represent a larger, general group of American-perceived Spanish American immigrants coming from lands of poverty and disease. The dances and the music were created in a general Latin style, rather than from indigenous music and dance from Puerto Rico. Says Knapp:
This strategy was in line with Broadway musical conventions—not to mention those of opera and concert music—of setting ethnicity according to what a projected audience will recognize and accept, without much concern for authenticity. Similarly, the show generalizes the politics of immigration so as to apply in blanket fashion to Spanish-speaking populations in the New World who moved to cities in the United States, whose motivation might have included, in some combination, extreme poverty, crowded and unhealthful living conditions, limited opportunities for advancement, or frequent outbursts of political violence and revolution.…Even if we might understand that, for
West Side Story, Puerto Ricans stand for a larger population of resented immigrants, the show nevertheless purports to depict a specific population and describe a specific place in often derogatory terms. On the face of it, perpetuating this kind of preconception and prejudice would seem to be a decidedly odd way to put to promote ethnic tolerance” (Knapp, 2005, p. 206).
The making of the film in 1961 proved how valuable Hollywood was to the Broadway musical. Despite its flaws in cultural representation,
West Side Story became an iconic representation of the power of Broadway to confront issues in America and the power of dance to heighten the story. Robbins was able to go even further with his characterizations by bringing the dances outdoors and using creative editing to accomplish additional emotional tension that the stage could not provide. There were certain things, however, that film could not portray. Rita Moreno, who played the character of Anita in the film said the dance at the gym was never the same on film as in the live theater.
Now We’re Getting Personal
Robbins’ personal life was confused and conflicted. Though he came close—more than once—to marrying different women, many who were close to him saw him as a homosexual Jewish man with both sexual and cultural identity issues.
Long finds Robbins’—and the rest of the creative teams’—homosexuality evidenced in the portrayal of relationships in the show:
It is certainly a source of curiosity that the love story of Tony and Maria should suggest the idea of sexual ambivalence. In
The Gay Metropolis, 1940-1996, Charles Kaiser describes Bernstein, Robbins, Laurents, and Sondheim as “four gay Jewish men, all working at the top of their craft” in
West Side Story, and speculates that the musical’s inner theme is forbidden love. He doesn’t elaborate, but the work clearly possesses a strong sense of alienation that is linked to thwarted love. In the ballad “Somewhere,” Tony and Maria dream of “a place for us” in what seems to them a hostile and uncomprehending world. In a small pocket of the story lives a social-sexual misfit called Anybodys, a girl who dresses as a boy and longs to be part of the gang, but is excluded by the gang members as well as by the rest of society.
A heterosexual love story adapted from a famous, classical model occupies a central place in
West Side Story, yet it is shaded with a certain ambiguity. Most of the dancers in
West Side Story by far are males; Robbins’s dances are predominately performed by them, and they often concern bonding rights, the gang members’ blood brotherhood that will be “for life.” …
In
West Side Story,…delinquent youths…are at times menacing in their dance numbers and exude a male sexual energy…Robbins takes the boy-meets-girl-and-they-fall-in-love formula of a thousand musicals and confronts it with a closely bound world of young men. In fact, in a very focal way Tony is torn between his love for Maria and his loyalty to the brotherhood of the Jets, an inner conflict that brings on the tragedy of the play. Sexual love is inseparable from alienation in
West Side Story, a theme that seems to have struck a deep, richly creative chord in both Robbins and Bernstein. Some of Robbins’s earlier ballets explored themes of alienation, but in
West Side Story it bursts into being with unprecedented explosive power. In
Fancy Free, New York was the setting of the sailors’ high-spirited fun, but in
West Side Story it has more complicated and darker connotations. Around it swirl ideas of yearning and brutalization, ecstasy and despair. It is a young conflicted world of high excitement, eroticism and danger, a powerful tonal poem of New York. (2004, pp. 108-9).
The Dance
The white Jets gang had a vocabulary of movement that was jazz-based, alternating between cool, restrained jazz movements and outbursts of explosive energy. The Puerto Rican Sharks used Latin-styled moves that were sharp, passionate, percussive and rhythmic (Knapp, 2005).
Appropriation
West Side Story is often cited as a pivotal point in theatrical jazz dance history, due to the ingenious use of jazz, ballet, and social dance by Jerome Robbins. But [Donald] McKayle, who worked as dance captain and swing dancer with the original cast, sees the contribution of jazz movements differently than most historians. “I was in
West Side Story, the original, and that wasn’t jazz dance. It was very theatrical, quite marvelous, but the part that was closest to jazz is what [assistant choreographer] Peter Gennaro did. Of course, Jerome Robbins took all of the bows for Peter’s work. It was Peter’s work that was closest to jazz dance. ‘America’ was Peter’s, all of the Shark movement in the gymnasium was Peter’s…he was an unsung hero” (Boross, 2010 “Donald McKayle”).
West Side Story was the first musical to begin its creation with dance as a storytelling device. In West Side Story, shifts in power were shown through shifts in who danced and who controlled the dance (Kislan, 1987). From the very first scene, the tension of barely restrained violence demonstrated by the posture and movement of the characters grabbed the audience by the heart more physically and more profoundly than any words could have done. And the movement gave the audience a physical experience of the action.
Like de Mille, Robbins required of his dancers a depth of character and feeling that was usually found only in the actors on the stage (Kislan, 1987). He demanded all of the emotional depth of the fine actor combined with the expertise in technique, line and expression found in the elite dancer. De Mille had made her chorus members part of the action. Robbins gave each actor/singer/dancer a name and a full character story.
In
Oklahoma! de Mille broke up the traditional linear chorus…, arranging her performers in groups—with actors in the dramatic scenes and dancers taking over when dance sequences were introduced. But in
West Side Story, Robbins dispensed with the chorus entirely, employing performers who could act, sing, and dance all in one, and who could perform a chorus function without looking like a chorus. Moreover, they could move from a dramatic moment into a dance moment with a maximum of fluidity and naturalness. De Mille helped to create the integrated musical but her musicals were still not fully integrated. Her dream ballet, for example, may have brought dance into the musical more fully than ever before, but it stood out from the rest of the show as dance, and it did involve bringing in a dance chorus and lead dancers who filled in for the non-dancing actors. In
West Side Story there is no dance portion to the show; it is all dance, all movement. Robbins blurs the line between dance and dramatic action, so that it is hard to say where one ends and the other begins. (Long, 2003, p. 110)
Although West Side Story was highly successful, both artistically and commercially, it did receive criticism, especially of its ending.
Robert Emmet Long:
The endings of
Romeo and Juliet and
West Side Story are interesting to compare. Shakespeare’s play ends with a convincing restoration of moral order as the warring families come to recognize, with the loss of their children, that they have put anger and pride about love and forgiveness; the tragic catharsis brought by the death of the young people forces them to reorder their values, to reach a larger, more enlightened and harmonious view of what life should be. But unlike
Romeo and Juliet,
West Side Story has almost no adults in it: in an eerie way the gang members seem to have no homes, and there is no sense of society… only a scarred urban battlefield. At the end the musical would like to give the Shakespearean sense of contrition, of bitter lessons learned, and of a movement into the future that will be more humane and generous than the past. But the coming together of the Jets and Sharks is not entirely convincing. They are not deep enough as people to be transformed through suffering, and it is hard to imagine a future for them in which they will be other than as they were. Their truce at the end and common mourning seem primarily a platform from which to preach that prejudice and hatred of groups different from one’s own are wrong—a well-meaning message from the 1950s that dates the musical. (2004, p. 108)
Raymond Knapp:
If we are convinced at all by the hope offered up at the end of
West Side Story, it is not because anyone has been convinced that Tony’s and the Maria’s mutual
love should be a model for them to follow, but rather because Maria herself has learned to
hate, and because she has redirected her hatred away from particular individuals and groups, hating instead the very hatred that has divided them and driven them to murder. Hate, not love, is the operative currency in the world of
West Side Story. Implicitly, then, race-based hatred is the given core to
West Side Story, the non-negotiable point of reference for everything that happens. Even the hope for reconciliation advanced at the end, like the love of Maria and Tony, is plausible only within a context removed from the here and now; the most we can say is that it
may happen, over time. (2005, p. 204)
In other words, appreciation of the opposite gang never really happens. A lesson in humanity is not necessarily learned. Rather the ending leaves the audience hanging with the question: could we coexist without killing each other?
