Robert Cohen - Theatre, Brief Version-McGraw-Hill Education (2016)

Theatre 247
The iconic “musical about musicals” is Michael Bennett’s A Chorus Line (1975), which portrays New York musical
performers auditioning for a show—in part created from true stories told to Bennett by just such performers. This 2006
Broadway revival was directed by Bob Avian (the original production’s choreographer); the costumes were designed by
Theoni V. Aldredge, who also designed the originals. © Paul Kolnik
version of Uncle Tom’s Cabin—in The King and I and
his vigorous teenage “street rumble” dances in West Side
Story earned him national critical fame, leading to his
combining directorial and choreographic chores in the
seriocomic Broadway musicals Gypsy, about the lives
of striptease artist Gypsy Rose Lee and her mother, and
Fiddler on the Roof, about Jewish life in prerevolutionary
Russia. In 1989 Robbins put together a retrospective
collection of his dances in Jerome Robbins’ Broadway,
which won the Tony Award for best musical.
Gower Champion (1921–1980) and Bob Fosse
(1927–1987) were of Robbins’s generation but utterly
unlike him, or each other. Champion, a veteran dancer
(with his wife, Marge) in many Broadway shows and
Hollywood films, returned to the stage in 1960 to both
stage and choreograph the energetic, crowd-pleasing
Bye Bye Birdie. He followed this up with the romantic
Carnival (1961) and the brashly entertaining Hello,
Dolly! (1964). In each case, dance was at the center of
the dramatic entertainment. Champion’s final show—
he died tragically on its opening night—was 42nd
Street, a valentine to the Broadway theatre and particularly
to tap dancing. The show enjoyed a long run
after its 1980 opening and was brought back in a Tony
Award– winning revival twenty years later. Fosse, also
a golden-age choreographer (The Pajama Game and
Damn Yankees, 1954 and 1955, respectively), went on
to develop a highly distinctive style—quick, jerky moves
that suddenly segue to slow, sinuous come-ons; bumps
and grinds; white gloves and black bowler hats lifted
from minstrel and vaudeville—in, particularly, Chicago
(1975) and Dancin’ (1978), as well as in the film of Cabaret
and his own filmed autobiography, All That Jazz.
A posthumous retrospective of Fosse’s dances, simply
titled Fosse, opened on Broadway in 1999, running two
years and winning the Tony Award for best musical.