His Choreographic Style:
“Though physically small and asthmatic, Fosse was a dance prodigy; …With pigeon toes and slouching posture, Fosse hardly fit the dance ideal so he focused more on rhythm and style to make up for what he lacked physically.”
Bob Fosse used his imperfections to create his own technique that focused around the imperfections of a dancer’s body to implicate new moves and poses. It focused the most on the hips, belly, shoulders, and isolated areas of the body rather than the legs and feet. Along with his movement style came a specific style of dress as well. His trademark dance sported a bowler hat, black pants, and vest and sleek. This style of dress can also be explained since his idol and influence was Astaire and he also used props like hats, chairs, and canes.
"I was getting pretty bald for a hoofer and felt a hat would hide it. Canes became important to me when my hands started trembling and seemed like a good way to distract the audience." --from The Boston Globe, September 6, 1998.
In addition to the isolated body parts and attire of his dances, his choreography was recognized as a developed jazz dance style that had a stylized, “cynical sexuality.” Distinctions of his styles included movements such as turned-in knees, sideways shuffling, and rolled shoulders.
Even though Bob Fosse created a stylized dance, you must also have technique to be able to attain his combinations. Only a talented and versatile dancer can truly master the Fosse style. A fosse dancer must have a strong tecnique in ballet, tap (influenced in his movement because he started out learning this as a child), and jazz. As well as dancing, a person must also be able to sing and act. While dancing a Fosse performance, dancers would be required to sing and be able to express themselves with their bodies and stage presence as any actor could using character and dialogue.
Although Fosse's movements are based around his own body, some may consider his movement style to be sultry and inappropriate. For example, a scholarly source explains a scene. "Certainly the cabaret audience in the film is positioned as being morally guilty by placing them in a mirror relationship to the grotesque performers on stage." Normally dance movements are not characterized as grotesque or adjectives like this. One must look at his choreography as a whole and be open minded as to its pure meaning and difficult technique.
I too am really crazy about Fosse so I'm slightly biased but I find it had to believe that critiques would find it "grotesque". When you watch an inspirational movie such as "Rudy" or "Radio" you don't have something bad to say afterward. When you learn about how America was the underdog but we still won the revolutionary war and our independence it is impossible not to feel pride. When I view the special olmpics I am chanting right along with the rest of the viewers.
ReplyDeleteI realize that Bob Fosse didn't win a war or the special olympics but when he overcame so many physical defects that are not normally tolerated in the dance world to become one of the most accomplished choreographers of his time I think that major praise is in order.
I love the quote at the beginning of this blog post, because it had never occurred to me that Fosse's slouching posture and pigeon toes had ever been a bad thing. They have come to be so welcomed because of his aesthetic, and his aesthetic spreading into other techniques and areas of dance, that I never even thought of them as something that could have once been looked down upon. It makes me very curious how the rest of us could take the things others don't like about our bodies, such as in auditions or class, and use them to create our own choreographic aesthetic.
ReplyDeleteI think Fosse is a really good example of creating your own aesthetic. I feel like it is a very hard thing to do everything so differently from everyone else. I admire how he followed his own affinities and created something totally new. He is such a different mover than anyone else that we studied.
ReplyDeleteAlmost anybody would see a physical limitation as a reason to quit, but visionaries like Fosse use that to their advantage. He took qualities that were previously frowned upon in dance and made his own style that epitomizes cool.
ReplyDeleteI recently watched All That Jazz, however prior to watching it I didn't fully understand the caliber of a dancer one needed to be to be a "Fosse Dancer". Within the first 10 minutes of the move the dancers where leaping and turning so fast and high with flawless transitions i couldn't stop watching!
ReplyDeleteBob Fosse has been a name that I've heard a lot, but don't know too much about. I didn't realize his style came from his own imperfections in his body. But I love this quote, "Even though Bob Fosse created a stylized dance, you must also have technique to be able to attain his combinations." I believe that all dancers should be trained, in whatever form they are doing. Althought Fosse is it's own style, as many differen't choreographers are, the dancers who are dancing their works, must be trained.
ReplyDeleteI love the quote about his presentation of 'cynical sexuality' that is such a 20th century term in light of all the shifts in sexual expression and freedom that occurred in that century. It makes a lot of sense that Fosse's dances expressed this cynicism. I wonder if his work would be different now that as a culture we have suffered the AIDS epidemic and are celebrating the advent of legalizing gay marriage. Would his work reflect grief, hope, optimism, a return to innocence? We will never know...too bad.
ReplyDeleteI love the quotes from him!!!!!!
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