‘Fosse/Verdon’ Has Magic to Do. And Undo. A hip cocks. A shoulder jerks. The fingers fan like a Swiss Army knife that’s nothing but blades. To see a body like this — a congregation of angles kinked in opposition — is to recognize Bob Fosse’s slinky specter. Fosse died in 1987, but he still haunts Broadway, where he won a record eight Tonys for choreography, plus one for direction. He also brought home an Oscar, for “Cabaret,” and three Emmys, for “Liza with a Z.” “I don’t think it’s possible to do a musical that has dance in it and not have the influence of Fosse,” Thomas Kail said. Kail, who directed “Hamilton,” is an executive producer on “Fosse/Verdon,” a limited series that debuts on FX April 9. Though based on “Fosse,” Sam Wasson’s exhaustive 2013 biography, the series, as the name implies, twines Fosse’s story with that of Gwen Verdon, his third wife and longtime muse. Sam Rockwell plays Fosse, Michelle Williams is Verdon. Why the slash? Verdon, a knockout dancer and an unimprovable musical comedian who won four Tonys in six years, was no slouch. (Watch her in “Damn Yankees.” Her slouch is electric.) Fosse often shaped his choreography on her body, which means that she shaped it, too, and she taught it to dancers in turn, even after she and Fosse separated. Her inclusion also suggests a narrative informed by the #MeToo movement, a way to reframe the myth of the lone male auteur, of the man who behaves badly, but still, my God, those steps. If “Fosse/Verdon” succeeds, it could inform how we now tell stories about men like Fosse. Assuming we should tell these stories at all. Because if Fosse was a great man, he wasn’t necessarily a good one. He had genius, he had charm, but coercion and scapegoating colored his rehearsals, and he rarely met a chorus girl he didn’t try to bed. (Would he take no for answer? More or less. But his seductions often constituted an ugly abuse of power.) His addictions — pills, sex, all that jazz — were legion. In making “Fosse/Verdon,” the showrunner, Steven Levenson, knew what he didn’t want to create: “Another story about a brilliant man haunted by demons who behaves badly and does terrible things and the question of the series becomes, Well, was it worth it?” “No,” he said recently over breakfast in Brooklyn. “Of course it’s not worth it.” Image Fosse’s moves — the cocked hips, the shoulder jerks, the splayed hands — became instantly recognizable after shows like “Sweet Charity” and “Chicago.”CreditJohn Springer Collection/Corbis, via Getty Images Kail had read Wasson’s book as soon as it was released and had bought a copy for the “Hamilton” choreographer Andy Blankenbuehler as an opening night gift. When Kail learned that “Fosse” had been optioned, he and Lin-Manuel Miranda approached FX and joined the project in the summer of 2016 as executive producers. That fall he met Levenson, who wrote the book for “Dear Evan Hansen,” at a “La La Land” screening. Over sushi a deal was struck. Today’s Broadway royalty would make a show about yesteryear’s. Blankenbuehler joined Susan Misner as a choreographer, while Alex Lacamoire, another “Hamilton” veteran, was brought on as music director. Eight episodes were ordered, with Kail slated to direct five of them. So yes, the lead artists are primarily white and male, but the writers room, which includes Tracey Scott Wilson, Debora Cahn and Ike Holter, is at least a little more diverse. Before preproduction kicked off, Kail and Levenson wanted the blessing of Nicole Fosse, Fosse and Verdon’s daughter. In the spring of 2017 they met her for a breakfast so long it stretched into lunch. A few months later they went up to New Hampshire, near where she lives, and met with her again, spending a weekend looking through her archives. At that point, they still thought they were making “Fosse,” but as they flicked through photos and listened to old recordings, they knew they would have to include Gwen Verdon, too. Image Verdon (right) and Chita Rivera were the original Roxie Hart and Velma Kelly in “Chicago.”CreditAssociated Press Like Lola and Joe from “Damn Yankees,” Charity and Oscar from “Sweet Charity,” Roxy and Velma from “Chicago” — all characters from shows they built together — Fosse and Verdon were two lost souls, not one. So why had Fosse’s name endured and Verdon’s hadn’t? They decided that the show would explore, as Levenson put it, “how these complicated partnerships and collaborations become about one person, almost always the man.” “Fosse/Verdon” moves forward and