“Demanding in the Extreme”: Virtuosity and Labor in Bob Fosse’s Dancin’

Abstract: Dancers were injured in Bob Fosse’s Broadway revue Dancin’ (1978) at a notable and alarming rate. Fosse’s choreography demanded virtuosic feats, cementing the show’s reputation as punishing and causing a host of labor issues that changed the nature of work for Broadway dancers. “The show must go on” was the ethos of the era, and this article examines the labor it took, onstage and off, for the show to go on. The show’s onstage virtuosity demanded much of not only performers but also a team of general managers, dance captains, stage managers, and alternates. Dancin’ is an especially strong object for considering popular performance’s relationship to labor because its dependence on virtuosity was both its strength and its weakness; the show pushed the dancers’ bodies—the human capital that produced fiscal capital—to their breaking point through a combination of risk and endurance. In this materialist history, I draw from untapped archival sources to show not only that Dancin’ brought paradigm-shifting levels of virtuosity to Broadway, but that it also altered the labor of making Broadway dance and raised the dancer’s status in ways that challenged the Broadway industry.

Duke Scholars

Author Ryan M Donovan Theater Studies