Jazz Blog - 1st year 2019/20

Jerome Robbins

Jerome Robbins was a choreographer and director of ballets as well as Broadway shows. Some of his ballets include 'Fancy Free', 'The Concert' and 'In the Night' which have been performed by New York City Ballet. 'West Side Story' and 'Fiddler on the Roof' are examples of his Broadway shows. He was very successful within his career, winning many awards such as 4 Tony awards and an Emmy award (Jerome Robbins Foundation, 2020). His Broadway shows were often very dramatic with an aim to make male dancers look masculine and using his knowledge on utilising non-dancers. One feature of his work is “electric pacing, and tense, volatile dance sequences” (Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2019). This makes his work stand out as it has contrasting dynamics to how classical ballet would usually be perceived as it suggests strong sharp and quick movements. This is shown within our Billie Eilish routine as there is a lot of quick movements such as turns, jumps and arm movements which are very fast paced and have to be performed with impact. This means we have to use more plié especially in turns and travelling movements so we are able to perform the steps accurately and to hit the next position. Another feature within his work is that he wanted his dancers to have a natural style while still being engaged with the audience (Davis, 2020). This helps his performers enhance their characterisation especially within his Broadway pieces but also helps keep the engagement of the audience when watching. This is reflected in our routine as at the beginning of the piece we stand in a wide second position with an intense eye contact with the audience, the idea of connecting with the audience is repeated throughout the piece during movement and stillness which helps us as dancers create an atmosphere for our performance. One last feature within his work is that he often themes his work around communities, villages, tribes etc. Despite his personal life being conflicted between his sexuality and religion, his dances portrayed the idea of friendship and resilience (Davis, 2020). This is demonstrated in our Billie Eilish routine as toward the end of the piece we travel into a clump finish which may imply the idea of communities or groups of friends similar to what is used in his work. I think this idea of communities makes his work unique as there is a deep theme behind his choreography. I also think that as he was mostly ballet focussed, it gives more depth and technicality behind his choreography.

Bob Fosse

Fosse was very diverse within his career as a director of films and a choreographer of Broadway and cabaret shows. He was very successful in his career, earning an Oscar, 3 Emmy awards, a BAFTA and many other awards (IMDB, 2020). Some of his most famous works include ‘All That Jazz’, ‘Cabaret’, ‘Sweet Charity’ and ‘Chicago’ (Barson, n.d.). His work was very different to styles seen before, they were provocative, sexual, humorous and very physically demanding. His style was inspired by his own ability to dance, he had physical limitations which inspired his unique dance style. For example, he didn’t have great turn out so he would use turned in legs, he also had bad posture so his dances feature walks in which the dancers lean forwards or backwards. He also regularly wore and used gloves and a hat within his choreography to cover his hair loss (Davis, 2020). Common features within his choreography are splayed hands and sharp isolated movements such as small arm movements and jutting of the hips. This is represented within our routine ‘Juggernaut’ as there is a section where we are in a V shape and we perform isolated movements such as stretching our right arm up to a diagonal with a sharp head turn to the hand which is splayed. Another example is when we jut our hip to the audience with an assertive manner. This adds a contrast to other movements within his style which may be slower and more seductive. Another feature of his work is strutting. As mentioned before due to his physical limitations, he created abstract walks. These feature in our routine as we do ‘fosse walks’ to travel across the stage. We perform these by leaning back, engaging the abs and glutes, extending the leg out far which arms, cinched at the shoulder blades behind the back waving towards the extending legs. This movement is very typical of his style and stands out as before his work, there was no similar movement as it is very personal to him. His work is unique because while he was inspired by other choreographers such as Jack Cole, he created a very different style of jazz with movements such as the ‘jazz hand’ which are now widely used in jazz dance.

Jack Cole

Jack Cole is known as the ‘father of theatrical jazz dance’ (Streetswing, 2013). He was trained as a modern dancer which helped shape his style of jazz by merging different styles of dance to make a technical jazz style. He was also trained in Indian dance “bharata natyam”, Cecchetti Ballet and explored Afro-Caribbean and lindy hop. He used all these styles to influence him in his ‘urban folk dance’ choreography (Rizzuto, 2013). Cole performed and choreographed for Broadway and later in his life choreographed for films, tv shows and nightclubs. Some of his choreographies include ‘Gilda’, ‘Gentlemen prefer Blondes’ and ‘Man of La Macha’ which he was nominated a Tony award for (Rizzuto, 2013). Cole used the idea of low plié in his work, power and gravity, isolation and syncopation. He used a lot of deep plié for its power and also used a lot of parallel fourth positions and changes in direction. Cole was also trained in Indian dancing which helped inspire some of his movements, particularly isolations of the neck, shoulders, ribs and hips (Davis, 2020). Our Jason Derulo dance features a lot of isolations throughout, specifically the ribs and arms which shows a clear link to Cole’s style of jazz which was influenced by his Indian dance training. Another feature of his style which is used in our routine is the use of deep plié, this is used with almost every step to give the illusion of being grounded and to add power and dynamics to our movement. It also allows us to travel more when necessary and adds a contrast to other movements by using different levels. In our routine there is also a lot of parallel fourth positions which I previously mentioned as a feature of his style, this is also combined with a deep plié at the start of our routine when we step forward. The use of change in direction in used in a box step in partners and during walks. These features in his work makes his choreography unique because he draws on many different aspects of dance, outside of ballet and jazz such as Indian and African styles. This allows a lot of unique movement to be created which stands out against other choreographers and has since inspired other choreographers such as Fosse.

REFERENCES

Barson, M. (n.d.). Bob Fosse | Biography, Musicals, Movies, & Facts. [online] Encyclopedia Britannica. Available at: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Bob-Fosse [Accessed 2 Mar. 2020].

Davis, C. (2020). 1st Year - Bob Fosse. [online] Missdavisbtuk.blogspot.com. Available at: https://missdavisbtuk.blogspot.com/2020/02/1st-year-bob-fosse.html [Accessed 2 Mar. 2020].

Davis, C. (2020). 1st Year - Jack Cole. [online] Missdavisbtuk.blogspot.com. Available at: https://missdavisbtuk.blogspot.com/2020/02/1st-year-jack-cole.html [Accessed 2 Mar. 2020].

Davis, C. (2020). 1st Year - Jerome Robbins. [online] Missdavisbtuk.blogspot.com. Available at: https://missdavisbtuk.blogspot.com/2020/02/1st-year-jerome-robbins.html [Accessed 2 Mar. 2020]

Encyclopedia Britannica. (2019). Jerome Robbins | American choreographer. [online] Available at: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jerome-Robbins [Accessed 2 Mar. 2020].

IMDb. (n.d.). Bob Fosse - IMDb. [online] Available at: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0002080/awards [Accessed 2 Mar. 2020].

Rizzuto, R. (2013). Afaliah Tribune Makes Age-Appropriate Hip-Hop Music for Class. [online] Dance Teacher. Available at: https://www.dance-teacher.com/afaliah-tribune-makes-age-appropriate-hip-hop-music-for-class-2645090276.html [Accessed 2 Mar. 2020].

Streetswing.com. (2013). Jack Cole |Father of Theatrical Jazz. [online] Available at: https://www.streetswing.com/histmai2/d2jcole1.htm [Accessed 2 Mar. 2020].