Cabaret Dance Review- February 11, 2013:

For once, I actually can write my dance paper on something I actually saw live, that being Cabaret with Joey as the Emcee. I adore the show, and as expected, Joey was fantastic! It surprised me a lot, though compared to other versions I have seen in the past. The main difference was that it incorporated so much more dance than I had expected. Before I saw the show, I heard that it was more dance oriented than Chicago, yet versions I have seen of it on YouTube as well as the Frank Theatre’s production have had far less dance than Chicago or other shows such as Scottsboro boys.

The most surprising dance part of the show was ‘Sitting Pretty’ which was turned into an enormous tap-based dance number. I had never seen the song performed, since the Frank Theatre as well as most YouTube versions include ‘Money Makes The World Go Round’ in its place. It surprised me more than other songs like ‘Don’t Tell Mama’ or the telephone song, which are all inherently movement-related.

Also, I never thought of ‘Cabaret’ as a tap show and so the sudden intricate tap movements surprised me and got me even more invested in this portion of the show than ‘Money Makes The World Go Round’, despite being so used to the latter. Not to mention the fact that Joey as the Emcee is very good at tapping! Many community versions of Cabaret I have seen on YouTube keep the Emcee as a rather stationary character, leaving the dancing to the cabaret girls. I like when the Emcee is incorporated in the dancing; as the fourth-wall-breaker having him dance really pulls the audience into the action even more!

I love the show so much; it really connects with me in a way different from other shows, and seeing tap dancing in it got me even more invested since I love tap dancing and find it especially interesting to watch and do! I wish I had seen a manifestation of Cabaret including this song as a tap piece last year; Darius and I did a project on Kander and Ebb and a tap dance to ‘Electric Chair’ from Scottsboro Boys. Had I known about this, since Cabaret is my second (though only just barely) favorite musical, he and I could have done something with this.

I just was very inspired by and astounded by the fact that tap worked so well in this piece. Cabaret, contrary to popular belief, has a very different atmosphere compared to Chicago, despite a somewhat similar tone and the same creators, and I tend to think of Chicago as the dance show, and more of an appropriate instance for a tap number. Still, this worked so well and it just made me so happy to see something so unexpected, yet fitting and wonderful!