Deep Are the Roots: Trailblazers Who Changed Black British Theatre by Stephen Bourne

Author:Stephen Bourne [Bourne, Stephen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Performing Arts, theater, History & Criticism, Social Science, Black Studies (Global), General
ISBN: 9780750999106
Google: e1Y_EAAAQBAJ
Publisher: History Press
Published: 2021-10-07T00:14:33.025533+00:00

Bradley also created a cabaret act for the ballet dancers Vera Zorina and Anton Dolin, but he was most in demand for West End musicals and revues. In 1935 he choreographed the London production of Cole Porter’s Anything Goes, followed by many other successful productions including Charles B. Cochran’s Follow the Sun (1936); Lew Leslie’s Blackbirds of 1936, with a cast that included the Nicholas Brothers; I Can Take It (1939) with Jessie Matthews; Light’s Up (1940); Full Swing (1942); Big Top (1942); Something in the Air (1943); and It’s Time to Dance (1943) with Jack Buchanan and Elsie Randolph, in which he also appeared as ‘Buddy’.

In 1935, when he was interviewed for Film Weekly, he gave some insights into his thought processes:

Let’s begin at the beginning. All modern dance creations have African rhythm and movement as their rudimentary bases. People lose sight of the fact that all these modern dance creations, stretching over the past fifteen years, beginning with the Charleston and carrying on through the Black Bottom, Pickin’ Cotton, Beguine, Rhumba and Carioca [danced by Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in the 1933 film Flying Down to Rio], all have African rhythm. The idea is to ‘localise’ that African basis. Take the Rhumba. In this you must introduce Spanish touches, as it has a Spanish background, hands on hips and bending back from the waist, for instance. With the Carioca you still have the Rhumba movement, but here the background is South American, so it’s much more fiery and tempestuous, as against the languor of the Spanish … We must study the National Dance, and add to it newer movements, mostly African in origin, but now universal in practice.4

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.