Dance, mobility and social change in Billy Elliot: The Musical

Pub Date : 2022-12-01 DOI:10.1386/smt_00107_1
Robert Gordon
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Abstract

Billy Elliot: The Musical addresses the issue of class that, while seldom analysed as a theme in Broadway musicals, has been a key trope of the majority of British musicals since the première of The Shop Girl in 1894. The article examines how the dialectic of dance as an emblem of individual freedom opposed to the rigidity of the British class system is expressed through movement within the mining community of Easington. By utilizing various aspects of Rudolf Laban’s effort theory, including the kinetic personality patterns of his associate, Warren Lamb, the article examines the cultural gendering of movement via the strict regimes of boxing (for boys) and ballet (for girls). With brief references to Bourdieu’s notion of habitus and Brecht’s praxis of Gestus, the article illustrates how Billy’s ability to embrace a supposedly ‘feminine’ kinetic vocabulary constitutes the flexibility to free himself from the rigid and inherently homophobic definition of conventional masculinity. In promoting movement beyond the confines of an outmoded tradition of working-class behaviour, Billy embraces a classless notion of postmodern masculinity represented in the bohemian milieu of the metropolitan artist. By ‘dancing’ his freedom for the Royal Ballet’s audition panel in ‘Electricity’, Billy embodies his own liberation from the repetitive pattern of movement that inevitably sends the miners to early graves while he flies upwards to defy the typical destiny of a miner. The article explicates key moments of movement and dance in order to exemplify the embodiment of the musical’s central tropes in kinetic terms.
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《比利·艾略特:音乐剧》中的舞蹈、流动性和社会变革
Billy Elliot:《音乐剧》解决了阶级问题,尽管在百老汇音乐剧中很少将其作为主题进行分析,但自1894年《女店员》首映以来,这一直是大多数英国音乐剧的一个关键比喻。这篇文章探讨了舞蹈作为个人自由的象征,与英国阶级制度的僵化相对立的辩证法是如何通过伊辛顿矿业社区内的运动来表达的。通过运用鲁道夫·拉班努力理论的各个方面,包括他的伙伴沃伦·兰姆的动态人格模式,本文通过严格的拳击(男孩)和芭蕾舞(女孩)制度来考察运动的文化性别化。文章简要引用了布迪厄的习惯概念和布莱希特的《手势》实践,说明了比利接受所谓“女性”动态词汇的能力如何构成了将自己从传统男性刻板且固有的恐同定义中解放出来的灵活性。在推动运动超越过时的工人阶级行为传统的过程中,比利接受了一种无阶级的后现代男子气概的概念,这种概念体现在这位大都市艺术家的波西米亚环境中。在《电》中,比利为皇家芭蕾舞团的试镜小组“舞动”了自己的自由,体现了他自己从重复的运动模式中解放出来,这种运动模式不可避免地会让矿工们早逝,而他则向上飞行,挑战矿工的典型命运。文章阐述了动作和舞蹈的关键时刻,以举例说明音乐剧的中心比喻在动力学方面的体现。
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
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