Treatment of Dancers
Robbins was well-known for his genius. He was also well-known for his ascerbic tongue. Those who worked for Robbins almost universally agree that he could be cruel. Following a long line of authoritarian, Machiavellian choreographers, Robbins believed cruelty was justified if the end result was achieved. As I mentioned earlier, this was, unfortunately, fairly standard practice in the world of dance.Those who worked with Robbins universally agree on another point: Robbins was a genius who was worth whatever abuse he gave. Read the following article. It chronicles his treatment of the dancers who dealt with the darker side of Jerome Robbins.
NYPost Article – Actors recall living in fear of Jerome Robbins — yet dying to work with him
Links to an external site.
More Musicals by Robbins
Gypsy (1959 – 702 performances):
Based on the memoirs of Gypsy Rose Lee, a reknown burlesque stripper, this show was another show about show business. Robbins directed and choreographed the show. He prepared his dancers by immersing them in the world of burlesque, inviting local burlesque artists to come to the theatre to demonstrate their craft.
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1962)
– Show doctor.
Funny Girl (1964):
Robbins had various roles in the production and finally was credited as “Production Supervised by …” He is unofficially credited with successfully pulling the show together and coaching then unknown Barbra Streisand in her acting (Long, 2004).
Fiddler on the Roof (1964)
Cultural Identity
Being of Jewish descent, Robbins faced a challenge in America: assimilation. Like many others in the Broadway industry, he turned his back on his cultural ancestry in order to blend and become a true American [whatever that might mean.] Robbins said:
I see the rages and discontents deeply rooted inside of me, and it seems to me that the anguish has been caused by this wrenching away from my true cultural background and the constant modification to assimilate myself, whoring myself to become an American. As I grew up, Judaism seemed to be tallises [prayer shawls] and beards and eyes watering and smells that I didn’t know, language I couldn’t understand. It revolted me, and I laid my knife against it. Now, I’m trying to get back to the things that I am graced so deeply. (Cited in Kinberg, 2009)
Fiddler on the Roof (1964) was the first Broadway musical to run for over 3000 performances. (It ran for 3242.) The show was a global hit. The universal themes of tradition vs. assimilation and the generation gap caused
Fiddler to be successful with audiences of all races and ethnicities. It was also popular in countries having very little Jewish population. Librettist Joseph Stein, said “
Fiddler on the Roof isn’t a play about Jewish people; it’s a play about people who happen to be Jewish” (cited in Knapp, 2005, p. 215).
Nevertheless, the show was lovingly embraced by Jewish people all over the world, especially in America and Israel. To have Jewish life boldly displayed and well-received gave the Jewish community rare positive exposure.
The musical beautifully portrayed universal themes of traditional male/female power structures, generational gaps and oppression. That said, specific historical messaging was not hidden. It was used to further the themes.
The political events that bring each act to a close—the pogrom-like “demonstration” at the wedding celebration of Tzeitel and Motel midway through, and the mass eviction of the Jewish population at the end—serve mainly as the backdrop to one of the central dramas endemic to race-based cultural conflicts: preservation vs. assimilation—a conflict that takes on quite different complexions depending on the degree of oppression experienced from the outside. Thus, in a more benign political environment for Jews (such as that of Western Europe in the first half of the nineteenth century or in twentieth-century America), assimilation, perceived as a merger of cultural strengths, might seem a plausible alternative. In the face of manifest oppression, however, the separatist urge toward preservation will understandably seem to be the only human alternative, for cultural preservation becomes the only viable means of self-preservation (in the human sense as opposed to a mere animal survival). (Knapp, 2005, p. 219)
Once again, Robbins researched history and culture, then used dance to forward the concepts of the show: tradition vs. assimilation, old vs. young, Jewish people vs. those who would oppress them. The dances were interwoven seamlessly into the storyline as a natural outpouring of emotion in a cultural context. The dancers were instructed to avoid looking at the audience, and there were no production numbers (Long, 2003).
The opening number, “Tradition,” began not with the big sound of an orchestra but with the modest music of a fiddler silhouetted on a roof and the solitary figure of Tevye who, in a ten-minute monologue [text spoken by a single actor without a break], explains himself as a simple man given to talking to his God. As he speaks, peasants in ragged outfits appear hand in hand from the wings, and as they begin to sing of their traditions they move faster and faster, weaving about Tevye in a circle, their singing rising in a emotional crescendo. “Tradition” illustrates Robbins’s use of dance (in this case more choreographed movement than actual dance) to tell a story: the encircling of Tevye by the peasants forges a bond between them of ever-increasing intensity. The dance celebrates the solidarity of the dispossessed in the face of an oppressive social system. (Long, 2003, p. 128)
Robbins research included a visit to a Hasidic wedding “at the Ansonia Hotel on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, where a Jewish comedian did an amusing dance while balancing an empty wine bottle on his head. The little incident inspired Robbins’s “Bottle Dance, “in which four male villages do a spectacular dance with bottles poise precariously on their heads” (Long, 2003 p. 128)
Although
Fiddler won nine Tony awards, including Best Musical, Best Choreographer and Best Director, Robbins was not hired to work on the film version. It’s possible that his exorbitant overages of time and money while working on the film of West Side Story were the reason.
Fiddler was Robbins last original Broadway musical. (A collaboration with Leonard Bernstein failed to make it to the stage after ten months of work, and another original musical had an even more dramatic ending. After months of pre-production work and major conflicts between the creative staff, “nothing worked as Robbins had hoped. An opening date was set, and the collaborators were in the middle of an audition, when Robbins said, ‘Excuse me a moment,’ and left the theater. When he did not return, Guare [composer/writer/lyricist] went backstage to see what was happening; and the doorman told him that Robbins had got into a limousine and was on his way to Kennedy Airport. ‘I had a feeling of horror and relief,’ Guare said. Bernstein burst into tears and exclaimed, ‘It’s over’” (Long, 2003, p. 134).
In 1989, Robbins supervised
Jerome Robbins Broadway, a collection of his choreographic Broadway masterpieces, including dances from
The King and I,
On the Town, and
West Side Story.
Epilogue
Though Robbins retired from the Broadway stage, he continued to choreograph for the New York City Ballet for many years. A massive stroke in July of 1998 put Robbins into the hospital, but in his last hours, close friend—and executor of Robbins’ living will—Nadia Stern convinced the hospital to release him, and he died at home, surrounded by friends.
Robbins’ legacy lives on. The most cherished of his musicals are regularly revived on Broadway and are performed across the globe in regional theatres and tours. His ballets remain part of the New York City Ballet repertory and are also performed by companies around the world.
West Side Story Suite (the dances from
West Side Story) remains in the New York City Ballet repertory, a tribute to the genius of Jerome Robbins. It was last performed in February 2010.
Social Commentary on Stage
The Great Depression
In October of 1929, America’s stock market crashed. A world-wide financial depression began, and the extravagance and overspending of the 1920s came to an abrupt halt. Charles Poor Kindleberger (an American economist who was instrumental in the U.S. Marshall Plan that provided aid to post-World War II Europe) faulted Britain and the United States for the failure of the world economy. The causes of “The Depression” are quite complex, and, in fact, they did not happen overnight. I will oversimplify and briefly summarize Kindleberger’s theories: After World War I, Britain was unable and the U.S. unwilling to stabilize the international economic system. Kindleberger believes that Britain and the U.S. should have policed and regulated open market trading, international exchange rates and government lending policies. The neglect of these obligations led to the collapse of the world economic system (1986).
So what impact did all of this have on the Broadway community? For the most part, the financial hole created by the stock market crash was not felt immediately on the avenue. Ticket prices were not as outrageously expensive as they are today, and patrons continued to attend shows. But the fluffy, happy themes of the 20s began to be replaced by a new type of musical…
Video: “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?”
(Dupre, et al., 2004)
Broadway and Hollywood: Friends or Enemies?
Slowly, the realities of unemployment met up with the excitement surrounding the new world of movies. Broadway tickets in 1929 sold for amounts between $3 and $6.50; movie tickets cost about 30 cents (Mizejewski, 1999). This pricing difference, which did little to decide audiences prior to the stock market crash, proved to be monumental as the early days of the Depression turned into years of hardship. As Americans began to tighten their belts, they also spent their money on reusable entertainment. Sales on items such as radios and bicycles skyrocketed. Still, if the advent of Talkies had not coincided with the financial difficulties of the 1930s, most historians are convinced that movies would not have affected Broadway audiences.
As the movie musical industry grew, many Broadway theaters were converted to movie theaters. Some of them even became soundstages [buildings in which movies are filmed or “shot”].
