All tagged Agnes de Mille
Lerner and Loewe certainly wrote some gorgeous music together for Broadway and Hollywood musicals. From Brigadoon to My Fair Lady, from Gigi to Camelot, the duo crafted lush, elegant music with sweeping melodies and intelligent, character developing lyrics. The duo also wrote the score for another musical that is seldom revived today, on Broadway or otherwise, but that deserves to be remembered for its potent, often haunting score. That musical is Paint Your Wagon.
Dance is an essential part of most Broadway musicals and there have been many amazing choreographers over the years. Some have really stood out, either reinventing the form and purpose of dance within Broadway musicals and/or bringing a signature style to their work that has become legendary in its own right. Today, I’d like to celebrate these gods and goddesses of the world of musical theatre dance and talk a little about how each of them left their imprint on the art form.
One of the most popular musicals of the twentieth century (it was certainly produced by every high school and community theatre) was the 1947 Lerner & Loewe classic Brigadoon. It established the composing team as second only to Rodgers and Hammerstein in prowess, setting the duo up to evolve toward their most celebrated project, My Fair Lady. Brigadoon tells the story of two Americans on a hunting trip in the Scottish Highlands.
Brigadoon. It is a musical that is considered one of the "greats" from the golden age of musical theatre. When I was growing up, it seemed like every high school and community theatre produced this show (with varying degree of success). Nowadays, it seems as though Brigadoon isn't done quite as often as it used to be. It would be interesting to speculate as to why. Perhaps audiences aren't as enchanted with this show as they used be? Maybe it was a musical for a simpler time? Maybe the stodgy, static film version turns people off to the piece? The story is essentially a romantic fairy tale and its straightforward, falling in love at first sight premise may be too simplistic for those of us living in more romantically complicated world. It's certainly not dated by its content or language. I'm not sure that I agree with those who feel the script needs to be "reworked" for Brigadoon to be revived on Broadway, but maybe I am wrong? So where is our revival of the show about two hunters that happen upon a Scottish town that appears every one-hundred years and who have their lives forever changed by interacting with the town's denizens?