backward in time, but centers, roughly, on the decade between “Cabaret” and “All that Jazz.” “It’s really a story of interdependence and codependence and” — Levenson paused here — “and love.” Still, Levenson wavered. The more he learned about Fosse’s behavior the more he wondered why he wanted to tell this story. “Like, why is this an interesting story? Is this just another awful person who made great art?” he asked himself. Then in the fall of 2017, the Harvey Weinstein scandal broke and Levenson realized, “We have to tell this story because of the way he behaved instead of in spite of the way he behaved.” Williams, speaking by telephone as she rode to the studio, put it a little more dryly: “Thank you to the movement. We’re now going to find out who Gwen Verdon is.” Kail — who had spent years making “Hamilton,” another show about a man of talents and flaws — had always figured they could tell the story with nuance. (When I saw him on set one day he had accessorized with a 30-pound weighted vest. “Otherwise it would be too easy,” he said. This is a man who likes a challenge.) “We need to examine these things, we need to talk about them,” he said later, speaking by telephone. Image “Fosse/Verdon” is informed by the #MeToo movement, a way to reframe the myth of the lone male auteur, of the genius who behaves badly. CreditMichael Parmelee/FX Image “Fosse/Verdon” explores, according to the showrunner Steven Levenson, “how these complicated partnerships and collaborations become about one person, almost always the man.”CreditEric Liebowitz/FX Of course, examining can look a lot like glamorizing, and if you saw the first teaser, which played during the Oscars, you’ll have spotted the legs, the breasts, the zippers plummeting down, down, down. But if the show celebrates Fosse, it’s the kind of party where the cake falls and most of the balloons pop. It would be a mistake to strip Fosse’s world of its appeal, its libidinal oomph. And another mistake to ignore how that appeal could sour. Levenson figured that Fosse’s own work suggested a possible approach. Fosse had magic to do and an almost compulsive need to then show you how the lousy trick was done. He created shows for grown-ups — decadent, mordant, cynical. The first time I came on set, to Grumman Studios on Long Island, cameras were placed to shoot “Big Spender” from “Sweet Charity.” The dancers wriggled in their stilettos and miniskirts, sequins skittering. They looked like unadulterated sex. Until you looked closer. Behind the fake eyelashes, these dance hall girls were dead inside. Fun, laughs, good times? Not exactly. This complicated sexuality had roots in Fosse’s own trauma. Dancing in burlesque houses as a teenager, he experienced transactional sex too early and too often. But his love of sparkle and his need to reveal sparkle as a sucker’s bet also stemmed from professional doubts. He worried that his talent was somehow superficial, all light and no heat. “Razzle Dazzle” from “Chicago” could have been his theme song: “Throw ‘em a fake and a finagle/ They’ll never know you’re just a bagel.” Nicole Fosse, a co-executive producer, said that she feels her father was drawn to projects that allowed him to explore himself. “He was figuring out parts of himself by the work that he chose to do,” she said. Most of his shows have the particular flavor of what Levenson called “his self-hatred mixed with self-aggrandizement.” Image Even after Fosse and Verdon (seen here in 1966) separated, she often taught his choreography to the dancers in his shows.CreditMartha Holmes/The LIFE Images Collection, via Getty Images If the series doesn’t try to overlay 2019 values on a 1970s story, it doesn’t exactly absolve Fosse either. Back then his habits were laughed aside, broadly condoned. In this series, as Rockwell wrote in an email, “nothing is glossed over. You see all of his flaws and self-destructive behavior.” As Rockwell acknowledged, that behavior wasn’t only self-destructive. “He was so destructive,” he wrote. “Destructive to everyone around him. Especially the women in his life.” Was aggression essential to his work? Did predation somehow color “Chicago” or “All That Jazz?” Fosse thought so. Kail not so much. “I refuse to buy into the idea that you need acrimony and tension to create great work,” he said. Williams wondered what kinds of work Fosse would have made if he’d left his demons at home and protected his colleagues. “When I feel safe is when I can be fully expressive and completely free,” she