Broadway producers, forced to get creative, sometimes took advantage of the best of both worlds. Radio City Music Hall—which Roxy had opened on December 27, 1932, in partnership with John D. Rockefeller to boost the New York economy—showed its first film on January 11, 1933. A new format was utilized: a revue was performed prior to the movie. The glamorously costumed Rockettes performed their tap numbers, ending each with their now-famous eye-high kicks. Then, they exited the stage to their dressing rooms while a giant movie screen was lowered from the ceiling. A movie’s premiere at the Hall almost guaranteed that the movie would be a success.This format proved to be a hit for decades. It was not until 1979 that Radio City Music Hall changed its focus to provide a venue for concerts. Special events with movie showings, however, still play at the 6000-seat theater.
Broadway on the Silver Screen
The Talkies–now a permanent fixture–had both positive and negative effects on the Broadway musical industry.
On the positive side, American film musicals reached new audiences across the country. In
The Great Ziegfeld, Seymour Felix, who had staged dances for Ziegfeld’s production of
Rosalie, had the opportunity of out-Ziegfelding the original master of spectacle, when he was given an enormous soundstage and a budget to match. Seymour Felix is remembered for his small attempts to integrate dance into the storyline of musicals on Broadway and for his successful career on both American coasts. “In his time, he was reputed to be the highest paid dance director in the business” (Kislan, 1987, p. 59).
But it was Busby Berkeley who became the Ziegfeld of Hollywood. He incorporated lavish choreography and staging with innovative camera work to establish a new standard of musical dancing that was impossible to replicate on the Broadway stage. He even cut a hole in the roof of the soundstage to get an overhead view! Berkeley became known for his visual extravaganzas. His movies featured chorus dancing taken to a new level. Geometric, precision dancing could now be viewed from all sides. Berkeley took audience members close to the girls, then gave them a “Peeping Tom” look from above. Broadway could not match this experience.
Armed with many of the most talented Broadway performers and creative artists, Hollywood became powerful competition for Broadway. And Hollywood capitalized on Broadway’s success. Many films borrowed the Broadway musical format and used Broadway as their themes. In the film
42nd Street (1933), a young Broadway chorus girl gets her chance at stardom when the unlikeable star of the show breaks her ankle. The tough coaching of the Broadway director molds the timid but talented girl into a poised sensation. The gritty story and the dances staged by Berkeley proved to be a winning combination. The film was later adapted for the Broadway stage (1980) and ran for eight and a half years. [The 2001 revival ran for 1524 performances.] Movies about Broadway, such as
42nd Street and
The Great Ziegfeld, piqued audience curiosity. By giving ticket holders a peek into the backstage life of Broadway dancers, additional interest was generated for the Broadway theater.
It is uncommon for films to make the trip to Broadway stages. The flexibility of editing, the unrestricted space used for dance sequences and the “magic” on screen that can be realized by special effects may be just a few of the many reasons that make transfer from film to stage problematic. [That said, recent years have shown a new trend towards movie to stage transfer, with such films as
Mary Poppins (2006),
Billy Elliot (2008),
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (2005) and many Disney animated features enjoying successful runs.]
It is more common for Broadway musicals to be adapted for film. The trend began with one of the most iconic films in cinema history,
The Wizard of Oz, which premiered in 1939. (The Broadway musical opened in 1903.) Hollywood films provided exposure for musicals. Audiences that viewed these films often became the tourists that flocked to New York City to see the sites and the shows. Broadway became a prime destination. Below is a partial list of Broadway hits that became films:
Musical
Original Broadway Opening
Film Opening
Show Boat
1927
1951
The Band Wagon
1931
1953
Oklahoma!
1943
1955
Guys and Dolls
1950
1955
The King and I
1950
1956
West Side Story
1957
1961
The Music Man
1957
1962
My Fair Lady
1956
1964
The Sound of Music
1959
1965
Oliver!
1964
1968
Funny Girl
1964
1968
Fiddler on the Roof
1964
1971
Cabaret
1966
1972
1776
1969
1972
Grease
1972
1978
Evita
1979
1997
Chicago
1975
2002
The Wiz
1975
1978
Annie
1977
1982
Sweeney Todd
1979
2007
Hairspray
2002
2007
The Phantom of the Opera
1988
2004
Nine
1982
2009
Les Miserables
1987
2012
Into the Woods
1987
2014
Until recently, most Hollywood producers gave Broadway choreographers the option of recreating their dances for film, bringing the original Broadway dances to many people who would never have otherwise seen them, and also providing a link to the history of Broadway dance.
1930s: Concert Dance Leaps Across the Footlights
Copyright ©2010
On Broadway
In the first years following the depression, black musical theatre continued to thrive. Eleven black musical shows opened in the first two seasons of the 1930s (Woll, 1989). Production costs for colored shows were much lower than those for white shows. Scenery was cheap or non-existent, and colored performers were often willing to work for whatever wages were offered.
Black performers continued to struggle against racial prejudice, even in the union that claimed to represent them. As the Depression settled in, changes in Actors’ Equity rules led to lower wages for black performers. When producer/director Earl Carroll wanted to hire fifty black actors for his new
Vanities revue, he received a special waiver from Equity to hire them as “atmosphere” rather than as performers. By changing their status from “chorus” to “atmosphere,” Carroll was able to pay each performer only $19 each week (Woll, 1989).
Black performers also continued to battle racial prejudice in American society. Even Bill Robinson’s Broadway celebrity status did nothing to protect him on the street.
Florenz Ziegfeld claimed that Robinson was booked to perform in his upcoming
Follies, but in reality, Robinson was engaged to perform in
Brown Buddies (1930), a new musical revue produced by his manager, Marty Forkins. After three weeks of out-of-town previews, the show was scheduled to open at the Liberty Theater in New York. Two days before opening, Bill Robinson was shot.
He had left his hotel and was hailing a taxi to take him to the train station when he heard the screams of Mrs. Annie Bies. The white woman pointed after a fleeing black youth, who had her purse in his hands. Bill dropped his bags and gave chase, calling to the boy to stop. When the youth kept running, Bill pulled his gold-plated revolver and fired. He missed the youth. Patrolman Michael Horan heard the shots, ran in their direction, and seeing a black man with a gun, fired. Bill dropped. The purse-snatcher escaped, and Bill was taken to Mercy Hospital. Treated for a superficial wound in the left arm, Bill was released and resumed his journey to New York. Two days later he opened in
Brown Buddies as scheduled, with his arm in a white satin sling, and managed to carry on until the finale, when suddenly he felt faint. He whispered to his fellow cast members, “Get me off.” Leaning on the arm of a large male dancer, he reached the wings and collapsed. But he went on as scheduled the following night. Asked how he felt about being shot while trying to help the woman who lost her purse, Bill stated he felt no rancor toward Officer Horan, which further endeared him to police departments all over the country. (Haskins & Mitgang, 1988, pp.197-8)
Brown Buddies was not a critical or a commercial success. The plot loosely supported several song-and-dance numbers. But Robinson brought down the house every night and received rave reviews. Wrote critic Richard Lockridge:
And now we move TO THE FEET OF Mr. Robinson—the subtle feet, the amazingly rolling eyes, the strange chuckling sounds with which he applauds the feet when they perform, always to his apparent surprise, some peculiarly difficult evolution. He croons with his feet and laughs with them and watches them in wide-eyed amazement as they do things which apparently surprise him as much as they do the rest of us, and please him, if possible, even more. (cited in Woll, 1989, p. 143)
Adelaide Hall was also credited with carrying the show.
America and the Broadway stage continued to struggle along hand in hand. Bread lines became a daily event for many New Yorkers. As breadlines grew, so did evidence of social unrest. The Great Depression swiftly forced Americans to take a realistic view of personal necessities. It had a dual polarizing impact on theatrical themes. On the one hand, there were musicals and revues that helped audiences escape the grim realities of current life.
Anything Goes (1934)
Anything Goes captured the spirit of musical comedy and spotlighted dancing and singing. Here is the title song from the revival, performed on the Tony’s in 1988. Patti LuPone, a star of the Broadway stage, plays Reno Sweeney in this version. You will remember Sutton Foster from the Tony Awards that we watched a couple of weeks ago. Foster was a divergence from the usual casting of the female lead. Foster, to me, is a cleancut girl-next-door. Normally that role would go to a brassy, woman-of-the-world, someone more like LuPone:
Video:
Anything Goes
(2007)
You may also enjoy watching this video below. The video shows Sutton Foster and company in a rehearsal of the full version of the title song. (The Tony Award performance was about half the length!) The rehearsal scenario offers you a glimpse of the performers as humans rather than just as a part of a glitzy picture. For instance, you will notice after the big dance, Foster stands centerstage breathing deeply, while the chorus begins to sing. Later, she turns upstage for several counts to catch her breath before her last big note!
