{"id":1780,"date":"2019-04-29T17:33:32","date_gmt":"2019-04-29T16:33:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/?p=1780"},"modified":"2019-04-29T17:34:42","modified_gmt":"2019-04-29T16:34:42","slug":"change-the-dance-change-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/2019\/04\/change-the-dance-change-the-world.html","title":{"rendered":"Change the dance, change the world"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Bob Fosse and Jerome Robbins: two geniuses who sound as\nhorrible to work with as they were inspiring to watch. Two artists whose\nchoreography is tightly locked into the DNA of the silver-plated shows they\nhelped create.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unpicking their movement from those landmark Manhattan\nmusicals is tough \u2013 Robbins\u2019 West Side\nStory<\/em> gangboys who stake a leaping, finger-clicking claim on the streets;\nFosse\u2019s Sweet Charity <\/em>hardnuts with\njutting hips and shoulders and a cold-eyed swivel. Two new revivals set major\nBritish choreographers on that hallowed material, and the movement world they\ncreate not only changes the dances themselves, but how we see the show itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I briefly reviewed both West Side Story<\/em> (choreographed by Aletta Collins at Manchester\u2019s Royal Exchange) and Sweet Charity<\/em> (Wayne McGregor at the Donmar in London) for the Sunda<\/a>y<\/em> Times<\/a><\/em>. New choreography? It\u2019s about ever mother-lovin\u2019 time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aletta Collins<\/a> is an interesting choice for West Side Story<\/a> <\/em>(1957). Her sensibility involves a very British seam of quirk and eccentricity and she\u2019s made contemporary dance rather than classical ballet \u2013 but, like Robbins, she has directed and choreographed a wide range of musicals and operas. She offered a nice line when asked<\/a> whether her West Side Story<\/em> would include the original\u2019s trademark finger clicks \u2013 yes, she said, \u2018but maybe I\u2019ve put them in different places.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s true. On the Royal Exchange\u2019s in-the-round stage, the\nhoodlums and buddy boys, the women who walk in their wake, thicken the air with\nmenace. The Converse-shod cast of loose-limbed bodies can tense up in a second:\neveryone looks ready to rumble. Collins builds a vocabulary of slouch and\nswivel on the streets, but in the dance hall turns on the kapow in an instant. In\nthe mambo, cheeky toes and shoulders lash out with kickboxing fervour. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

If Robbins\u2019 sidewalk jockeys are still his enduring West\nSide image, Collins and the director Sarah Franckom locate the piece\u2019s heart in\nthe abstract number Somewhere. It\u2019s a gorgeous piece of staging. Instead of an\nanonymous, ethereal soprano, the singer is Anybodys (Emily Langham), the Jets\u2019\nscorned tomboy hanger-on. It\u2019s a number about remaking the world, finding a new\nway of living \u2013 and a girl who won\u2019t stay quiet in a skirt has as many reasons\nto hope for a new reality as an amorous gangboy or rebelliously obedient\ndaughter. Collins sensuously refashions her mambo, and it\u2019s beautiful to see\nthe armoured bodies open up, soften, unspool their vulnerable places. The\nadvantage of the Exchange\u2019s relatively small ensemble means we know all these\nfaces, recognise their fears and frowns. Suddenly they unbend, and we look\ntheir dreams in the eye. The world they inherit can be wider than this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

People even smile – Fosse would have had them shot<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Sweet Charity<\/a> <\/em>(1966), its ever-hopeful heroine ever-unlucky in love, is ar New York story from the following decade. Wayne McGregor<\/a>, an audacious artist, has rethought ballet in Chroma<\/em> or Woolf Works<\/em>. Like Collins, he\u2019s worked quite a bit in theatre, but less distinctively, and although he loosens the Fosse template, this never feels like a passion project. Maybe, for this tale of feminism long overdue, a female choreographer could have brought an iconoclastic edge?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Or maybe McGregor defers to his collaborators \u2013 notably director Josie Rourke and designer Robert Jones, who nudge the story across town to Andy Warhol\u2019s silver-wrapped Factory. It wasn\u2019t an easy place \u2013 personality was currency in Andy\u2019s world \u2013 but Warhol was a magnet for the big city\u2019s lost souls, scooping up misfits and making them shine. Fosse\u2019s snarling Manhattan seems more kindly in this setting. Take the Rich Man\u2019s Frug at the swanky nightclub, which Fosse gives an intimidating sheen. McGregor dresses everyone as Warhol (pictured above by Johan Persson<\/em>) \u2013 peroxide wig, shades, stacked gold boots \u2013 and the number is warmer, more fun to inhabit with its poodle punches, swivel and flap. People even smile \u2013 Fosse would have had them shot for that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The dancehall hostesses are bored and raging in Big\nSpender, propped against aluminium ladders like surplus stock in B&Q.\nAgain, it\u2019s a small ensemble on a small stage \u2013 they eyeball us and give the\nodd discomforting pelvic retch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fosse\u2019s acts of Charity \u2013 Gwen Verdon on stage, Shirley\nMaclaine on film \u2013 radiated an optimism that ran smack into a harsh, sneering\nworld. Anne-Marie Duff may not be the slickest hoofer, but she radiates too \u2013 incandescent\ngrin, hiccupping chuckle \u2013 yet her eyes are red with hurt. She\u2019s not the\nyoungest actor to play the role \u2013 which means you register the lines about how\nshe\u2019s been doing temporary dance hall duties for gulp, eight years. She and\nRourke increasingly refocus the episodic story so that it\u2019s not about what the\nworld does to Charity, but about the questions she asks of it. As in\nManchester, the keynote anthem is displaced \u2013 not the expected Big Spender, but\nWhere Am I Going? It\u2019s not a question of finding love \u2013 especially not with\nthese blowhards and bumblebrains \u2013 but finding herself, and finding the will to\nchange her life on her own terms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Follow David on Twitter: @mrdavidjays<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bob Fosse and Jerome Robbins: two geniuses who sound as horrible to work with as they were inspiring to watch. Two artists whose choreography is tightly locked into the DNA of the silver-plated shows they helped create. Unpicking their movement from those landmark Manhattan musicals is tough \u2013 Robbins\u2019 West Side Story gangboys who stake […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1781,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[29,143,560,542,34],"class_list":{"0":"post-1780","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"tag-dance","9":"tag-donmar","10":"tag-josie-rourke","11":"tag-musical","12":"tag-theatre","13":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1780","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1780"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1780\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1783,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1780\/revisions\/1783"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1781"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1780"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1780"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1780"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}