said. “That’s when you’ll get the best out of me. In an environment like what Fosse created, that person wouldn’t be safe.” Genius can take other forms. The episodes that focus on Verdon offer a counternarrative. She started in burlesque clubs, too. Her first marriage was abusive. She had to leave a son with her parents. Her work ethic was equally relentless. But unlike Fosse, “Gwen wanted to stay high and bright and on top of everything,” Williams said. “She just gave joy. When you watch her dance, you feel her love of it.” When I first spoke to Levenson, he mentioned how he’d worshiped Fosse as a teenager. “He was sort of like the cool musical theater person, you know?” he said. A month or so later, as the final episodes were being prepared, I asked him if he could still enjoy Fosse’s work, knowing what he now knows about the man who made it. “That’s a really good question,” he said. He told me that twice, buying time. “The thing that makes this work fascinating is that the pathology and pain is so there on the surface,” he said. “A lot of these artists, once you know the personal stuff, you realize that it was there all along in the work. So I can’t enjoy it in an uncomplicated way. Enjoy is, like, no longer quite the word.” A Showman Whose Dazzle Hid Darkness Nov. 6, 2013 via NYT > Home Page http://bit.ly/2WrfIpH April 3, 2019 at 07:27AM DMT.NEWS, @ALEXIS SOLOSKI, @dmtbarbershop April 3, 2019 at 09:11AM - DMT NEWS

Breaking News

Home / DMT.NEWS / DMTBarberShop / DMTBeautySpot / ‘Fosse/Verdon’ Has Magic to Do. And Undo. A hip cocks. A shoulder jerks. The fingers fan like a Swiss Army knife that’s nothing but blades. To see a body like this — a congregation of angles kinked in opposition — is to recognize Bob Fosse’s slinky specter. Fosse died in 1987, but he still haunts Broadway, where he won a record eight Tonys for choreography, plus one for direction. He also brought home an Oscar, for “Cabaret,” and three Emmys, for “Liza with a Z.” “I don’t think it’s possible to do a musical that has dance in it and not have the influence of Fosse,” Thomas Kail said. Kail, who directed “Hamilton,” is an executive producer on “Fosse/Verdon,” a limited series that debuts on FX April 9. Though based on “Fosse,” Sam Wasson’s exhaustive 2013 biography, the series, as the name implies, twines Fosse’s story with that of Gwen Verdon, his third wife and longtime muse. Sam Rockwell plays Fosse, Michelle Williams is Verdon. Why the slash? Verdon, a knockout dancer and an unimprovable musical comedian who won four Tonys in six years, was no slouch. (Watch her in “Damn Yankees.” Her slouch is electric.) Fosse often shaped his choreography on her body, which means that she shaped it, too, and she taught it to dancers in turn, even after she and Fosse separated. Her inclusion also suggests a narrative informed by the #MeToo movement, a way to reframe the myth of the lone male auteur, of the man who behaves badly, but still, my God, those steps. If “Fosse/Verdon” succeeds, it could inform how we now tell stories about men like Fosse. Assuming we should tell these stories at all. Because if Fosse was a great man, he wasn’t necessarily a good one. He had genius, he had charm, but coercion and scapegoating colored his rehearsals, and he rarely met a chorus girl he didn’t try to bed. (Would he take no for answer? More or less. But his seductions often constituted an ugly abuse of power.) His addictions — pills, sex, all that jazz — were legion. In making “Fosse/Verdon,” the showrunner, Steven Levenson, knew what he didn’t want to create: “Another story about a brilliant man haunted by demons who behaves badly and does terrible things and the question of the series becomes, Well, was it worth it?” “No,” he said recently over breakfast in Brooklyn. “Of course it’s not worth it.” Image Fosse’s moves — the cocked hips, the shoulder jerks, the splayed hands — became instantly recognizable after shows like “Sweet Charity” and “Chicago.”CreditJohn Springer Collection/Corbis, via Getty Images Kail had read Wasson’s book as soon as it was released and had bought a copy for the “Hamilton” choreographer Andy Blankenbuehler as an opening night gift. When Kail learned that “Fosse” had been optioned, he and Lin-Manuel Miranda approached FX and joined the project in the summer of 2016 as executive producers. That fall he met Levenson, who wrote the book for “Dear Evan Hansen,” at a “La La Land” screening. Over sushi a deal was struck. Today’s Broadway royalty would make a show about