Did Fosse ever say to you, "Thank you for coming"

anyway no and at the audition they were not accustomed to being treated like human beings like he treated everyone and and when he dismissed someone he went up to them personally thank you for coming thank you for coming and so all over Munich and then Germany and all Europe it became a dancer's joke not a joke but you know it became famous and it would be you know if somebody rejected somebody it was thank you for coming here I was still taking classes and it was there when you Brenner had the King and I reliable so what was Fosse doing Oh Sweet Charity of revival of it or something I don't know what year but there was a guy in my class and that told me that he was going to a Fosse audition the next day and I knew he had no chance but good luck so the next couple days later when I was in class I saw the guy there and I said how was the audition oh so wonderful I mean he came over and he thanked us I'm he won fans from that audition from saying thank you great reputation yeah he was but his rehearsals were like a love fest sometimes you know they other people like Jerry Robbins you break your leg because you didn't want to lose your job but with Bobby you break your leg because you didn't want to disappoint him you know he really I think calculated he made me fall in love with him because he got much more work out of you more easily that way this is very true Harvin you know I used to work really hard at giving him what he wanted and watching his line and everything and I think it was new girl in town we took off our hats and we had to prance down the stage and he kept one day he L did mer Harold Harvey keep your shoulder down like that and so recently John gave me a tape of some of bobby and Gwen doing that number and his shoulders up it ain't that easy Bobby yes yes but no you did work hard at being exactly specific and this this number and new girl in town the trio was way before people thought of him only as this you know he was much more athletic and and vaudevillian in his early days than he is thought of now he's thought of this well you know Fosse and dance and maybe when yeah but to me you know all those precise small moves to me it started with Secretariat's not a toy I don't remember redhead but he took those small little movements then he broke the ensemble up so you'd have four people making a line and then suddenly they had work against three people making a triangle then five or six people making a circle and it's a very geometric and I think there's a clear line from secretary into richkids rag of little me into the rich man's Krug and blast man of charity and then into Pippen and then I think he tended to get so stylized he forgot to move all of his his style has it's almost become a contagion around now you cannot see a television commercial without seeing the influence the Rockettes what are you talking about when I did the number with Gwen she said where's your hat I said I don't have one so she gave me one of Bobby's hats and it's on the wall at my house and everybody that tries it on whether they're in the business or not goes right to a it's just amazing what that it transfers people into him you know even the falldown step from from little me from How to Succeed which he also used in the Frug and the first the front page of the fine art section of the New York Times was a picture of the Rockettes during spa they do it in slow motion but it's that you know it's the same thing and so he stole from himself and now the world is this is stealing from me he stole that pony stuff from know from Jack Cole and Bale stole they all stole ah Jack Hoel yeah became smaller and very precise also about the same time he started doing the movies when you can focus easily and I think that contributed to the smallness of the movement because he tried to focus in on it which is not so easy to do on the stage as opposed to the butt cap but then in Yankees there's Shoeless Joe which head which is all athletic and pounding pounding all right but then Sheila's joke but then of course Lola I mean I mean that that was the containment was there he didn't use it as much as as he did later on the show was very chaplain esque in style along with a path let ik fred astaire style yeah it was very much like that whereas the two lost souls in the second act it was very I mean me I'm all over the place you know he always say bring it down bring it down you know and I feel like this the baby to me it almost knocked out the fun but it was what he wanted and is what paid off a really Goddard for his style it was terrific it was wonderful but he saw something else in Jack Cole that nobody else sold that he took and adapted to his own ways his own styles his own energy that really created another style for him that was just fantastic that the dancers of today are still following it but it was his eye and his that saw that extra thing and with his special thing that he had within him he took that and made it a great dancing style and I'm talking about his Chaplin is a adoration for Chaplin his adoration for Fred Astaire and of course for Jack Cole and when Gwen would do up step like this he'd see it need minimize it take it down and he just kind of adjusted to himself and it became another it was ingenious it was great we're doing the Fosse style it just came out of that that's what happened where do you think it started though I think well I was with Damn Yankees yeah it wasn't none bells ringing well no pedestrian no I well I think it started maybe in pajama game with Carol Haney who was his star dancer and I think that kind of she was kind of a jack she was a jock old Dan yeah oh yeah and from her he took some of that movement and adjusted that the steam heat but that was not subtle that was really big but when he got the Damn Yankees and he worked with Gwen again he got the Jack Cole technique then it adjusted his Chaplin thing his Fred Astaire thing minimized and his feelings about everything and that extra special thing I don't know what the hell it is but extra special thing that he had it himself came out of all that and he developed the FASTA style that was it a new girl in town he used to be really tight with his dancers he would throw parties for just the dancers and this was he was courting Gwen then and I remember one party he gave on some small apartment he had on the Westside and he had a low bed and I almost felt sorry for him because Gwen was holding court on the bed with all of us on the floor around just talking about Jack Cole and Jack Paul a Jack Paul and I'm thinking hey here's Bobby sitting here and it's Jack Cole so he obviously all that filtered through him like you said yeah and I remember I remember our dressing room up there I look down and one night Gwen was in the middle and Fosse was on one side and Jack Hoel was an odd the other side and they were walking 46th Street and I thought oh I'm seeing history here yeah

Channel: dancersover40

Views: 10,275

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: Dancers, Over, 40, Men, of, Fosse, Harvey, Evans, Gene, Gavin, George, Marcy, CHICAGO, DAMN, YANKEES, Bob, Fosse

Id: hcAgZn7rnR8

Length: 8min 45sec (525 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 05 2008