Dance in Musicals!

Dance in musicals! I adore musicals to death and today I got to write about dance from two of my favorite, Grease and Hairspray. Our task was to choose a dance from grease then choose a dance from a musical of choice, the reason I choose hairspray was because grease and hairspray are both set in high school and a dance show is featured in both of the musicals (hairspray- Is about a dance tv show called hairspray), (Grease- has the filmed dance competition scene).

(click on the photos for links to the dances)

This dance has two parts a hand jive, and rock and roll dances and tricks. The hand jive is a type of dance that is mostly used with rhythm and blues from the 1950s. A hand jive involves complicated patterns of hand movements, claps, and/or imitating percussion instruments. Think of it as a very extreme groovy version of pat-a-cake! The story behind this dance begins with everyone wanting to be in the spotlight of the camera whereas sandy prefers to stay away for the spotlight wich gives a more goody two shoes look, then Danny decides to follow sandy which gives up his "gang" attitude. During the lineup dance it shows how much Danny cares about sandy as he makes sure that they are together. During the dance competition, Sandy gets dragged away from Danny, yet Danny decides to stay on the dance floor with cha-cha which creates conflict between Danny and sandy.

Drama Gender roles in musicals!

Today in drama we watched grease and that got us thinking about gender roles in musicals compared to recent musicals like mean girls. In grease, the boys are expected to be tough, race cars, and smoke like in the scene where sandy and Danny meet at high school. Danny is pressured by the members of his gang, The T birds to act tough and careless. Whereas girls are expected to be Polite, gentle, and wear dresses.  In mean girls, the idea of LGBTQ+ is more accepted, as two of the main characters are gay. Boys are free to be who they want to be, and girls are free to have their own fashion and personality.