York U



American Musicals & Race - Flower Drum Song, Carmen Jones, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers and Sweet Charity

DANC 1500 – The Dance Experience

Dr. Bridget Cauthery

Lecture Notes - November 2nd, 2011

History of Musical Theatre

• Musicals grew out of the musical comedy acts of vaudeville.

• Instead of short skits, musicals are full evening shows.

• Musicals are characterized by dialogue interspersed with songs.

• Musical theatre is closely related to opera.

• The 20th century "book musical" has been defined as a musical play where the songs and dances are fully integrated into a well-made story, with serious dramatic goals, that are able to evoke genuine emotions other than laughter.

What makes a musical?

• The three main components of a musical are the music, the lyrics, and the book.

• The book refers to the "play" or story of the show 

• The music and lyrics together form the score of the musical.

• When the emotion becomes too strong for speech you sing; when it becomes too strong for song, you dance.

• The creative team for a musical includes a director, a musical director and usually a choreographer.

The Golden Age of Broadway Musicals

• The Golden Age of the Broadway musical is generally considered to have begun with Oklahoma! (1943) and to have ended with Hair (1968).

• Musicals in this period sought to emulate a utopian ideal.

Dyer’s Five Categories for Creating Utopia in Musicals

• Abundance

• Energy

• Transparency

• Community

• Intensity

Integrated Musicals

• Some producers of musicals aimed to integrate white and non-white performers (eg. Stormy Weather).

• Others chose to portray wholesale conceptions of race – black musicals for black folks, white musicals for white folks, etc.

• This was simultaneously a reflection of marketing and prejudice.

American Musicals & Race

• Carmen Jones is a 1943 Broadway musical, later made into a 1954 musical film.

• It is an updating of the Georges Bizet opera Carmen in an African-American setting.

• The Broadway musical was produced by Billy Rose, using an all-black cast.

• Seven Brides for Seven Brothers is a musical film released in 1954 about the settling of the American (white) West.

• The film is particularly known for the choreography by Michael Kidd, who made dance numbers out of such mundane frontier pursuits as chopping wood and barn-raising.

• Flower Drum Song (1961) is the first all-Asian musical.

• Written by Rodgers and Hammerstein, it is based on the 1957 novel of the same name by Chinese American author C. Y. Lee.

• The musical focuses on the issues of cultural conflict and the generation gap.

• Sweet Charity (1966)

• Music by Cy Coleman, lyrics by Dorothy Fields and book by Neil Simon. It was directed and choreographed for Broadway by Bob Fosse. 

• Charity Hope Valentine is a taxi dancer at a dance hall called the Fandango Ballroom in New York City. 

• The musical portrays three dancers each from different ethnic/cultural backgrounds wanting to rise above their lower, working class status.

................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download