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“FREEDOM INCARNATE”: JEROME ROBBINS, GENE KELLY, AND THE DANCING SAILOR AS AN ICON OF AMERICAN VALUES IN WORLD WAR II

2001; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 24; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1081/dnc-100103142

1532-4257

Beth Genné,

Communism, Protests, Social Movements

Abstract The shadows that had immured France exploded. The tall soldiers, dressed in khaki and chewing their gum, were living proof that you could cross the seas again. They ambled past, and often they stumbled. Singing and whistling, they stumbled along the sidewalks and subway platforms: stumbling, they danced at night in the bistros and laughed their loud laughs, showing teeth white as children's. Jean Genet … declared loudly on the terrace of the Rhumerie that these costumed civilians had no style. Stiff in their black and green carapaces, the occupiers had been something else! For me, these carefree young Americans were freedom incarnate: our own and also the freedom that was about to spread—we had no doubts on this score—throughout the world.Citation[[1]] (emphasis mine) Acknowledgments Notes * I am grateful to Chrystelle Bond for alerting me to the “trucking” elements of the African-American-based movements of the jitterbug. In her article, “Homefront Heroes: Jitterbugging in Wartime Baltimore,” she points out that the most popular dance among servicemen was the jitterbug because of its association with “freedom.” Dancing the jitterbug implicitly made a political statement: despite wartime dislocation and military restrictions, Americans felt free to express themselves physically, mentally, and spiritually, and to do so whenever they got a chance—to jitterbug. (The Maryland Historical Magazine, Vol. 88, No. 4, Winter 1993, p. 14). † In the 1940s it was not unusual (in fact in many towns it was the norm, if not the only way) for those who wanted to learn to dance to be taught what was then called “tap, toe, acrobatics, and interpretive dance”—often by the same teacher and within one class. The separation of dance “genres” was by no means always followed. (Interview with Betsy Blair Reisz, London, May 10, 1999.) Reisz was a young dancer on Broadway in the late 1930s. As the wife of Gene Kelly and a dancer in her own right who knew many other dancers and went to a variety of teachers, she is well equipped to comment on the dance training and practices of the time. Robbins also talks about this eclectic kind of American training in his interview with Toby Tobias (“Bringing Back Robbins Fancy” [An Interview with Robbins], Dance Magazine, January 1980, p. 71). Flash tap is also quoted in Fancy Free. Robbins gave Harold Lang an air turn ending in the splits, which was a specialty of acts like those of the Nicholas Brothers and the Berry Brothers. * In a 1975 interview by Marilyn Hunt, Kelly makes it clear that he was aware of historical precedents of the dancing sailor, although he does not mention all of these examples by name (Oral History Archive, Dance Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts). Arlene Croce traces dancing sailor imagery in Fred Astaire's Follow the Fleet to the Vincent Youmans stage musical Hit the Deck (made as a film by RKO in 1930). Hit the Deck was, in turn, based on the play Shore Leave (1922). Croce sees these two works as “the basis of practically every musical about sailors that has ever been made since. The plot concerned two sailors—one comic and one straight.” (Arlene Croce, The Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers Book, New York: Outerbridge and Lazard, 1972), p. 82. A dance for sailors (Matelotte), choreographed by Balanchine and performed to traditional hornpipe music, was also included in the repertoire of the Dancers of the Russian State Ballet, the little troupe organized by Balanchine for his first appearances in London in 1924 at the Empire Theatre. The dancers were Balanchine, Danilova, and Efimoff. See Mary Pritchard, “Sandwiched Between the Performing Dogs and The Fat Lady with the Silver-Plated Trombone: Dancers Performing in Variety in London from the Imperial Russian Ballet in St. Petersburg,” p. 75. (Master's thesis, Roehampton Institute, London, December 1997).