Oxford University Press has released Liza Gennaro’s Making Broadway Dance, which explores how musical theater choreography is created. Gennaro applies script analysis and movement research to provide a close-up look at the creative work of influential choreographers George Balanchine, Agnes de Mille, Jerome Robbins, Katherine Dunham, Bob Fosse, Savion Glover, Sergio Trujillo, Steven Hoggett, and Camille Brown. “It’s important to understand that musical theater dance is not a monolith,” Gennaro said. “It is a multivaried dance expression that responds to the predetermined aspects of librettos — time, place, plot, and character — and employs dance to tell stories.” By considering influences from ballet, modern, post-modern, jazz, social, and global dance, Gennaro offers a rich understanding of how choreographers make Broadway move, and she challenges the perception that stage dance is often kitsch, disposable, or without artistic process. Her book is enlightening reading for theater students, artists, and fans.
Below is Gennaro on the American Theatre Wing’s Working in the Theatre epsiode “The Vocabulary of Dance: Choreographers 2010,” talking about recreating the dances of her father, Peter, who choreographed West Side Story and Annie.