That master of the extravagant dance moves, the ultimate godfather of the kind of show we theatrical queens love today, Bob Fosse would have been 80 years old today.
The talent behind such magnificent shows as Cabaret, Sweet Charity and Chicago, some of our greatest showbiz ladies such as Shirley MacLaine and Liza Minelli owe much of their success to his exquisite eye for a show-stopping number. A magnificent talent, and, even twenty years after his death, still a huge influence on the renaissance of musical theatre today...
In the words of one of his biographers Fernando Zaremba, a major contributor to Bob's tribute website:
"When Bob Fosse died on September 23, 1987, many, many people were saddened by his untimely passing. But few, if any, were surprised by it. Fosse had always been a man who fully embraced life, and his death at the relatively young age of sixty came as a shock to almost no one. Indeed, many of his associates were amazed he lived as long as he did.
"Possessed of both unbridled energy and tremendous artistic gifts, Fosse was one of this century's great choreographers. Though he forged his craft on the Broadway stage and on film, he was as much an artist as Nijinsky, Balanchine, or DeMille.
"He was also one of our era's most indulgent personalities, for he applied the same frenetic pace to his personal life as he did to his artistic efforts. A fan of drink and drugs, Fosse eventually tempered his habits after his first major heart attack in the early 1970s. But he never slowed down when it came to women. Married three times, Fosse had an almost endless list of dalliances.
"As an artist, Fosse was known for his thoroughly modern style, a signature one could never mistake for anyone else's. Snapping fingers are omnipresent, so are rakishly tilted bowler hats. Both hip and shoulder rolls appear frequently, as do backward exits. Swivelling hips and strutting predominate, as do white-gloved, single-handed gestures.
"Fosse himself often called the en masse amalgamation of these moves the "amoeba", and that word as much as any describes his particular style, at once fluid and angular."
Read more on the Fosse website
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