yesteryear’s. Blankenbuehler joined Susan Misner as a choreographer, while Alex Lacamoire, another “Hamilton” veteran, was brought on as music director. Eight episodes were ordered, with Kail slated to direct five of them. So yes, the lead artists are primarily white and male, but the writers room, which includes Tracey Scott Wilson, Debora Cahn and Ike Holter, is at least a little more diverse. Before preproduction kicked off, Kail and Levenson wanted the blessing of Nicole Fosse, Fosse and Verdon’s daughter. In the spring of 2017 they met her for a breakfast so long it stretched into lunch. A few months later they went up to New Hampshire, near where she lives, and met with her again, spending a weekend looking through her archives. At that point, they still thought they were making “Fosse,” but as they flicked through photos and listened to old recordings, they knew they would have to include Gwen Verdon, too. Image Verdon (right) and Chita Rivera were the original Roxie Hart and Velma Kelly in “Chicago.”CreditAssociated Press Like Lola and Joe from “Damn Yankees,” Charity and Oscar from “Sweet Charity,” Roxy and Velma from “Chicago” — all characters from shows they built together — Fosse and Verdon were two lost souls, not one. So why had Fosse’s name endured and Verdon’s hadn’t? They decided that the show would explore, as Levenson put it, “how these complicated partnerships and collaborations become about one person, almost always the man.” “Fosse/Verdon” moves forward and backward in time, but centers, roughly, on the decade between “Cabaret” and “All that Jazz.” “It’s really a story of interdependence and codependence and” — Levenson paused here — “and love.” Still, Levenson wavered. The more he learned about Fosse’s behavior the more he wondered why he wanted to tell this story. “Like, why is this an interesting story? Is this just another awful person who made great art?” he asked himself. Then in the fall of 2017, the Harvey Weinstein scandal broke and Levenson realized, “We have to tell this story because of the way he behaved instead of in spite of the way he behaved.” Williams, speaking by telephone as she rode to the studio, put it a little more dryly: “Thank you to the movement. We’re now going to find out who Gwen Verdon is.” Kail — who had spent years making “Hamilton,” another show about a man of talents and flaws — had always figured they could tell the story with nuance. (When I saw him on set one day he had accessorized with a 30-pound weighted vest. “Otherwise it would be too easy,” he said. This is a man who likes a challenge.) “We need to examine these things, we need to talk about them,” he said later, speaking by telephone. Image “Fosse/Verdon” is informed by the #MeToo movement, a way to reframe the myth of the lone male auteur, of the genius who behaves badly. CreditMichael Parmelee/FX Image “Fosse/Verdon” explores, according to the showrunner Steven Levenson, “how these complicated partnerships and collaborations become about one person, almost always the man.”CreditEric Liebowitz/FX Of course, examining can look a lot like glamorizing, and if you saw the first teaser, which played during the Oscars, you’ll have spotted the legs, the breasts, the zippers plummeting down, down, down. But if the show celebrates Fosse, it’s the kind of party where the cake falls and most of the balloons pop. It would be a mistake to strip Fosse’s world of its appeal, its libidinal oomph. And another mistake to ignore how that appeal could sour. Levenson figured that Fosse’s own work suggested a possible approach. Fosse had magic to do and an almost compulsive need to then show you how the lousy trick was done. He created shows for grown-ups — decadent, mordant, cynical. The first time I came on set, to Grumman Studios on Long Island, cameras were placed to shoot “Big Spender” from “Sweet Charity.” The dancers wriggled in their stilettos and miniskirts, sequins skittering. They looked like unadulterated sex. Until you looked closer. Behind the fake eyelashes, these dance hall girls were dead inside. Fun, laughs, good times? Not exactly. This complicated sexuality had roots in Fosse’s own trauma. Dancing in burlesque houses as a teenager, he experienced transactional sex too early and too often. But his love of sparkle and his need to reveal sparkle as a sucker’s bet also stemmed from professional doubts. He worried that his talent was somehow superficial, all light and no heat. “Razzle Dazzle” from “Chicago” could have been his theme