Bob Fosse
Take equal parts Fred Astaire elegance, burlesque sexuality, and jazz cool, mix them all well - what do you get? A Bob Fosse dance number. Born in Chicago in 1927, Fosse studied dancing from an early age, becoming a teen tap dance phenomenon. At the age of thirteen, he joined Charles Grass to form The Riff Brothers, which became a successful night club act in the Chicago area clubs and burlesques. Fosse's early experiences with night clubs' sensuality and burlesque shows' playful sexuality became key inspirations for his work. After a tour of duty in the entertainment units in World War II, Fosse appeared as a dancer on Broadway and in several film musicals, including Kiss Me Kate and My Sister Eileen. In 1954, Fosse choreographed Broadway's The Pajama Game, directed by George Abbot, for which Fosse won his first Tony Award. The following year he won again for choreographing Damn Yankees. He would go on to win another seven Tony Awards for his Broadway work. Fosse brought a new style of movement to Broadway, one as freely sexual as it was a perfection of the body's sensuality. Fosse dancers with long legs, dressed in black with derby hat, white gloves, hands opened wide, and the body leading with the pelvis, became a staple of the Broadway musical. Fosse's work was as experimental as it was grounded in showbiz fun. As director and choreographer, Fosse created Pleasures and Palaces (1965), Sweet Charity (1966), Pippin (1972), which was the first Broadway show to advertise on television and at the time was the highest earning show in Broadway history, Liza (1974), Chicago (1975), Dancin' (1978), and Big Deal (1986). Fosse brought his precision in a body's movement to the possibilities of a camera movement for film. No one had previously captured a dancer's body so well on film, a Fosse approach which has become the standard now in music videos and musical films. Fosse's films include the musicals Sweet Charity (1968), Cabaret (1972), for which he won the Oscar for best director, and All That Jazz (1979), a completely autobiographical film of the hard-driving Fosse's working experience on Broadway and in Hollywood, his loves and family, as well as his fears and ambitions. Fosse's non-musical films are Lenny (1974) the making of which features in All that Jazz, and Star 80 (1983). While working on a revival of Sweet Charity, Bob Fosse died of a heart attack at the age of sixty.
