This class was culturally stimulating in that we studied different dance styles across all the continents of the world. I loved having guest teachers each week come in and teach us a style of dance we were studying in class allowing us to embody the movement experience. We could not do with with every style of dance, but the styles we did have teachers for I understood more fully the particular style of dance we were learning. Also, I felt a connection the the emotions and experiences from time to time in class as the dance scholars wrote about when I experienced their genre of dance making my experiences dancing these forms even that much more amazing. Allison Rupert and I did our final project on musical theatre and the styles of dance that are used within it. I took a musical theatre tap class where we learned a portion of the dance Good Mornin' from the movie Singing in the Rain and my reflection is attached as my artifact for this class.
Dance 250: The Creative Context
In creative context, we started out learning about African dance forms. From there, we progressed into other dance forms that are closely related to the African dance style and culture such as capoeira which is a form of dance fighting in a circle. We had guest teachers come in on mondays and teach West African dance as well as capoeira with live musicians playing the drums. Then we learned about dance styles in America and Europe such as Native American Powwows, the Hula, Flamenco, Tango, Salsa, and Swing to name a few. And in particular, I never knew how different ballroom style dancing was from other forms of dancing in the same genre. Such as tango for example, Argentine tango and ballroom tango are way different in body positioning with the partner as well as leg positioning and how you cross the legs in between one another. Then, we also learned about dance a few dance styles from Asia such as Bharata natyam, Chinese dance and Kabuki Japanese traditional dance.
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Proceeding the time of the silent film era, a musical theater craze began to hit Hollywood. Actors and Actresses untrained in singing and dancing was being overlooked due to the increasing popularity of musical theater in film. Also, the newly arrived etiquette of ‘the talkies’ caused improperly trained actors and actresses to lose their jobs. The sophistication of Broadway musicals and performers’ pronunciation and projection of the voice together with singing and dancing talents permanently impacted Hollywood. Singin’ in the Rain is one of the greatest musical films of all time and is seen as a big marker of progression for musical theater into films.
“Good Mornin’, Good Mornin’ ”
“We’ve talked the whole night through”
“Good Mornin’, Good Mornin’ to you”
It’s sure great to stay up late as it was in 1952, and then go to dance class on a Saturday morning. Taking an intermediate tap dance class at Johnson and Peters in Seattle, we learned a portion of the dance from “Good Morning” in the musical show Singin’ in the Rain. Gene Kelly is the star of the show is seen as one of the greatest actors/ tap dancers of all time. Along with Gene Kelly, Donald O’Conner and Debbie Reynolds made a dynamic trio with multiple talents in singing, acting and dancing. Gene Kelly also co-directed Singin’ in the Rain with Stanley Donen and combining their visions has made this musical one of the most memorable musicals in history.
The intermediate tap class started at ten in the morning and went for duration of an hour in a half. As an introduction to the piece, Anthony Peters the choreographer gave us a brief overview of the portion of the musical we were going to learn. The three main characters of Singin’ in the Rain stayed up all night and celebrate the morning at just after 1am. “Good Mornin’” Is the song they singing to one another after staying up and talking the whole night through. After the portion of this song when they say good morning in French, Spanish, Italian and German, a dance portion starts where the song becomes mostly instrumentation. We learned most of the tap dance to this section that starts in around the middle of the song.
When I entered the classroom, I was intimidated at first because I had only taken one tap class since the eighth grade. Even though this tap class was a level two intermediate, I knew that some of the more complex rhythms might be hard to get my body to perform at first. This musical theater tap class that I took did involve some complex moves during the section that we learned because it was the instrumentation part of the song. In the beginning when the dancers are singing in the movie their moves are less complex and include many gestures.
Because this dance class was only the dancing portion to instrumentation we did not have to sing. To warm up we first stretched before putting our tap shoes on. Stretching out upper legs and the calves in lunges were first priority. Then we rolled our ankles in circles as me picked our legs up off of the floor in both directs to warm up the ankles for quick movements. Afterward, we stretched out our upper arms both the triceps and biceps pulling our arms straight across our chests and bending them up over our heads. In tap dancing, a dancer’s lower body movements are complimented by the upper body. With the entirety of fast pace movements and sounds the feet make in tap dances, stretching and warming up the legs and feet first are of most importance.
After stretching, we took a few tap traveling movements from the piece and learned them diagonally across the floor. We first did shuffle heels across the floor once on each side, and then scuffles with both feet backwards and a ball change. This movement took a while to move across the floor because of the constant movement front and back. I then remembered that I could just make the shuffles that travel forward bigger than the rest of the phrase that travels back. After doing this across the floor in one direction, we did fillaps from the upstage right corner of the studio downstage to the left corner. Then we did shuffle hops on both sides across the floor. Then from the right side of the studio we learned the first move of this section that was shuffle left and then right, ball change shuffle back with the right foot then scuffle back with the left foot.
This first section we practiced a few times across the studio, and then we began to learn the rest of the dance sequence. People in class we very silent during this class session because everyone seemed to really want to learn this dance because of their love for Singin’ in the Rain. We were all intensely focused on each particular movement and how they all blending together so smoothly in the original movie. After the first sequence we added on upright big step walking three times back to the center of the room.
We then broke down a more complex movement in the middle of that we were about to add to the dance. This dance step consisted of hop, step, and a small slide switching from the right to left foot and moving the weight of the upper body in opposition to the lower body. In the original movie this part was performed in stairs and we discussed how much harder this must have been on stairs as it was already a challenge just on a flat dance floor.
When we progressed in learning this section of the dance, we worked through the next part of this section where they dance with rain jackets. A few of us in class had jackets or sweatshirts to dance with, while others used their imagination. In this portion of the dance, dancers were laughing pulling the rain coat up over our face and flapping the arms out and in front of our faces as well. The sense of humor in this section was found just through the humor in the movements and performing them in rehearsal.
Going back to the beginning of the phrase we learned in class, we talked about the gestures of the upper body and how they compliment the lower body with a light and airy feel to the arms as they have a slight sway back and forth. We also talked about the facial expressions and how the performers all portrayed happiness in different ways on their faces. Debbie was smiley, as the two men Gene and Donald smiled sporadically but still showed happiness through their eyes and their focus internally on their tap gestures. The ways these dancers show happiness and ease through the movements reminds of the “aesthetic of the cool” as we learned about in African dance.
We then split off into groups of three so that we could have a feel for dancing in a trio as they did in the movie. Performing and watching one another allowed me to see each individual dance and focus on how they each portray their ‘aesthetic of the cool’ differently from one another. One dancer who watched me complimented me on my beautiful smile and happiness in my dancing. Even though some of us made mistakes, and we only had a studio space to work with without the props from the movie, the overall recreation of this section of the dance was pretty close to the original movie.
Musical theater and tap dancing were combined on stage and in films after 1952 as well. The populairy of Singin’ in the Rain today still makes it a class for viewers to watch. Even though this dance was a sequence of steps that were performed together in a phrase, tap dancing also can be performed in a dual or battle setting where dancer do improvisations and somewhat mock each other but make each movement their own.
Ownership in tap dance is important in keeping the ‘aesthetic of the cool,’ but I did learn from this tap dance class that we could also apply ownership to a set chorographical piece as well. Overall, I noticed that facial expressions and gestures are just as important as the complex movements of the feet to make tap dancing pleasant to watch and listen to.
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