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Choreographic Ghosts: Dance and the Revival of Shuffle Along

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 December 2019

Joanna Dee Das
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Abstract

In 2016, director George C. Wolfe and choreographer Savion Glover created Shuffle Along, or, the Making of the Musical Sensation of 1921 and All That Followed, a backstage musical about the 1921 show Shuffle Along, noted for its all-black cast and creative team. Although Wolfe proclaimed dance to be the most important aspect of the original musical, his production does not mention Shuffle Along’s original choreographer, Lawrence Deas, nor does it examine the labor of choreography. These omissions expose how dance on Broadway remains subordinate to other aspects of a musical, thus reproducing racist and sexist logics about embodied performance.

Keywords

black dancechoreographycopyrightLawrence DeasMusical Theater DanceSavion GloverShuffle AlongShuffle Along, or, the Making of the Musical Sensation of 1921 and All That FollowedTap DanceGeorge C. Wolfe

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Type
Articles
Information
Dance Research Journal , Volume 51 , Issue 3 , December 2019 , pp. 84 - 96
Copyright
Copyright © Dance Studies Association 2019

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References

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