Here’s a really wierd and interesting video of an old Fosse dance routine redubbed to a more contemporary song in a completely different genre (Hip Hop) called “Walk It Out.”
The moves are eerily appropriate. (Esp. starting around the 25th second.) It’s wierd.
So what did Fosse do exactly? Did he invent the moves themselves? Or were they all already around, and he was the guy who put them together?
If the latter, where would the moves have originated? (I’m sure there’s a complicated story to tell here I don’t mean to oversimplify.)
It’s interesting to look up the original music the above routine was choreographed to. The music is so radically different from the above dubbed music, it seems to completely change the characteristic of the moves themselves. If I’d seen the original, then been told that many of the moves in it are similar or identical to stereotypically Hip Hop -ish moves from today, I wouldn’t have believed it.
Anyway, so what I’m wondering is, did white people invent this kind of dancing after all? Or did the contemporary use not evolve from the use of Fosse and others of his genre, and rather evolved along with the Fosse-type use from some common ancestor?
ETA: Of course I meant to mention possibility three, that Fosse stole the moves from black people. (Said possibility being meant as tongue-in-cheekily as the possibility of stealing I mentioned in the OP itself.)
Plenty of Fosse’s choreography was done very deliberately (loose-limbed style due to Verdon’s childhood rickets leaving her with knock-knees, lots of hat work because he was going bald). He was a brilliant choreographer so it doesn’t surprise me a bit that his work would translate well, even 30 years later.
I had seen comments to the effect that the Single Ladies routine was closely based on the Breakfast routine. I’m not sure I’d call this “neat…” Am I missing something about the significance of your link?
Do you just mean that this is another example showing how many of the 60’s moves match contemporary dance moves?
I just thought it was “neat” when I saw “Single Ladies” a while ago and realized how much like “Mexican Breakfast” (the original music for the Gwen Verdon clip) it was. It was pretty obvious that the Beyonce video was a kind of tribute to Fosse.
I have a documentary on Fosse laying around somewhere which claims that his trademark posture (hip popped, one knee up, shoulders hunched over and tilted, elbows usually out) was designed by him to disguise his rather severe scoliosis, which made one shoulder and one hip noticeably higher than the other.
Or did the contemporary use not evolve from the use of Fosse and others of his genre, and rather evolved along with the Fosse-type use from some common ancestor?