DNCE 1017 Lecture 10: Week11
Document Summary
Peaked in 1930: 67 musicals were made. Tap and ballet: africanist and europeanist aesthetics. Tap: entertaining form from vaudeville and minstrel shows. Ballet provided a sense of higher class, as a way of depicting a fantasy to momentarily lift people up out of the struggles of the great depression. Homogeneity: barriers between ballet, modern, tap, social dance, and gymnastics were broken down. Early musical film (operetta, revue, musical comedy) Enriches plot but does not advance it. Spectacle: elaborate sets, huge costumes, large numbers of dancers. Dance as integral part of musical (#2) 1820s- the black codes/ jim crow laws. 1840s- minstrel shows: only representation to lack life allowed on us stages, white performers in blackface. 1860s- black minstrels: black performance common, still in blackface. The brute: savage and violent, animalistic man. The jezebel: hyper sexualized, animalistic, sexually ravenous woman. The uncle tom: the good slave eager to winning approval of whites.