Video: “Anything Goes” rehearsal
[If time is short, watch a minute or two]
(2011)
Escapism continued to play on Broadway. On the other hand, realism and political satire also became staples of the Broadway stage. Broadway dance reflected both ends of the escapism/realism spectrum. Even revue shows managed to stitch together entertainment and social commentary, touching on political topics with increasingly barbed satire communicated through song and dance.
Dwindling ticket sales continued to plague Broadway theaters, forcing many dancers and singers to join the ranks of the unemployed. But, according to Broadway historian, Laurence Maslon:
Out of this adversity came an extraordinary decade of artistic growth for the Broadway musical, which, next to the daily newspaper, became the most vibrant and incisive indicator of what was going on in America. Never again would Broadway reflect its country’s concerns with such crystal clarity. (2004, p. 131)
Americana
The
Americana revues incorporated contemporary American life into song and dance numbers. The third revue, which opened October 5th, 1932, was notable for two reasons. First, it included the song “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” a lament about the plight of the working man reduced by the Depression to begging on the street. This song became the signature ballad of the great Depression. Second, this last
Americana revue brought modern dance–then called “The New Dance”–onto the Broadway stage.
Concert Dance Invades Broadway
First of all, what do we mean by “concert artists” and “concert dance?” For the purpose of our course, we will use the following simple definition: concert dance refers to dancing that occurs on stage, by trained dancers, in front of an audience that expects to see only dance for the evening. Traditionally, ballet, modern dance and world dance pieces, performed by dancers trained in these styles, are considered concert dance.
At the time concert dance became prominent on Broadway, dancers in New York City enjoyed a fluidity of opportunities that allowed for them to juggle Broadway show employment with concert dance rehearsals and performances. The technical training of the dancers was valued by the Broadway community. Often, modern dance companies were hired to perform their repertory pieces within a show. Though this practice did little to support the storyline, it probably saved producers money, since the initial period of rehearsal that it took to put together each dance piece was already done.
Now, back to
Americana. A revolutionary modern dance company, the Humphrey-Weidman Company performed repertory works that were interpolated [interjected between parts] into the
Americana revue. [The show credits two companies, the Charles Weidman Dancers and The Doris Humphrey Dance Group, who correspond to the choreographer of each piece.] Jose Limon—who would later achieve fame with his own dance company and his own signature modern technique—performed in Americana as part of the Humphrey-Weidman Company. [Limon performed in 7 Broadway musicals and 4 Broadway dance specials.] In the following reading, he talks about the Humphrey-Weidman school during the Depression and Doris Humphrey and Charles Weidman’s participation in the Broadway community:
Doris and Charles were whistling in the dark, so to speak, to keep up their spirits and courage.
Things were going from bad to worse in the country. The unreal world of politics, senseless and strident, would impinge crudely on our minuscule universe. One day we learned that a certain Franklin Delano Roosevelt, of whom we had been vaguely aware as a remote figure in a place called Albany…was now president. So removed, so isolate, so ignorant were we when it came to anything that did not concern our obsessive preoccupation with dance!
This innocence was not to last much longer. There was widespread deprivation, hunger, misery, and protest. The wolf, raging and slavering, was at the door, making ready to lope up the stairs of many homes in America, including ours on Eighteenth Street. Most of the girls in the company came from comfortable middle-class families and were immune to the contagion of poverty. But others were not so fortunate. Those who were on their own, who had to work as salesgirls or waitresses or at odd jobs, felt the pinch, as did the young men.
It was at this point that the writer, J.P. McEvoy, whose musical revue, Americana, was being produced by the Shuberts, persuaded the producers to engage the Humphrey-Weidman company to perform some of their concert pieces intact, as part of the show. It was agreed that “The Shakers,” “Water Study,” “The Little Soldiers,” and “Ringside” would fit nicely into the production. Doris chose not to appear personally. Charles would; moreover, he was to create several original production numbers for the show.
Opening night at the Shubert Theater on Forty-Fourth Street was a sensation. Americana had for its theme the Depression that was afflicting the land, treated with irony and compassionate humor. McEvoy had written an unusually adult show, and the miracle was that it was such a great success. The dances, especially, excited comment. For the first time the New Dance was introduced into the commercial theater, a prophetic and auspicious event that was to lead to a fecund association over the next decades. Charles, in particular, was to function successfully in the Broadway arena, presaging the later success of Hanya Holm, Helen Tamiris, Agnes de Mille, and Jerome Robbins. (Limon, 1998, pp. 38-9)
Below is a reconstruction of one of Doris Humphrey’s pieces that appeared in
Americana. Picture the society who was just getting used to jazz. Imagine the reaction of the audience to “The New Dance.”
(2011) Water Study was choreographed by Doris Humphrey in 1928. This video shows a reconstruction of the work.
The piece is performed in silence and the only sounds are those the dancers make as they move.
Modern dance began to infiltrate Broadway. The addition of serious, “real” themes to musical offerings paralleled the journey that many concert dance artists were taking in their choreography and performance. With its exciting new commitment to the exploration of “real” emotions and its determination to shatter the boundaries of movement in traditional dance (namely ballet), modern dance opened up new possibilities for movement on the Broadway stage. Broadway shows benefitted aspiring modern choreographers, too, providing them with regular employment that enabled them to pay their rent, fund artistic dreams and perform regularly for an audience.
As Maslon said, the artistic side of Broadway flourished. This was particularly true for dance. With the inclusion of modern dance, the technical training of Broadway dancers and the emotional content of Broadway choreography both expanded. When these two elements came together on stage, the result was revolutionary.
Dance Integration
Although
Show Boat had made great strides in integrating music and script, dance numbers had yet to be intricately woven into the fabric of musical storytelling. One of the most consistent forces in the evolution of Broadway dance is the interpolation [interjection between parts] of random dance styles into the current standard dances. A wide range of dances often co-existed in the same show. Broadway historian, Mark N. Grant, cited the musicals
The Student Prince and
The Desert Song as examples of musicals that “used interpolation, mixing in extraneous dances like vaudeville numbers, fairy ballets, eighteenth century gavottes, Spanish-flavored dances” (2004, p. 249). Early shows that included modern dance did little to change the practice of interpolation. Though the theme of current national events ran through the Americana revue—and modern dance was certainly a main event of the period—you can well imagine the disjointed evening experienced by the show’s audience. “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” and “Water Study” are two very different numbers!
Many of the dancer/choreographers who were revolutionizing concert dance in America also danced on Broadway stages. We will continue to discuss the impact of concert dance on Broadway as the unit progresses.
Broadway News
Another show that chronicled national happenings was
As Thousands Cheer (1933), a revue show that regularly rotated numbers to keep up with current events.
As Thousands Cheer had as its concept the daily newspaper, with each number and skit taken from (or performed in ironic contrast to) a headline…projected across the proscenium [the arch at the front part of the stage that frames it]. This structure allowed Hart to parody such wet-ink-fresh subjects as Gandhi, … the building of Rockefeller Center, and the outgoing Hoover administration (the sketch has the lame-duck ex-president and his wife running up a huge last-minute long-distance bill on the eve of FDR’s inauguration). [Composer Irving] Berlin took a gentler swipe at society…by ribbing Josephine Baker (“Harlem on My Mind”), Woolworth heiress Barbara Hutton (“How’s Chances?”), even the hoary conventions of the revue format itself (“Supreme Court Hands Down Important Decision”), which says that revues are forbidden to reprise their most memorable songs in the finale. (Maslon, 2004, p. 167)
More Concert Dance
Earlier in the course, we discussed the inclusion of ballet dances in musicals and variety shows. (Remember The Black Crook?) Concert dance had been included in Broadway offerings for decades.
Dancers en pointe [wearing ballet dancing shoes called “pointe shoes” that have hardened toe boxes to stand on the very tips of the toes] and ballet choruses continued to make appearances in many shows that also included vaudeville-style acts.
