Category: dance

Fred Astaire Week: One for My Baby

August 21, 2012 • 3:33 pm

There are really more than a week’s worth of Fred Astaire videos worth highlighting, so “Astaire Week” may go on for ten days or so.

This video starts with Astaire, drunk and dolorous, singing, and then segues into a wonderful dance routine where he breaks real glasses (and a mirror) during the dance. It’s said that he cut his ankle quite badly during the filming. As the YouTube notes say:

Fred Astaire dancing and singing to “One for My Baby (and One More for the Road)”. Song written for him to perform in the movie “The Sky’s the Limit” (1943). Words by Johnny Mercer and music by Harold Arlen, dance by Fred Astaire.

The dancing and singing stop at 5:45, so you may want to quit watching at that time.

Dancers and choreographers on Astaire (from WikiQuote):

  • He is terribly rare. He is like Bach, who in his time had a great concentration of ability, essence, knowledge, a spread of music. Astaire has that same concentration of genius; there is so much of the dance in him that it has been distilled.
    • George Balanchine in Nabokov, Ivan and Carmichael, Elizabeth. “Balanchine, An Interview”. Horizon, January 1961, pp. 44-56. (M)
  • He is the most interesting, the most inventive, the most elegant dancer of our times… you see a little bit of Astaire in everybody’s dancing–a pause here, a move there. It was all Astaire’s originally.
    • George Balanchine, quoted in Thomas, Bob. Astaire, the Man, The Dancer. Weidenfeld and Nicholson, London, 1985. ISBN 0297784021 p.33.
  • What do dancers think of Fred Astaire? It’s no secret. We hate him. He gives us a complex because he’s too perfect. His perfection is an absurdity. It’s too hard to face.
    • Mikhail Baryshnikov at the 1978 Kennedy Center Honours for Fred Astaire and George Balanchine, as quoted in Satchell, Tim. Astaire, The Biography. Hutchinson, London. 1987. ISBN 0-09-173736-2 p.255.
  • He’s a genius…a classical dancer like I never saw in my life.
    • Mikhail Baryshnikov in “Interview with Mike Wallace”, 60 Minutes, CBS Television. February 18, 1979
  • He was not just the best ballroom dancer, or tap dancer, he was simply the greatest, most imaginative, dancer of our time.
    • Rudolph Nureyev quoted in Cooke, Alistair. “Fred Astaire Obituary”, Letter From America, BBC World Service, June 1987
  • When I was in the Soviet Union recently I was being interviewed by a newspaperman and he said, “Which dancers influenced you the most?” and I said, “Oh, well, Fred Astaire.” He looked very surprised and shocked and I said, “What’s the matter?” He said, “Well, Mr. Balanchine just said the same thing.”
    • Jerome Robbins in Heeley, David, producer and director. Fred Astaire: Puttin’ on his Top Hat and Fred Astaire: Change Partners and Dance (two television programs written by John L. Miller), PBS, March 1980. (M)
  • The history of dance on film begins with Astaire.
    • Gene Kelly in Heeley, David, producer and director. Fred Astaire: Puttin’ on his Top Hat and Fred Astaire: Change Partners and Dance (two television programs written by John L. Miller), PBS, March 1980. (M)

Fred Astaire week: Top Hat, White Tie, and Tails

August 20, 2012 • 6:06 pm

This is absolutely classic Astaire: wonderful dancing in the full formal regalia, avec cane, which becomes part of the tap routine.  The song, which you’ve surely heard, is by Irving Berlin, who wrote it for the 1935 film Top Hat. The choreography is, as it so often was, by both Astaire and Hermes Pan.

Near the end, the tempo of Astaire’s feet is almost like that of a machine gun.

Astaire Week: Begin the Beguine

August 19, 2012 • 2:20 pm

This is my first post from 30,000 feet, and I’m convinced that the installation of wireless on planes will be the death of me. I’ve always counted on airplanes’ freedom from internet to afford me huge chunks of uninterrupted reading time. But since this is only an hour flight, my one book is by theologian Alvin Plantinga (more painful than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick), and internet is ony $5 for the nonce on Southwest (my favorite airline), so be it.

Thanks to my friend Latha, I’ve recently rediscovered the marvels of Fred Astaire, certainly the greatest “popular” male dancer of the 2oth century. He was an artistic polymath: not only a great dancer and choreographer, but a talented drummer and a hugely underrated singer with a light but expressive voice.  Watching some of his videos in the past two weeks, I’ve realized what a massive talent he was.

So, for the next seven days, let’s look at that talent.

Born Frederick Austerlitz in 1899 (he lived until 1987), Astaire had many famous partners, including Ginger Rogers, Eleanor Powell, and, later Cyd Charisse. But some of his best work, as we’ll see in the coming days, was on his own. Perhaps his best known “couples” dance on film is this 1940 routine to “Begin the Beguine” with Eleanor Powell.  As Wikipedia notes,

His first post-Ginger dance partner was the redoubtable Eleanor Powell—considered the finest female tap-dancer of her generation—in Broadway Melody of 1940 where they performed a celebrated extended dance routine to Cole Porter‘s “Begin the Beguine“. In his autobiography Steps in Time, Astaire remarked, “She ‘put ’em down like a man’, no ricky-ticky-sissy stuff with Ellie. She really knocked out a tap dance in a class by herself.”

Watch this video carefully; I’m convinced that we’ll never see a dance talent like this again. It knocks me out.

Powell was great, but looks, well, labored next to Astaire, whose hallmark was the ease and grace with which he performed incredibly difficult steps. Even Gene Kelly, another giant talent in movie dancing I admire, is not close to being in the same league with Astaire.