song: “Throw ‘em a fake and a finagle/ They’ll never know you’re just a bagel.” Nicole Fosse, a co-executive producer, said that she feels her father was drawn to projects that allowed him to explore himself. “He was figuring out parts of himself by the work that he chose to do,” she said. Most of his shows have the particular flavor of what Levenson called “his self-hatred mixed with self-aggrandizement.” Image Even after Fosse and Verdon (seen here in 1966) separated, she often taught his choreography to the dancers in his shows.CreditMartha Holmes/The LIFE Images Collection, via Getty Images If the series doesn’t try to overlay 2019 values on a 1970s story, it doesn’t exactly absolve Fosse either. Back then his habits were laughed aside, broadly condoned. In this series, as Rockwell wrote in an email, “nothing is glossed over. You see all of his flaws and self-destructive behavior.” As Rockwell acknowledged, that behavior wasn’t only self-destructive. “He was so destructive,” he wrote. “Destructive to everyone around him. Especially the women in his life.” Was aggression essential to his work? Did predation somehow color “Chicago” or “All That Jazz?” Fosse thought so. Kail not so much. “I refuse to buy into the idea that you need acrimony and tension to create great work,” he said. Williams wondered what kinds of work Fosse would have made if he’d left his demons at home and protected his colleagues. “When I feel safe is when I can be fully expressive and completely free,” she said. “That’s when you’ll get the best out of me. In an environment like what Fosse created, that person wouldn’t be safe.” Genius can take other forms. The episodes that focus on Verdon offer a counternarrative. She started in burlesque clubs, too. Her first marriage was abusive. She had to leave a son with her parents. Her work ethic was equally relentless. But unlike Fosse, “Gwen wanted to stay high and bright and on top of everything,” Williams said. “She just gave joy. When you watch her dance, you feel her love of it.” When I first spoke to Levenson, he mentioned how he’d worshiped Fosse as a teenager. “He was sort of like the cool musical theater person, you know?” he said. A month or so later, as the final episodes were being prepared, I asked him if he could still enjoy Fosse’s work, knowing what he now knows about the man who made it. “That’s a really good question,” he said. He told me that twice, buying time. “The thing that makes this work fascinating is that the pathology and pain is so there on the surface,” he said. “A lot of these artists, once you know the personal stuff, you realize that it was there all along in the work. So I can’t enjoy it in an uncomplicated way. Enjoy is, like, no longer quite the word.” A Showman Whose Dazzle Hid Darkness Nov. 6, 2013 via NYT > Home Page http://bit.ly/2WrfIpH April 3, 2019 at 07:27AM DMT.NEWS, @ALEXIS SOLOSKI, @dmtbarbershop April 3, 2019 at 09:11AM

‘Fosse/Verdon’ Has Magic to Do. And Undo. A hip cocks. A shoulder jerks. The fingers fan like a Swiss Army knife that’s nothing but blades. To see a body like this — a congregation of angles kinked in opposition — is to recognize Bob Fosse’s slinky specter. Fosse died in 1987, but he still haunts Broadway, where he won a record eight Tonys for choreography, plus one for direction. He also brought home an Oscar, for “Cabaret,” and three Emmys, for “Liza with a Z.” “I don’t think it’s possible to do a musical that has dance in it and not have the influence of Fosse,” Thomas Kail said. Kail, who directed “Hamilton,” is an executive producer on “Fosse/Verdon,” a limited series that debuts on FX April 9. Though based on “Fosse,” Sam Wasson’s exhaustive 2013 biography, the series, as the name implies, twines Fosse’s story with that of Gwen Verdon, his third wife and longtime muse. Sam Rockwell plays Fosse, Michelle Williams is Verdon. Why the slash? Verdon, a knockout dancer and an unimprovable musical comedian who won four Tonys in six years, was no slouch. (Watch her in “Damn Yankees.” Her slouch is electric.) Fosse often shaped his choreography on her body, which means that she shaped it, too, and she taught it to dancers in turn, even after she and Fosse separated. Her inclusion also suggests a narrative informed by the #MeToo movement, a way to reframe the myth of the lone male auteur, of the man who behaves badly, but still, my God, those steps. If “Fosse/Verdon” succeeds, it could inform how we now tell stories about men like Fosse. Assuming we should tell these