Albertina Rasch
Albertina Rasch was the first documented female dance director on Broadway. Although she trained at the Opera Ballet School in Vienna, when she came to America, she quickly grasped the commercial possibilities of the musical theatre. She opened a dance studio in New York and began to choreograph for Broadway and Hollywood. She formed her own company, which she called “Albertina Rasch and the American Ballet” (also billed as the Albertina Rasch Dancers and the Albertina Rasch Girls) and combined syncopation with ballet steps–often en pointe!—to originate a new style of dance that she named “symphonic jazz” (Austin, 1997, p. 67). “Rasch Girls” were featured in the Ziegfeld
Follies of 1931 and
Ballyhoo of 1932.
Rasch’s goal was to entertain. She made little attempt to integrate storyline into her dance numbers (Kislan, 1987). She often included a “dream ballet” in the shows for which she choreographed. [The dream ballet—which would soon be beautifully integrated and eventually overused in future musicals—is a musical dance sequence that allows the choreographer to take the audience into a character’s dream, basically allowing anything to happen! Rasch used this device often. She choreographed three dream ballets for the musical
Lady in the Dark (1941) (Wilmeth, 2007).
Rasch had an extensive career as a choreographer. However, her twenty years staging and choreographing thirty Broadway musicals, revues, revivals and plays (including the 1927 and 1931 editions of Ziegfeld’s
Follies) did little to bring her notoriety in Broadway history.
In contrast, accounts of Rasch’s punitive personality have traveled through the decades. According to author Debra Hickenlooper Sowell, Rasch “had a reputation for being difficult to work with; she was demanding and spoke harshly to her dancers in a vocabulary studded with obscenities” (Sowell, 1998, pp. 100-1).
Rasch’s behavior, however, was not rare in the field of dance. In fact, tyrant choreographers and directors were more the rule rather than the exception, especially in concert dance. Artists such as Rasch often employed a Darwinian, “survival of the fittest” method of dance training. Those dancers that were not physically and emotionally strong enough to stand up to hours of rehearsal and strings of verbal abuse were weaned out. Some performers thrived under such methods.
Like Buddy Bradley, Rasch taught and coached star performers, including film star Jeanette MacDonald.
In an era when male dance directors dominated Broadway, New York producers made an exception for the “Czarina,” as she was known, because of her business sense and her grasp of the public pulse. MacDonald enrolled at Rasch’s studio in the Steinway Building on West Fifty-seventh Street…While less stalwart pupils were intimidated by the instructor’s accented bellow, thumping cane, and scalding sarcasm, Jeanette took instantly to her demands for discipline, stamina, and consistency…
An emancipated European, Rasch believed that the United States offered the greatest promise for democratizing the female body politic. In dance, she insisted, if a woman’s body is “lithe and resilient and perfectly controlled,” and if she possesses “an abundant vitality,” she will project, regardless of her actual social stratum, the manners and mental attitudes Europeans typically associate with aristocratic breeding. MacDonald was an exemplar of this philosophy. She learned from Rasch how to tone down her chorus-girl prance and walk across a stage with stately grace in an American manner, without affectation. Rasch also believed that classical art forms had to be adapted to a New World context. She argued for American ballet and opera geared not to an intellectual elite but to the general populace, in much the same way as baseball and motion pictures have mass appeal. (Turk, 1998, pp. 47-8)
Whatever method Rasch used, her career flourished. Her instinct for the type of dance that would sell tickets coupled with her ballet background resulted in a dance style that was at once technically beautiful and commercially appealing. Rasch’s innovative combination of syncopated steps with ballet put her original stamp on show choreography. Though she rarely received rave reviews from journalists or accolades from historians, her work is noteworthy as a precursor to contemporary styles of dance. Said musical theatre historian, John Kenrick:
As respect for dance rose on Broadway, Rasch became one of the first “dance directors” to be referred to as a “choreographer” …Rasch received equal praise for massive ensembles in
The Great Waltz (1934) and intimate routines in
Jubilee (1935). She was one of the first to treat dance as a serious element in musical theatre. (2003, “Ziegfeld Follies III”)
Then, along came George Balanchine…
George Balanchine (1904 – 1983)
George Balanchine was born Georgi Melitonovitch Balanchivadze in St. Petersburg, Russia. He began studying piano at the age of five and ballet at the age of nine. In the summer of 1924, he and three other dancers defected from the Soviet Union, while on a dance tour of Western Europe (George Balanchine Foundation, 2002).
Balanchine and his comrades joined the Ballets Russes, a world renown London ballet company. After several years of performing and choreographing ballets—as well as a wide variety of dances for the Cochran Revues in London, a fateful partnership was proposed.
The young American arts patron Lincoln Kirstein…harbored a dream: To establish a ballet company in America, filled with American dancers and not dependent on repertory from Europe…He met Balanchine after a…1933 performance and outlined his vision. Balanchine was essential to it. Deciding quickly in favor of a new start, Balanchine agreed to come to the United States and arrived in New York in October 1933. “But first, a school,” he is famously reported to have said. (George Balanchine Foundation, 2002, p. 2)
Together Kirstein and Balanchine founded the School of American Ballet, which continues to train dancers today and is the feeder school for Balanchine’s company, The New York City Ballet Company.
Balanchine’s immense impact on the world of ballet is well documented in dance history. Less well known are his contributions to Broadway dance. Balanchine got his first musical theatre job on Broadway via his friendship with a Russian composer, who was working on the 1936 edition of Ziegfeld’s
Follies (Kristy, 1996). The choreographer for the show was Robert Alton. Balanchine was brought in to choreograph dances for Josephine Baker. According to author Bernard Taper:
At considerable expense the Shuberts had brought Josephine Baker from Paris, and it was Balanchine’s assignment to fashion some dances that would display to advantage her dusky elegance and her talented, world-famous derriere. As much as anybody else, Balanchine admired this derriere of hers, but there was little original he could do for it. It was already, so to speak, institutionalized and not to be tampered with. (1987, p. 178)
Neither the Balanchine numbers nor the show created much of a stir.
Honorable Mention: Robert Alton
Robert Alton choreographed at least thirty-two musicals, revivals and specials [including
Anything Goes,
Pal Joey (starring Gene Kelly) and three editions of Ziegfeld’s
Follies] from 1933 until his death in 1957. He is known for his commitment to showmanship, musicality and high expectations for his professional dancers. Said Alton about musical theatre choreography, “I have exactly six minutes in which to raise the customer out of his seat. If I cannot do it, I am no good” (cited in Long, 2001, p. 16).
On Your Toes (1936)
Next, Balanchine was hired to choreograph
On Your Toes.
Tamara Geva and Ray Bolger, starred in Balanchine’s dream ballet for the show: “Slaughter on Tenth Avenue.” Ballerina Tamara Geva, who had defected from Russia with Balanchine, was his first wife. Ray Bolger—best known as the scarecrow in the film,
The Wizard of Oz—was a comic, eccentric dancer.
In the ballet, Bolger’s character is in love with the ballerina. He’s in trouble with the mobsters in the scene, who threaten to shoot him if he doesn’t keep dancing. At the end of the dance sequence, Bolger performed a desperate final dance that brought the house down every night. Ray Bolger considered himself an actor who happened to use dance to express his character. Known for his loose-limbed dancing, Bolger often improvised [made up spontaneously in the moment] his movement. He danced from the inside out. In other words, if he was committed to his character and the feelings/story his character needed to express, Bolger felt his movements would reflect those emotions. Balanchine agreed, and ironically, Ray Bolger’s dance at the end of “Slaughter on Tenth Avenue,” so praised by critics, was improvised at each performance!
Having been exposed to modern dance on the Broadway stage, audiences continued their education in dance “choreography” via Balanchine. With his Broadway adaptation of the title “choreographer”—previously used in programs only for concert dance—Balanchine helped clue both audience members and theatre reviewers into the new importance of dance in Broadway musicals. He focused attention on dance as an expressive vehicle to move the story and a notable contributor to the entirety of the Broadway show.
Before
On Your Toes, the playbill credit line for the dancers in musicals had always read, “Dances by _____.” Balanchine asked the producer, Wiman, whether his billing might read, “Choreography by George Balanchine.” This was an unfamiliar word in the United States in 1936. Wiman said he feared the public would not know what it meant. Balanchine replied that maybe it would intrigue the public to see a new word, and Wiman agreed to make the experiment.
The change in the credit line was the least of Balanchine’s musical-comedy innovations. Balanchine was able to rid musical comedy of the the notion that a dance number was a couple of showy soloists backed by a line of high-kicking showgirls; this dreary nonsense he replaced by genuine choreography. To musical comedy, Balanchine brought, it was generally agreed, an elegance, sophistication, and range of reference–all conveyed subtly and with a light touch–such as Broadway had not previously known. (Taper, 1987, p. 180)
However, many ticket holders were not yet ready for this theatre education lesson.
