The ditty she sings is inane, and her costume even worse. But Rita Hayworth does her thing prettily enough. That is, until a monster dancer joins her on stage — Jack Cole.
Choreographers, pay attention @ 1:43. Ladies and gentlemen, that is how to make an entrance — sliding in on your knees!
Jack Cole from 2:32 to 3:06 is as good as it gets. Top drawer. Monster technique.
Notice how Cole never fully stands up? He’s kind of crouching (in dance terms he is moving in plié, with bent knees). And he’s doing it more consistently than anyone else on the stage. Observations:
- It’s very difficult to dance like that.
- Cole also hunches his upper back — consistently. The guy was amazing at hitting shapes, and holding them. Jack Cole could certainly dance with his back fully erect; this is a choreographic choice.
- The low-to-the-ground work reflects Cole’s modern dance roots. It also reflects the jitterbug moves Cole picked up from dancing with ladies like Marie Bryant at Harlem’s Savoy Ballroom. And by the way, Jack Cole was roundly beat up, at least once, for dancing in public with brown-skinned women.
Tonight and Every Night is a very fun, watchable movie; a backstage drama, it’s full of dance. The marvelous Marc Platt, the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo guy, has a speaking role in it, and he dances as well.
What a coincidence, Jerome Robbins’s sailor ballet “Fancy Free,” which led to On the Town (1949) and made possible all kinds of Americanisms in classical ballet, dates from 1944. Who copied whom?
Like this? Read more:
- Marie Bryant put a bun in Betty Grable’s oven
- Rita Hayworth’s gown by John Singer Sargent
- Jack Cole invites you to a ball
- Jerome Robbins, ballet drill sargent
Interesting that Cole dances as if he didn’t have a partner. His use of space highlights the star, and Hayworth takes on the lead. Jack had a fantastic feel for staging, and in this case, it was the rapport between the male dancer and his ROLE (partnering) rather than an attempt to show interest in the girl. All the men partner this way – whereas, I remember as a teenager trying very hard to show your guy how much you adored him while going through those gyrations… and how much the techniques of social dance differed widely between geographical areas that are quite close…for instance, don’t dance at Nags Head, NC the way you dance at Rehobeth Beach, DE – or they’ll hound you off the floor!
(thanks for sending the clip)