stories at all. Because if Fosse was a great man, he wasn’t necessarily a good one. He had genius, he had charm, but coercion and scapegoating colored his rehearsals, and he rarely met a chorus girl he didn’t try to bed. (Would he take no for answer? More or less. But his seductions often constituted an ugly abuse of power.) His addictions — pills, sex, all that jazz — were legion. In making “Fosse/Verdon,” the showrunner, Steven Levenson, knew what he didn’t want to create: “Another story about a brilliant man haunted by demons who behaves badly and does terrible things and the question of the series becomes, Well, was it worth it?” “No,” he said recently over breakfast in Brooklyn. “Of course it’s not worth it.” Image Fosse’s moves — the cocked hips, the shoulder jerks, the splayed hands — became instantly recognizable after shows like “Sweet Charity” and “Chicago.”CreditJohn Springer Collection/Corbis, via Getty Images Kail had read Wasson’s book as soon as it was released and had bought a copy for the “Hamilton” choreographer Andy Blankenbuehler as an opening night gift. When Kail learned that “Fosse” had been optioned, he and Lin-Manuel Miranda approached FX and joined the project in the summer of 2016 as executive producers. That fall he met Levenson, who wrote the book for “Dear Evan Hansen,” at a “La La Land” screening. Over sushi a deal was struck. Today’s Broadway royalty would make a show about yesteryear’s. Blankenbuehler joined Susan Misner as a choreographer, while Alex Lacamoire, another “Hamilton” veteran, was brought on as music director. Eight episodes were ordered, with Kail slated to direct five of them. So yes, the lead artists are primarily white and male, but the writers room, which includes Tracey Scott Wilson, Debora Cahn and Ike Holter, is at least a little more diverse. Before preproduction kicked off, Kail and Levenson wanted the blessing of Nicole Fosse, Fosse and Verdon’s daughter. In the spring of 2017 they met her for a breakfast so long it stretched into lunch. A few months later they went up to New Hampshire, near where she lives, and met with her again, spending a weekend looking through her archives. At that point, they still thought they were making “Fosse,” but as they flicked through photos and listened to old recordings, they knew they would have to include Gwen Verdon, too. Image Verdon (right) and Chita Rivera were the original Roxie Hart and Velma Kelly in “Chicago.”CreditAssociated Press Like Lola and Joe from “Damn Yankees,” Charity and Oscar from “Sweet Charity,” Roxy and Velma from “Chicago” — all characters from shows they built together — Fosse and Verdon were two lost souls, not one. So why had Fosse’s name endured and Verdon’s hadn’t? They decided that the show would explore, as Levenson put it, “how these complicated partnerships and collaborations become about one person, almost always the man.” “Fosse/Verdon” moves forward and backward in time, but centers, roughly, on the decade between “Cabaret” and “All that Jazz.” “It’s really a story of interdependence and codependence and” — Levenson paused here — “and love.” Still, Levenson wavered. The more he learned about Fosse’s behavior the more he wondered why he wanted to tell this story. “Like, why is this an interesting story? Is this just another awful person who made great art?” he asked himself. Then in the fall of 2017, the Harvey Weinstein scandal broke and Levenson realized, “We have to tell this story because of the way he behaved instead of in spite of the way he behaved.” Williams, speaking by telephone as she rode to the studio, put it a little more dryly: “Thank you to the movement. We’re now going to find out who Gwen Verdon is.” Kail — who had spent years making “Hamilton,” another show about a man of talents and flaws — had always figured they could tell the story with nuance. (When I saw him on set one day he had accessorized with a 30-pound weighted vest. “Otherwise it would be too easy,” he said. This is a man who likes a challenge.) “We need to examine these things, we need to talk about them,” he said later, speaking by telephone. Image “Fosse/Verdon” is informed by the #MeToo movement, a way to reframe the myth of the lone male auteur, of the genius who behaves badly. CreditMichael Parmelee/FX Image “Fosse/Verdon” explores, according to the showrunner Steven Levenson, “how these complicated partnerships and collaborations become about one person, almost always the man.”CreditEric Liebowitz/FX Of course, examining can look