On Your Toes may have had more impact on the evolution of Broadway dance than it had on Broadway audiences. In addition to “Slaughter on Tenth Avenue,” the musical contained the “Princess Zenobia Ballet.”
The plot of
On Your Toes deals with the backstage life in the ballet world; that was new and “foreign” material on Broadway in the 1930s. Consequently, the audience proved as unprepared as the critics for the dancing—it’s importance to the show itself and its impact on the shows that followed. When the tongue-in-cheek send-up of the ballet
Scheherazade, or
A Thousand and One Nights, entitled “La Princess Zenobia” was performed in the original production, the audience simply didn’t know how to react. Many missed the point altogether, and a few who didn’t were too polite to laugh outright. (Kislan, 1987, p. 73)
Mark N. Grant, author of
The Rise and Fall of the Broadway Musical, credits Balanchine with bringing “advanced dance” to Broadway, but states that most of Balanchine’s choreography did little to forward storyline (2004).
A notable omission in the show is the missing credit for Herbie Harper, who assisted Balanchine. The black choreographer “melded jazz, tap, and ballet in
On Your Toes” (Wilmeth, 2007 p. 202).
Balanchine introduced the expressive possibilities of ballet to the Broadway stage at a time when musicals were making a shift from mindless entertainment to vehicles of artistic ideals in theatre. Powerful themes would be sung and danced during the Golden Age of Broadway over the next two decades. The strength, grace and potential for ballet to transport the audience would provide a foundation for emotionally expressive dances that would grip the audience by the heart and pull them on a responsive, kinetic journey.
[Balanchine’s] dances in
On Your Toes–particularly the memorable “Slaughter on Tenth Avenue”–were the first ever seen in a Broadway musical that were not just interludes but funtioned as an essential, active aspect of the plot. This paved the way for what was done by Agnes de Mille [studied in our next unit] a few years later in
Oklahoma! Thus Balanchine began a trend in American musical comedy that helped make it one of the brightest of this country’s theatrical forms. (Taper, 1987, p. 180)
The 1939 film version of
On Your Toes featured dancers Vera-Ellen and Gene Kelly. Balanchine was credited as “Dance Director.”
Video: “Slaughter on Tenth Avenue”
(2008)
From the 1948 movie adaptation of On Your Toes
To the show-going public Balanchine’s approach was a refreshing change; to the dancers in his shows it was an absolute liberation. Those performers who were lucky enough to work with him always came away with new insights into their dancing.
“If the rules of Equity permitted,” Brooks Atkinson wrote in 1940 in his New York Times review of
Cabin in the Sky, “probably the dancers would be glad to pay Mr. Balanchine something for the privilege of appearing under his direction, for he has released them from the bondage of hack dancing and ugliness.” (Taper, 1987, p. 181)
Ray Bolger said, “Taking dance direction from Balanchine was one of the highlights of my career. It was hard work, but the results were rewarding” (Fantle & Johnson, 2004, p. 59).
The original
On Your Toes ran for 315 performances. A 1954 revival ran for only 64. But, the 1983 revival of
On Your Toes, performed before an audience now well-educated to appreciate the complexities of dance choreography—and coming long after Balanchine’s choreographic genius was well-established—ran for 505 performances.
George Balanchine stretched the boundaries of both concert ballet dance and Broadway dance. He was open to change. To ballet, he brought sharp, contemporary movement, stressing visual, theatrical pictures rather than story. I think it could be said that Balanchine’s time on Broadway definitely impacted his ballet choreography. To Broadway, Balanchine brought the rigorous training and discipline of the ballet world. George Balanchine used the vocabulary of ballet in innovative ways that opened the eyes of Broadway choreographers to the new possibilities of Broadway dance.
So successful and pervasive did ballet become on Broadway after Balanchine and de Mille [whom we will study in our next unit], that the phenomena just about erased jazz-tap from commercial musicals and put many of its virtuoso performers out of big-time business. Temporarily, American show dancing turned its back on what the adherents of tap called “real American dance.” (Kislan, 1987, p. 74)
Rescue from Depression
Swing Music
With the morale of America plummeting alongside the economy, it is little wonder that music took an upbeat turn.
The music of the 1930s was “Swing.” Swing music was characterized by very large bands, fixed, usually written arrangements, and solos by individual musicians in turn instead of group improvisation. This move towards more user-friendly formatting enabled dancers to be more responsive to the new sound of swing music. And musicians enjoyed the renewed call-and-response of swing dancing.
In an effort to build business, nightclubs and dance halls offered specialty nights and dance contests to prospective clientele. In addition, jazz bands began to focus on visual effects to draw customers away from the radio. Band members wore uniforms, lined up in visually pleasing patterns and added movement to their performances. Band leaders whipped their orchestras into a frenzy to challenge dancers, and dancers performed their tricks and gave energy right back to the band.
Duke Ellington talked about band leader/drummer Chick Webb:
As a drummer, Chick had his own ideas about what he wanted to do. Some musicians are dancers, and Chick was. You can dance with a lot of things besides your feet…Chick Webb was a dance-drummer who painted pictures of dances with his drums. Way back, at the Cotton Club, we were always tailoring orchestrations to fit the dances…The reason why Chick Webb had such control, such command of his audiences at the Savoy ballroom, was because he was always in communication with the dancers and felt it the way they did. And that is probably the biggest reason why he could cut all the other bands that went in there. (Ellington, 1973, p. 100)
“Appreciation for particular swing performers caused racial boundaries to be crossed from both sides. White youth constituted the largest proportion of the audience for either black or white swing bands, but African-Americans were willing to cross the line for the right white band” (Stowe, 1996, p. 43)
Appropriation continued as band leaders scrambled to best their competition. Benny Goodman, for example, a child of Jewish immigrants, became known as “the King of Swing” although swing was well-established before Goodman attained his fame. The title had more to do with his commercial success–and perhaps the fact that he was white–than his musical productions. But Goodman earned the respect of white and black musicians alike when he integrated his band in 1936. Though this seems unexceptional today, in the 1930s it was not only an innovative decision, but also a politically explosive one.
It is worthy of note that the creation of a formalized jazz dance style for theatre and film came from a white dancer.
Jack Cole
Although Jack Cole was not seen as a major player in terms of Broadway choreography, his impact on dance and Broadway dance in particular, is undeniable. Agnes De Mille [whom we will study next] and Jerome Robbins [next unit] were both fans (Grant, 2004). Cole is widely credited with developing the technique that would later be called “jazz” dance.
Cole danced with modern dance luminaries Ruth St. Denis, Ted Shawn, and the Humphrey-Weidman dancers (Kislan, 1987). Dissatisfied with St. Denis’ inauthentic representation of Indian dances, Cole studied oriental history, and later “expanded his studies to include the American Indian, the black American, and the Caribbean and South American ethnic heritages” (Kislan, 1987, p. 86).
Cole demonstrated a fervent commitment to research. He traveled and studied dance in many genres in an effort to pay homage to authentic cultural styles: either by emulating them, satirizing them or incorporating them into his own style. Cole may well be the first well known choreographer to utilize what I call a “Personal Fusion” genre of dance. Rather than using a specific genre, Cole took what he liked best about many genres—vernacular [native and homegrown] jazz, Indian dance and modern dance—and fused them into his own Jack Cole jazz.
Video: Jack Cole
(2008)
“Jack Cole developed an entirely personal mode of jazz-ethnic-ballet that prevails as the dominant look of and technique for dancing in today’s musicals, films, nightclub revues, television commercials, and videos…Jack Cole’s style stamped all his work with an unmistakable look that followers claim endures in the choreography of Jerome Robbins, Bob Fosse, Peter Gennaro, and Gower Champion, among others” (Kislan, 1987, p. 84).
Cole jazz dancing is recognizable by its syncopated movement, use of plié [bending the knees to lower body towards the ground] and contrast between smooth, controlled movements, sensual movements and sharp, quick and isolated movements.
Video: “What is Jazz?”
(2007) Chita Rivera and Jack Cole dance in “Beale Street Blues.”
“Sing, Sing, Sing” was one of the biggest swing hits of the 30s, and it was also the most well-known of Jack Cole’s dances. All five of our jazz dance characteristics are represented in the dance.
