The Fosse Style

Even people with the barest interest in Broadway can recognize the unique, angular, sensual style of Bob Fosse. With its small gestures and isolated movements, it is frequently copied--and often misinterpreted. For there is far more to it than bowler hats and white gloves, which is why choreographer Debra McWaters has put together the ultimate visual and verbal guide to Fosse's way of dancing, choreographing, and teaching. Using hundreds of photographs, as well as descriptions from Fosse himself, McWaters guides dancers and teachers through the process of understanding the intricacies of this style of jazz dance. An assistant to Gwen Verdon on Fosse, a long-time associate of Ann Reinking, and personal choreographer for Ben Vereen, McWaters is uniquely situated to write this book. The Fosse Style provides facts, not guesswork, about how to execute Fosse's signature movements, information handed down from an illustrious list of artists and performers. It closes with a sample dance featuring Fosse's signature moves. No dancer or fan of such shows as The Pajama Game, Damn Yankees!, Sweet Charity, Cabaret, Pippin, or Chicago can afford to be without this book.

Bob Fosse (1927-1987) is recognized as one of the most significant figures in post-World War II American musical theater. With his first Broadway musical, The Pajama Game in 1954, the "Fosse style" was already fully developed, with its trademark hunched shoulders, turned-in stance, and stuttering, staccato jazz movements. Fosse moved decisively into the role of director with Redhead in 1959 and was a key figure in the rise of the director-choreographer in the Broadway musical. He also became the only star director of musicals of his era--a group that included Jerome Robbins, Gower Champion, Michael Kidd, and Harold Prince--to equal his Broadway success in films. Following his unprecedented triple crown of show business awards in 1973 (an Oscar for Cabaret, Emmy for Liza with a Z, and Tony for Pippin), Fosse assumed complete control of virtually every element of his projects. But when at last he had achieved complete autonomy, his final efforts, the film Star 80 and the musical Big Deal, written and directed by Fosse, were rejected by audiences and critics. A fascinating look at the evolution of Fosse as choreographer and director, Big Deal: Bob Fosse and Dance in the American Musical considers Fosse's career in the context of changes in the Broadway musical theater over four decades. It traces his early dance years and the importance of mentors George Abbott and Jerome Robbins on his work. It examines how each of the important women in his adult life--all dancers--impacted his career and influenced his dance aesthetic. Finally, the book investigates how his evolution as both artist and individual mirrored the social and political climate of his era and allowed him to comfortably ride a wave of cultural changes.

The authoritative and endlessly revealing biography of renowned dancer, choreographer, screenwriter, and director Bob Fosse, written by a bestselling pop culture historian.

Presents the life and accomplishments of one of America's best choreographers who developed his own style of dancing and is responsible for the musicals "Steam Heat" and "Damn Yankees."

Presents the life and accomplishments of one of America's best choreographers who developed his own style of dancing and is responsible for the musicals "Steam Heat" and "Damn Yankees."

The Routledge Companion to the Contemporary Musical is dedicated to the musical’s evolving relationship to American culture in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. In the past decade-and-a-half, international scholars from an ever-widening number of disciplines and specializations have been actively contributing to the interdisciplinary field of musical theater studies. Musicals have served not only to mirror the sociopolitical, economic, and cultural tenor of the times, but have helped shape and influence it, in America and across the globe: a genre that may seem, at first glance, light-hearted and escapist serves also as a bold commentary on society. Forty-four essays examine the contemporary musical as an ever-shifting product of an ever-changing culture. This volume sheds new light on the American musical as a thriving, contemporary performing arts genre, one that could have died out in the post-Tin Pan Alley era but instead has managed to remain culturally viable and influential, in part by newly embracing a series of complex contradictions. At present, the American musical is a live, localized, old-fashioned genre that has simultaneously developed into an increasingly globalized, tech-savvy, intensely mediated mass entertainment form. Similarly, as it has become increasingly international in its scope and appeal, the stage musical has also become more firmly rooted to Broadway—the idea, if not the place—and thus branded as a quintessentially American entertainment.

"Everything is Choreography: The Musical Theater of Tommy Tune is the first full-scale analysis of the work of Tommy Tune, and his place in a lineage of Broadway's great director-choreographers. The decade of the 1980s was considered a low point for the American musical. Tune's predecessors in the art of complete musical staging like Jerome Robbins, Bob Fosse, Gower Champion, and Michael Bennett were either dead or withdrawn from the Broadway arena. Yet it was the period of Tune's greatest success. The book examines how he adapted to an increasingly corporatized, high-stakes producing and funding environment. It considers how Tune kept the American musical a thriving, creative enterprise at a time when Broadway was dominated by British imports. It investigates Tune's work of the last twenty-five years, when he shifted his attentions to touring and regional productions, far from the glare of Broadway. Unlike his fellow director-choreographers, Tune also maintained a successful performing career, and the book details the deft balancing act that kept him working as a popular singer-dancer-actor while directing a series of striking and influential Broadway musicals"--

Traces the American musical from its rich beginnings in European opera. This book talks about the infancy of the musical - the revues, operettas, and early musical comedies, as well as the groundbreaking shows like "Oklahoma!" and "Show Boat", with references to how history, literature, fashion, popular music and movies influenced musical theater.