A black dancer and an Irish dancer faced off at a dance contest in New York in the 19th century. They take turns trying to outperform each other with unique and invincible steps and rhythms. It is both hostile and congressional. That is because it presupposes and encourages a kind of commonality in breeding hybrids. This is the main scene of American dance and its version is now on Broadway.
Whether it’s a revival, a jukebox musical, or a reimagination of a distant history, many of the recent Broadway dances are past dances. Since it is a theater, the purpose is less historical fidelity than convincing. The choreography needs to describe how people were moving in a way that was meaningful to today’s people. But that constraint is possible. Seeing current performers embodying old dance, we may feel how the present and the past are connected in our bodies.
That possibility applies to all five Tony Award-nominated shows in this year’s choreography. Each subject is, in a sense, historical. However, the most direct approach to the history of dance is “Paradise Square”. A musical about the black and Irish inhabitants of the Five Points district in the 1860s. Decades ago, the area was an important place for interracial interaction and invention, a nursery for not only tap dance, but also American theater dance in general, which has long characterized Broadway musicals.
The story, set mainly in an izakaya where cultural exchanges are active, seems to be centered and inevitable for dance. No one knows exactly what the dance at Five Point looked like and how it sounded, so Bill T. Jones, who heads the team of choreographers, has an idea on the part of blacks and Africans (juva dance). , Cry) can be arranged freely. Irish (a fast step familiar in “River Dance”). However, this choreography is subtle and original only in comparison to the score and the lack of those qualities in the book. It doesn’t convince.
The Irish dance, credited to Jason Olemes and Garrett Coleman, is somewhat well served, partly due to the support of the music Irish cliché. Two of what the program calls “Irish dancers” (Coleman and Colin Barkel) play little role in the plot and are temporarily impressive with a burst of footwork. But even though the story is built off that black vs. Irish dance, the dance is different from the similarities that attracted each other to how and why the black and Irish dances mixed with us. I don’t feel the point.
It’s an opportunity I missed. “Paradise Square” may have staged a return to shocking and thrilling sources, especially black sources. Instead, in a terribly flawed show, it provides a kind of choreography that inspires comments like “But wasn’t the dance good?” Not enough.
The resurrection of the proven classic “The Music Man” is a much simpler choreographic assignment. Warren Carlyle does a good job. He has a good nostalgia for the taste of the “new step” of the 1910s. The origin of these movements in places like Iowa, musical stages, and places like Five Points before spreading to Broadway’s white stage is not part of the story. Therefore, Carlyle can focus on placing a large cast of skilled dancers. If it’s all a little cautious and overwhelming, so is the rest of the production.
Carlyle still asks professionals to choreograph Broadway, even if they aren’t inspired. “Six” is much more up-to-date, even though it’s about Henry VIII’s wife. The concept of the show is to give them a voice by casting as a contemporary pop diva inspired by Beyonce and Rihanna. I think you can see some kind of dance in the song contest. These are dancing singers, and when each queen changes order, the other queens act as a backup for all pop diva to co-direct.
This is the current dance, and choreographer Carrie-Anne Ingrouille is familiar with this genre and its variations. The ratio of sus and sex and empowerment movements, even the necessary lack of dance in Adele-style heartache. She keeps the action tight and fluid, allowing the performer to save enough breath for all belts. Like a clever and catchy pastiche song, the choreography identifies its source without direct quoting. It gives us the joy of finding out what we already know in contexts where we may not expect it.
The show about Michael Jackson, the king of pop and one of the great dance singers, may seem to seek a similar approach. But like many other methods, the “MJ” is another beast. Being a jukebox musical, it’s important to listen to the songs you know and love. However, many of these songs are already closely tied to Jackson’s highly influential music video choreography of the 1980s. This is not just a style of the times that can be reproduced in general. Many people know the words and melody and know every step.
What does “MJ” choreographer Christopher Wheeldon do? In the part of the show that covers Jackson’s early life, the years of Motown and Soul Train, Wheeldon can work idiomatically, borrowing style to tell a story. But when the timeline reaches the arrival of MTV, he balks and teases the dancer with some of the zombie boogie from the “thriller” behind the stage.
Indeed, Act 2 begins with a verbatim reproduction of Jackson’s groundbreaking Motown 25 “Billie Jean” performance. And Miles Frost, who plays adult Jackson, is an amazing imitator. (He dances “Billie Jean” a little better than Jackson.) But elsewhere, Wheeldon continues to replace the original choreography with his own, and I’m a lifelong Jackson fan. As both a dance critic and a dance critic, I continued to feel my heart sinking.
Effective replacement must be an improvement. Wheeldon is a crowd control and transition expert (and a very skilled ballet choreographer), but what Jackson at the show calls “smell jelly”: funk, swing, or real five-point. I hardly feel what the dancers called it. Despite the help of Rich and Tone Tarawega, who worked with Jackson, Wheeldon continues to bend from its core, straightening the rhythmic complexity and strangeness of Jackson’s dance.
The most striking moment is the dancer scene that inspired Jackson. The expressions of Nicholas Brothers and Fred Astaire show how this great imitator created the style because he didn’t understand what Jackson saw in them (rhythms and attacks dating back to five points). Endless imitation that cannot be completely communicated. The only predecessor that “MJ” understands is Bob Fosse. Bob Fosse’s easy-to-mimic style defines the boundaries of Broadway Dance, where the “MJ” continues to recede.
A good director may have pointed this out. However, the director of “MJ” is Wheeldon (he, of course, had to deal with many other Jackson-related issues). There is a powerful Broadway precedent for combining these roles, established by Jerome Robbins. But among Tony’s candidates this year, Wheeldon isn’t the best example of how it can help the show.
This is Camille A. Brown. “For a colored girl thinking of suicide / when the rainbow is Enuf.” What the dancing poet author Ntozake Shange called “Coleo Poem”. The show was a hit on Broadway in 1976, but even though the text became standard, the format wasn’t common. Brown, who oversees and choreographs this revival, will be one of the very few black women to play both roles on Broadway shows. (The last thing that comes to her mind is Katherine Dunham in 1955.) That fact is important, but also how she uses the combined forces. She restores her work as an expression of dance-centric culture.
The seven women of the cast recite poetry and they are always dancing in sadness and joy. They dance in a girl’s game that becomes an adult play that is part of Shange’s original concept. However, Brown has added American Sign Language to further accentuate the weave of language and movement. Like the “Six” cast, these women back up each other with a dance. But in Brown’s vision, you can also feel their connection in a way that resonates with the silent body of others by exposing her solitude about abortion, abuse, and self-discovery.
This is not what we know and expect about Broadway choreography. But unlike “Paradise Square,” it’s a powerful return to sources. Dance, Shange once wrote, “It’s a way to remember what we can’t say.” Brown reminds us.