Shall We Dance? Yes, We Shall!

Curious piece from Matt Wolf in the Guradian about a new Adam Cooper dance show using the music of Richard Rogers. OK, let's get the pedantries out of the way. Exhibit A:

"What matters, too, is Rodgers's own interest in extending the very range of musical theatre, whether via the frontier sensibility he brought to his 'western' sounds for Oklahoma! or the liturgical elements in The Sound of Music"

T'ain't nothing 'western' about the music for Oklahoma. He did write a piece for the Sound of Music that copied a liturgical choral style but that was an exception not the rule. In general, whether the setting was New England, the Pacific Islands, Siam or California, the music remained his own; it was and is essentially Broadway.

Exhibit B:

"Rodgers' eleventh-hour waltz in The King and I lets the stern-faced King of Siam cut loose to the delight of an audience..."

Rodgers' elenth-hour waltz is actually an eleventh-hour polka (1,2,3, AND 1,2,3, AND...etc.etc. etc.). Rodgers was exceptionally good at writing romatic songs in 3/4 time ("Hello Young Lovers") but, for this most romantic of moments, he decided to write a decidedly un-romantic polka. That's what makes the moment so good.

Exhibit C:

"Rodgers' vast output across more than 40 Broadway musicals is both sufficiently dance-friendly and also varied enough to sustain itself across the kind of evening one would be hard-pressed to devote to, say, Andrew Lloyd Webber (notwith-standing his Lordship's 1980s venture, Song and Dance)"

Needless Lloyd Webber dig. Not only Song and Dance but Cats also disproves the assertion. Whatever other kind of musical Cats is, it is most definitely a dance musical. Maybe the only British dance musical.

Exhibit D:

"His output is often granted unique pride of place in the UK, where London's Cadogan Hall, for instance, next month hosts a musical revue of Rodgers and Hart, to star Maria Friedman, and the same city's tiny Finborough theatre will mount the European debut of the duo's State Fair"

Er, that was actually by Rodgers and Hammerstein. Poor Lorenz Hart had died by the time of State Fair.

But enough wrangling. The main point is whether Richard Rodgers' music can stand on its own two feet in a purely dance show. Well, yes and no. As tunesmiths go he was undoubtedly the best in the business, maybe one of the best of the 20th century (Lloyd Webber ranks him just behind Shostokovich). The music is good music in its own right. But I don't think the tunes can ever really separate themselves from the lyrics. Just try humming the first notes of "My Funny Valentine" without thinking of the words. Or the jaunty down-and-up phrase of "Oh, What a Beautiful Morning". Or countless other examples.

So when audiences are watching Adam Cooper dancing up storm in his new show, they'll be listening to Rodgers' music but hearing Lorenz Hart and Oscar Hammerstein as well. That's the legacy of popular song, the indivisibilty of words and music. Like love and marriage, you can't have one without the other.