Bob Fosse's instantly recognisable iconographic style and visual aesthetic has often been quoted in music videos, TV shows, and films featuring dance, such as videos by Paula Abdul, Michael Jackson, and Beyoncé. Using Fosse's screendance as a focal point for analysis, this essay seeks to illustrate the dynamics with which subsequent cultural capital of examples of screendance creates a multivocal archive that blends choreographic and screen histories. The idea that popular dance on screen creates an alternative form of archival records challenges the traditional notion of archive as a collection of artefacts by concentrating on works by various artists that quote, borrow and recycle previously available works of popular dance on screen. Quoting and referencing previous dance works, although problematic in terms of copyright and authorship, creates an active process for historical archiving that brings choreographic style and aesthetic to contemporary audiences adjusted to the current socio-political needs of the audience and technological possibilities. Artists reclaim and reformulate the existing repertory to their own political and economic needs therefore creating a regenerative ideology of the way popular dance re-interprets the dances for the given time, space, and context. The examples of dance videos discussed in this essay act as an interpretation of numerous references found in popular culture and therefore challenge the rigid tropes of dance creators as sole producers of dance material and the meanings communicated. Directing attention on to the dance and the corporealities of dancers further questions ideas of authorship as it recognises the bodily history as a fundamental part of web of meanings presented in dance.
This article considers the politics and dynamics of online ballet and contemporary dance classes during the Covid-19 lockdown on geo-political, economic, and cultural implications of dance classes in digital media. Using a post-colonial lens and popular dance studies, this research analyzes the effect of the online ballet and contemporary classes colonizing digital spaces and the effect of this phenomenon on creating a more democratic and participatory access to dance that has built a more global and inclusive engagement with the arts for geographically peripheral spaces. This essay investigates the kind of common created by kinaesthetic experience of the dancers teaching and participating in the classes in digital media providing a key strategy to analyze the participatory embodiment of dancers as a radical, material, corporeal challenge to the hierarchies of the dance world, and furthermore, the economic dynamics that shape it.
Bob Fosse greatly influenced commercial screen dance and musical theatre stages in the latter part of the 20th century as a choreographer and director in the US. In a career that spanned over 30 years, Fosse choreographed 16 Broadway musicals and 7 films, and directed 5 feature films and made numerous TV specials. Fosse broke with established conventions in thematic, musical, and editing choices, but never diverted his focus from the entertainment goals of his productions. His work aimed to create a complete dance-theatre experience, which would resonate with audiences. As interdisciplinary projects, Fosse’s directorial and choreographic works used minimalism, irony and artifice, and social engagement.
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