Video: “Sing, Sing, Sing”
(2008) “Sing, Sing, Sing” – danced by Ron Field, Jim Hutchenson, Tom Osteen and Jack Cole
Cole was another in a long line of authoritarian choreographers. Dancers sublimated themselves for their art, putting up with abusive and demeaning treatment from Cole, and forgiving all for the opportunity to work with a genius. Many dancers and choreographers believed that the Jack Cole process—including the abuse—was necessary to achieve the Jack Cole result of absolute control of the body.
In a 1968
Dance Magazine interview Jack Cole talked about dancers: “Sometimes you have to slap them. Sometimes you have to kiss them. It isn’t like painting or writing or something that can be done in solitude. The trouble with choreography is you have to get the person out of the way before you can bring out the dancer” (cited in Kislan, 1987, p. 86). One of Cole’s most famous prodigies was Gwen Verdon.
Gwen Verdon
Gwen Verdon, one of the most well-known Broadway dancers in history, was Jack Cole’s lead dancer and assistant for many years.
Video: DO40 Tribute to Gwen Verdon
(2008) Verdon’s dancing is discussed and shown.
Verdon would soon find another genius/tyrant choreographer with whom she would spend many years: Bob Fosse. We will continue our look at Verdon’s intertwined personal life and career when we discuss Fosse in Unit 7.
The Federal Theatre Project
Harsh realities continued to visit Americans. Broadway musicals became bolder in their political commentary. Interestingly, it was the American government that sponsored one of the most controversial musicals of the decade.
As part of his election campaign platform, Theodore Roosevelt promised Americans a “New Deal” that would address some of the key issues of the Depression, including banking regulations and aid and the creation of new employment opportunities. The Federal Theatre Project was “a nationwide producing organization that employed thousands within a network of smaller theater units that would put on all manner of plays and musicals for the public at popular prices. It was an unprecedented effort, eventually sponsoring almost twelve hundred productions for an audience of more than 30 million—one quarter of the United States population” (Maslon, 2004, p. 172).
The Document below is a wonderful “State of American Theatre” spotlight. This document is much too hard to read in its entirety, so I won’t make you strain your eyes. But take a look, it’s amazing to see how people were so passionate about the arts years ago.
Hallie Flanagan – Director of Federal Theatre – “Is This the Time and Place?” – Delivered October 8, 1935, Washington, D. C. – First Meeting of Regional Directors-Federal Theatre Project
Links to an external site.
In our study of the Federal Theatre Project, it is important to understand the heated dynamic that unions and attempts to unionize brought to the American workplace. Tactics for establishing or breaking unions were far from civilized. Disputes often resulted in violence and retaliatory “accidents” in the workplace. Workers striving to unionize were seen as communist and un-American (Knapp, 2005).
The Cradle Will Rock (1938)
Into the storm of this emotion entered
The Cradle Will Rock, a pro-union musical produced by the Federal Theatre Project (FTP). Although there is no mention of dancing in this musical, the show must be mentioned for its contribution to the American musical.
Plot: Steelworkers who have built the country must sell out to do whatever it takes to earn a buck from those in power, making them all prostitutes. A labor organizer leads them against their oppressive employers to form a union.
The Cradle Will Rock is most well-known for the fact that it was closed down by its own producer, the FTP. The doors of the Windsor Theatre were locked on opening night. The FTP cancelled the show
An injunction was put on its actors. Director Orson Welles booked the small Venice Theatre Off Broadway and marched the opening night audience to it, where the musical was performed without scenery or costumes with the cast performing from their seats in the audience and Blitzein [who authored both the book and songs] playing on the piano. (Hischak, 2008, p. 173)
The performance of the show from theater seats displayed a clever and courageous way of getting around the injunction, which forbade the actors from appearing on stage.
The Cradle Will Rock brought musicals into a real and gritty world that did not allow the audience to escape the grim realities of the story and their connection to current issues. Both the content of
The Cradle Will Rock and the publicity derived from the controversial opening–and subsequent bare stage performances–paved the way for more political messages and protests on the Great White Way.
More FTP Productions:
Swing Mikado and
Pins and Needles
The FTP produced mainly plays. The few musicals funded by the FTP included a one evening special featuring Charles Weidman’s choreography and
Swing Mikado (1938), a modernized, black version of Gilbert and Sullivan’s
The Mikado.
The Federal Theatre Project had established a Negro Unit. A celebrated black actress, Rose McClendon, was asked to offer her opinions as to how the leadership should be set up. She replied that the Negro Unit should have a white leader from the world of theatre. Her feeling was that a white leader would have more experience than a black one. Her sentiments marked one side of a debate among black performers and creative staff. Some felt that it was important that a black leader be appointed. These people argued that blacks had been active in all aspects of theatre for decades, and a black leader would best represent black interests. Others felt that if a white leader was not appointed, the Negro Unit would be largely ignored (Woll, 1989). In the end, both sides had their way: McClendon was named co-director along with a friend, John Houseman, whom she recommended for the post (Sklaroff, 2009).
The Swing Mikado made many updates to the Gilbert and Sullivan original. The musical’s setting was changed to the South Sea Islands, and some of the music was updated to utilize the latest American swing rhythms (Woll, 1989). The show was such a hit when it played in Chicago, it broke all of FTP’s sales records. Independent producers tried various means of obtaining the show to bring it to New York—from “buying” it from the government, to bribing the cast with high salaries.
Eventually, two versions of the show opened. The FTP-sponsored show,
The Swing Mikado opened on March 1, 1939, and its competition,
The Hot Mikado, opened three weeks later.
The Hot Mikado starred Bill Robinson and made greater use of swing music and dance. The New York version of
Swing Mikado only occasionally interjected swing music and dance into the Gilbert and Sullivan score (Woll, 1989). The FTP version was also limited in its casting. Rules for federal aid stated that the cast had to be made up of a majority of unemployed actors. “Critics reviewed both
Mikado’s and gave the nod to the ‘hot’ version” (Woll, 1989, p. 180).
When legislators found out that the FTP had refused public offers to buy the show, “Congress mandated that the government
Mikado be turned over to private investors as soon as a bona fide offer was made” (Woll, 1989, p. 183). Two investors who had originally battled to obtain rights for the show bought the FTP version at a low price and moved it across the street from
Hot Mikado. Both shows closed shortly after.
Swing Mikado is notable in musical theatre history for starting a new trend in black musical theatre, taking a classic and “swinging” it into a modern, black show. The adaptation of white shows to black would be used more in the future.
In addition to promoting black theatre by creating The Negro Unit, the FTP…
…supported a new integration in theatrical life. The creative process, which in the 1920s had slowly been removed from black control, now brought whites and blacks together in all aspects of the actual planning, from costume and scenic design to lighting and electrical work. The advances were apparent onstage as well, for black performers were no longer limited to roles as menials or to roles specifically designed for black characters. Interracial casting became commonplace as the FTP program flowered, and black actors performed in dramas, comedies, and musicals. (Woll, 1989, p. 212)
Although official policy encouraged integration in all divisions of the FTP, the actual process was not always a smooth one. Some individuals occasionally defied directives.
The Daily Worker featured a stream of articles during 1937 that revealed that black actors and backstage technicians were still facing prejudice within the FTP. Black members noted the use of racial epithets, and some found that they were discriminated against in casting decisions. The source of the stories might be questioned, but it is noteworthy that director [of the FTP, Hallie] Flanagan saved these articles in her scrapbooks…Follow-up articles often revealed that offenders were either fired or forced to resign. Although prejudice continued to exist in the ranks of the FTP, the organization generally acted upon the complaint of black participants within a short period of time. In this fashion, Flanagan forcefully indicated that prejudice would not be tolerated within the Federal Theatre Project. As a result, one of the FTP’s major legacies, according to Langston Hughes and other critics, was the eventual breakdown of segregation onstage and behind the scenes as well:
With few previous exceptions, it was Federal Theater that had dared to cast Negro actors in non-Negro roles, not only on Broadway, but in its units elsewhere as well. The Federal Theater broke down not only the old taboos against colored Americans as backstage technicians, but the bars against colored actors playing other than racial roles. (Woll, 1989, p. 213)
Pins and Needles (1937 – 1108 performances!)
David Dubinsky, the powerful head of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union [ILGWU] in the 1930s, was devoted to the betterment of its members, whose numbers had tripled since the New Deal was instituted…One of his ideas was a Cultural Division, which made “good union members aware of the truth that man does not live by bread alone” (Maslon, 2004, p. 169). The largely immigrant membership was soon being offered lessons in tap dancing, mandolin playing, and elocution. In the mid-1930s, the Division had the idea of creating a musical revue by and for the members of the ILGWU. They hired a former architect turned songwriter, Harold Rome, to write it. Rehearsals for most Broadway musicals in 1937 usually involved four weeks in town, plus two on the road, but there was nothing usual about
Pins and Needles.
