{"id":9612,"date":"2022-03-31T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-03-31T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=9612"},"modified":"2022-03-30T19:42:19","modified_gmt":"2022-03-30T23:42:19","slug":"hear-the-beat-those-dancing-feet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=9612","title":{"rendered":"Hear the Beat — Those Dancing Feet!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Just when you think Big Dance Numbers have gone the way of the passenger pigeon, along came Lin-Manuel Miranda\u2019s In the Heights<\/em>, the Academy Award-nominated (and commendable) new West Side Story<\/em>, and the disappointing, but innovatively cast, Cyrano, <\/em>all of which displayed innovative dance sequences. (I still get dizzy thinking of the dance\/fight sequence in West Side Story<\/em>, in which it seemed Tony or Riff\u2014or both\u2014would fall through the broken pier into the Hudson.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Film historian Max Alvarez recently hosted a program on \u201cfilming the dance,\u201d and how that has changed over the decades. When films acquired sound, the studios made a lot of quickie musicals to take advantage of the new technology, and persuade audiences they were the new thing. These films weren\u2019t always good. But the studios had made a big investment in converting movie houses and equipment to accommodate sound, and they were determined to recoup. As a result, in 1929, the studios produced 50 musicals and in 1930, an astonishing 78! You\u2019ll recall that the Gene Kelly movie, Singin\u2019 in the Rain<\/em>, is about the difficulties of the conversion to sound, and Max says it\u2019s pretty accurate. (That movie is having its 70th<\/sup> anniversary this year.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After the initial blitz of so-so products, movie makers became more discriminating about the form. In Hollywood\u2019s \u201cGolden Age,\u201d the studio system was in full sway, and not only actors and directors, but songwriters and choreographers also had studio contracts. This made musicals economical to produce. Of course, early producers remained a little nervous about musicals. For one of his films, Darryl Zanuck put all the musical numbers at the end, so he could lop them off if audiences didn\u2019t respond. Finally, the success of 42nd<\/sup> Street<\/em> (1933) did a lot to assuage their nerves. Treat yourself with this Busby Berkeley number<\/a> from the show. Glorious! Thrilling! Unforgettable!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For a time, the orchestra played, the singers sang, and dancers danced. Big soundproofed boxes had to be built around the cameras to dampen their noise. Today, none of that happens simultaneously, of course, as songs and music are recorded separately. Photographing dance sequences is almost a lost art, Alvarez says, because directors don\u2019t trust audiences to follow the action, so they do a lot of quick cuts. It\u2019s lively, but all the editing sacrifices something. Gene Kelly maintained that the use of a lot of fast cutting was simply to camouflage bad choreography. Even the sound of \u201cthose dancing feet\u201d is added in post-production. There aren\u2019t any taps on their shoes. Sorry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Just when you think Big Dance Numbers have gone the way of the passenger pigeon, along came Lin-Manuel Miranda\u2019s In the Heights, the Academy Award-nominated (and commendable) new West Side Story, and the disappointing, but innovatively cast, Cyrano, all of … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Movie musicals show staying power as tastes have evolved. Meanwhile, filming dance is just not the same.","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[56,57,207],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9612","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-film","category-movies","category-music"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-2v2","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9612","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9612"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9612\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9614,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9612\/revisions\/9614"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9612"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9612"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}