a lot like glamorizing, and if you saw the first teaser, which played during the Oscars, you’ll have spotted the legs, the breasts, the zippers plummeting down, down, down. But if the show celebrates Fosse, it’s the kind of party where the cake falls and most of the balloons pop. It would be a mistake to strip Fosse’s world of its appeal, its libidinal oomph. And another mistake to ignore how that appeal could sour. Levenson figured that Fosse’s own work suggested a possible approach. Fosse had magic to do and an almost compulsive need to then show you how the lousy trick was done. He created shows for grown-ups — decadent, mordant, cynical. The first time I came on set, to Grumman Studios on Long Island, cameras were placed to shoot “Big Spender” from “Sweet Charity.” The dancers wriggled in their stilettos and miniskirts, sequins skittering. They looked like unadulterated sex. Until you looked closer. Behind the fake eyelashes, these dance hall girls were dead inside. Fun, laughs, good times? Not exactly. This complicated sexuality had roots in Fosse’s own trauma. Dancing in burlesque houses as a teenager, he experienced transactional sex too early and too often. But his love of sparkle and his need to reveal sparkle as a sucker’s bet also stemmed from professional doubts. He worried that his talent was somehow superficial, all light and no heat. “Razzle Dazzle” from “Chicago” could have been his theme song: “Throw ‘em a fake and a finagle/ They’ll never know you’re just a bagel.” Nicole Fosse, a co-executive producer, said that she feels her father was drawn to projects that allowed him to explore himself. “He was figuring out parts of himself by the work that he chose to do,” she said. Most of his shows have the particular flavor of what Levenson called “his self-hatred mixed with self-aggrandizement.” Image Even after Fosse and Verdon (seen here in 1966) separated, she often taught his choreography to the dancers in his shows.CreditMartha Holmes/The LIFE Images Collection, via Getty Images If the series doesn’t try to overlay 2019 values on a 1970s story, it doesn’t exactly absolve Fosse either. Back then his habits were laughed aside, broadly condoned. In this series, as Rockwell wrote in an email, “nothing is glossed over. You see all of his flaws and self-destructive behavior.” As Rockwell acknowledged, that behavior wasn’t only self-destructive. “He was so destructive,” he wrote. “Destructive to everyone around him. Especially the women in his life.” Was aggression essential to his work? Did predation somehow color “Chicago” or “All That Jazz?” Fosse thought so. Kail not so much. “I refuse to buy into the idea that you need acrimony and tension to create great work,” he said. Williams wondered what kinds of work Fosse would have made if he’d left his demons at home and protected his colleagues. “When I feel safe is when I can be fully expressive and completely free,” she said. “That’s when you’ll get the best out of me. In an environment like what Fosse created, that person wouldn’t be safe.” Genius can take other forms. The episodes that focus on Verdon offer a counternarrative. She started in burlesque clubs, too. Her first marriage was abusive. She had to leave a son with her parents. Her work ethic was equally relentless. But unlike Fosse, “Gwen wanted to stay high and bright and on top of everything,” Williams said. “She just gave joy. When you watch her dance, you feel her love of it.” When I first spoke to Levenson, he mentioned how he’d worshiped Fosse as a teenager. “He was sort of like the cool musical theater person, you know?” he said. A month or so later, as the final episodes were being prepared, I asked him if he could still enjoy Fosse’s work, knowing what he now knows about the man who made it. “That’s a really good question,” he said. He told me that twice, buying time. “The thing that makes this work fascinating is that the pathology and pain is so there on the surface,” he said. “A lot of these artists, once you know the personal stuff, you realize that it was there all along in the work. So I can’t enjoy it in an uncomplicated way. Enjoy is, like, no longer quite the word.” A Showman Whose Dazzle Hid Darkness Nov. 6, 2013 via NYT > Home Page http://bit.ly/2WrfIpH April 3, 2019 at 07:27AM DMT.NEWS, @ALEXIS SOLOSKI, @dmtbarbershop April 3, 2019 at 09:11AM

April 03, 2019 , ,

http://bit.ly/2YKujhE barbering, ALEXIS SOLOSKI, barberlife, barber, barbersince98, BarberShopChronicles, hairmenst April 03, 2019 at 09:11AM