Rome rehearsed his cast—assembled from the ranks of stitchers, seamstresses, and cutters—after their work shift three hours a night, three nights a week, over the course of an entire year. The show opened two days after Thanksgiving in 1937, and it took some time before New York theatergoers heard about it—it played only on weekends, as the cast needed to get to bed early to rest up for their day jobs. (Maslon, 2004, p. 169)
Rome’s score set the tone for the whole show, which was not really a condemnation of the world’s evil, but rather a lighthearted look at young people in a changing society in the middle of America’s most politically engaged city. The opening number let the audience know where the hearts of these young workers lay. Here is Rose Marie Jun, from the 1962 revival cast of
Pins and Needles singing the opening song:
Rose Marie Jun: “Sing Me a Song With Social Significance”
(2010)
David Dubinsky spoke about his workers’ performances:
With zest and disarming frankness, their songs and skits punctured economic platitudes, ridiculed political insincerity, satirized the seamier side of American life, and poked fun at overseas dictators. At the same time, with wonderful freshness, they sang of pay envelopes and picket lines, of romance in the shop and Sundays in the park. All of this they did with the enthusiasm and attractive amateurishness that drew the high and mighty to sit in their small theater among ILGWU members and to cheer performance after performance. (Cited in Maslon, 2004, p. 170)
Michael Denning, Professor of American Studies at Yale University, and the Director of the Initiative on Labor and Culture, states: “The success of
Pins and Needles lay in its union of class, ethnic, and feminist energies, in the way it sang for young Jewish and Italian working-class women of the garment trades” (1998, p. 306). Denning goes on to say that
Pins and Needles was never meant to be anti-Communist or feminist, but the fact that the majority of the cast was women and the content pro-union gave the show an edge of both.
The feminism of
Pins and Needles was in part a result of the fact that…it was not a play, scripted in advance and then performed. The songs and sketches of the revue were interchangeable, and they were written and rewritten, added and dropped, throughout the year and a half of rehearsals and the three years of performances…As the satires of international politics came and went, the labor feminism of the working women’s songs became the backbone of the show. (Denning, 1998, p. 306)
However, success allowed for modifications in the show that did not necessarily unify the cast. Political and ethnic prejudice played out behind the scenes.
The show’s impresario, Louis Schaffer, was bitterly anti-Communist…Several cast members later claimed that if Schaffer learned someone was a Communist, he would fire them; both the first director, Charles Friedman, and one of the stars, Millie Weitz, were pushed out for their Communist politics…Moreover, Louis Schaffer was as wary of the casts’ accents as of their radical politics: “eventually Schaffer weeded out those pople with thick Jewish accents,” cast member Al Levy recalled. Human Goldstein was asked to change his name by the show’s public relations man, and he became Hy Gardner; and Schaffer tried to persuade both Rubinstein and Harary [two of the show’s stars] to get nose jobs…Finally,
Pins and Needles never escaped the labor relations of the culture industry itself. “I was a shop-worker and getting into
Pins and Needles was like being freed from slavery,” Joe Alfasa recalled. But the world of Broadway was itself a workplace, and there were conflicts between the Labor Stage and Actors’ Equity over the status of these “amateur” peformers…The first company were all amateurs; subsequent companies included more and more semiprofessionals. (Denning, 1998, pp. 307-8)
Among these “semiprofessionals” were Katherine Dunham and her dance troupe.
Katherine Dunham
Like the other modern dance choreographers that we discussed earlier, Katherine Dunham’s career included both concert dance and Broadway musical choreography and performance. According to author Susan Manning, Dunham successfully used her Broadway dance jobs to finance her less lucrative evenings of concert dance (2005).
Dunham’s choreography reflected the richness and diversity of her extraordinary background. In the video, Dunham is discussed in terms of her contributions to modern dance, however, all of the clips of her choreography are Broadway stage and film performances. Dunham blended her innovative dance vocabulary with a strong awareness of theatricality. The worlds of concert dance and theatre dance were intertwined in Dunham’s revolutionary choreography.
A producer for the Labor Stage saw a company performance in Chicago and hired Dunham as the dance director for the 1940 edition of
Pins and Needles. Dunham brought most of her company with her, and they performed company repertory (Manning, 2005).
Interestingly, Dunham is not credited for
Pins and Needles in any chronicle of American musical theatre that I could find, including some of the most comprehensive inventories available:
·
Broadway: Its History, People, and Places: An Encyclopedia by Ken Bloom
·
Broadway Musicals, Show by Show by Stanley Green & Kay Green
·
The Cambridge Guide to American Theatre by Don B. Wilmeth
·
American Musical Theatre: A Chronicle by Gerald Martin Bordman
· ibdb.com: the internet datatbase for Broadway shows
It is only in cultural studies of black Americans and in Dunham’s own memoirs that she is given credit for her contributions to the show.
While choreographing for and performing in
Pins and Needles, Dunham’s company performed Sunday concert revues at the same theatre (Windsor Theatre). One revue was called
Tropics and Le Jazz Hot: From Haiti to Harlem.
“With
L’Ag’Ya and
Tropics and Le Jazz Hot: From Haiti to Harlem, Dunham revealed her magical mix of dance and theater — the essence of ‘the Dunham touch’ –a savvy combination of authentic Caribbean dance and rhythms with the heady spice of American showbiz. Genuine folk material was presented with lavish costumes, plush settings, and the orchestral arrangements based on Caribbean rhythms and folk music. Dancers moved through fantastical tropical paradises or artistically designed juke-joints, while a loose storyline held together a succession of diverse dances (Sommer, n.d., “Katherine Dunham”).
The “revue” ran for several weeks and received a mix of reactions. In her essay, “Watching Dunham’s Dances,” Susan Manning discusses the challenges of the black choreographer: If a black choreographer choreographs with an “Africanist” style, her dance is considered a reproduction of folk dance, not as the choreography of an artist. If she choreographs in a “white” style she is seen as inauthentic and “derivative” and is accused of using movement that is “alien” to black dancers (2005).
If Dunham’s repertory was diverse, it was also coherent. “Tropics and le Jazz Hot: From Haiti to Harlem” incorporated dances from the West Indies as well as from Cuba and Mexico in its “Tropics” section, while the “Le Jazz Hot” section featured early black American social dances, such as the Juba, Cake Walk, Ballin’ the Jack, and Strut. The sequencing of dances, the theatrical journey from the tropics to urban black America implied–in the most entertaining terms–the realities of cultural connections through time. (Sommer, n.d., “Katherine Dunham”)
In 1940, Dunham and her company appeared in the black Broadway musical,
Cabin in the Sky, staged by George Balanchine. Dunham played the sultry siren, Georgia Brown–a character related to Dunham’s other seductress, “Woman with a Cigar,” from her solo “Shore Excursion” in
Tropics.
Katherine Dunham used her celebrity to advocate for civil rights for African Americans. While touring with her company, she protested segregated theatre seating.
Sometimes there were outrageous confrontations, such as the story company members tell about how Dunham, in a segregated theater in the South, turned around and showed her rear end to the audience, saying, ‘Until people like me can sit with people like you,’ the company could not and would not perform. (DeFrantz, 2002, p. 342)
Dunham’s reputation as a luminous modern/African dance revolutionary far exceeds her notoriety on Broadway. However, she did contribute to the diverse offering of dance genres on Broadway, and her journey further illustrates black/white issues on the Great White Way.
“Fighting segregation in hotels, restaurants and theaters, she filed lawsuits and made public condemnations. In Hollywood, she refused to sign a lucrative studio contract when the producer said she would have to replace some of her darker-skinned company members” (Sommer, n.d., “Katherine Dunham”).
Epilogue
With concert dance choreographers such as Doris Humphrey, Charles Weidman, Katherine Dunham and George Balanchine came an influx of professionally trained ballet and modern dancers to the Broadway stage (Wilmeth, 2007). Then, Jack Cole added numbers of elite, newly-trained jazz dancers to the mix. After that, with the possible exception of the Rockettes, tap dancing and tap dancers plummeted in popularity, and interest in them would not return until the 1970s (Wilmeth, 2007).
image1
Order an Essay Now & Get These Features For Free:
Turnitin Report
Formatting
Title Page
Citation
Outline
