Read more
Dance Me a Song explores how Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, and others led to the rise of a distinctive dance style as a crowning achievement of twentieth-century dance and cinema.
List of contents
- Contents
- Introduction: The Synergy of Sound and Moving Image
- Part I. From Stage to Screen
- 1. No Limitations I: Astaire's Outlaw Style and its New World Roots
- 2. No Limitations II: Astaire's Roots in Social Dance, Ballet, and Other Forms
- 3. Old World Meets New World on Broadway: Balanchine, Astaire, Dukelsky, Gershwin, Minnelli, Rodgers and Hart, Josephine Baker
- 4. Ballet Meets Jazz in Hollywood: Balanchine and the Film Ballet
- 5. Dancing with the Camera, Dancing in the Street: Introducing Kelly and Donen
- Part II. Film Dance Genres
- 6. Seduction Dances: Astaire, Kelly, and Song and Dance as Courtship
- 7. Freedom Incarnate: The Dancing Sailor as an Icon of American Values in World War II
- 8. Dancing in the Street: Courtship, Euphoria, and Despair
- 9. The Dream of Courtship: The Cinematic Dance Drama
- 10. Making Film Dance: The Through-Composed and Through-Choreographed Musical
- 11. Legacy
- Appendix I. Timeline
- Appendix II. Dance Genres
About the author
Beth Genné is Professor of Dance History and Art History at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, in the Dance Department and the Arts and Ideas concentration of the Residential College. She has written numerous book chapters on British ballet and dance in film (including Gene Kelly and Vincente Minnelli) and articles in such journals as Dance Research, Dance Chronicle, and Art Journal. She has contributed criticism and feature articles to The Dancing Times of London. She was Director of research for Balanchine's musical films for the Popular Balanchine Project of the George Balanchine Foundation. Her first book, The Making of a Choreographer, was on the early training and choreographic development of Ninette de Valois, founder of the Royal Ballet.
Summary
Dance Me a Song explores how Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, and others led to the rise of a distinctive dance style as a crowning achievement of twentieth-century dance and cinema.
Additional text
What this book does is vitally important work in illuminating that uniquely American genre, the movie musical. It shows that the outlaw style of dance at the heart of it was created by freeform borrowings from both so-called highbrow end of the art and so-called lowbrow. In fact, Genné brings together not only styles but artists who don't usually meet in the same book -- like Balanchine and Astaire. With lucid and exuberant prose, she throws new light not only on the great dance-makers like Balanchine, Astaire, Kelly, but on their usually unsung but vital collaborators -- composers, arrangers, assistants, cameramen and a host of others who brought live dance to the big screen.
