| re: In defense of 'too much choreography' in HAMILTON | |
| Last Edit: GrumpyMorningBoy 12:47 pm EDT 07/04/20 | |
| Posted by: GrumpyMorningBoy 12:45 pm EDT 07/04/20 | |
| In reply to: re: In defense of 'too much choreography' in HAMILTON - andyboy 10:35 am EDT 07/04/20 | |
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| I'm gonna partially agree and partially disagree with you here, andyboy. Obviously for the battle scenes, even though we've got rather 'tell, not show' lyrics like those within "Guns and Ships," we've got to see the ensemble out there portraying soldiers. But have a closer look at those lyrics; the stakes and the conflict are right there in the text. It's all over the musical subtext as well. A bald lyric like "32,000 troops in New York Harbor" would be unemotional on the page; Lin-Manuel set that to music which starkly helps us appreciate what's happening. A battle is brewing and people are going to DIE. In the theater, seeing it for the first time, I remember that it was one of the things which impressed me most. Mr. Miranda found ways to continually raise the stakes throughout all of the writing. I could make another thread of that. But back to the topic at hand... I think the show needs to visually depict actual deaths of human beings the audience needs feel the cost of those losses. The lyrics and music are telling us what to imagine in terms of those battles, sure, but I'll argue that we NEED to SEE all of them. The choreography does that. This is especially true for "Yorktown (The World Turned Upside Down,)" which is very much a tell-not-show lyric. There's no way that song would have such heft without the ensemble on stage, both singing and dancing. Of course, there are any number of more traditional 'crowd' scenes where the ensemble is playing voters choosing whom to vote for, wedding guests, bar patrons, etc. I think the more discretionary use of ensemble is for something like "Wait for It," or "The Room Where it Happens," which are taking place within Burr's own mind. (The same could be said for "Satisfied," which rewinds out of the wedding scene into a very internal part of Angelica's mind.) Those are, to me, numbers where I think many choreographers would have given the ensemble a chance to rest backstage. But I'm willing to argue that keeping the ensemble onstage in those numbers doesn't just raise the stakes of what Burr and Angelica are contemplating; it maintains the sense that these people are making history. - GMB |
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