The Dance Troupe that Beat Susan Boyle:
Well-deserved, I think. (Click on number 3 on the playlist.)
UPDATE: BTW, Boyle sang the same song she sang on her first appearance on Britain's Got Talent. I understand the tremendous pressure she was under, but I suspect she would have been much more likely to win if she had shown the audience something new.
Also: the best pop singers can become a long-lasting cultural phenomenon ... something people will forever associate with a time or emotion in their life. No dance troupe will ever have the cultural resonance we associate with Elvis, the Beatles, etc.
Not to mention the greatest dance troup of all time, Fred and Ginger. Of course, that was only a two-person troup, but.... They could sing, too.
I think I prefer Gene Kelly on roller skates in Xanadu. It's worth sitting through the rest of that unbelievable mess of a movie just to get to Kelly on skates....
Of course dancing can be a cultural phenomenon, whatever that means. Singers have occupied that place more often mostly because radio and recordings dominated for a fairly long time. Dancing has become more and more important since the advent of music videos. Right now, dancing ability is at least as important for pop stars as their singing ability, and maybe more so, since its very difficult still to "lip-synch" your dancing.
Plus, in the past 30 years, we may remember specific dance crazes, but not the dancers of them.
When I think of Elvis, I think of his hips about as soon as I think of Hound Dog.
I understand that we don't associate any of these with anyone in particular -- but perhaps that's because they are very different from pop singing.
But to say that the Ballet Russe, with it's ground breaking Nijinsky choreography in Rite of Spring, AFternoon of a Faun and others, isn't a cultural phenonema! Sure it was a 100 years ago, and affected just the elites, but we elites like to have fun too!
I've no problem with that. My point was, if lamely made (yeah), that dance in certain periods of our history, on the screen anyway, was just as powerful a cultural phenomena as singing has become. I was thinkin of F&G in the 30s, but you could certainly point to those maginificent MGM musicals of the 50s as evidence for this, too (maybe moreso--just look at "Singin' in the Rain" and ask yourself what is most vivid in your memory, the singing or the dancing? Kelly in the rain dancing with that umbrella...matchless.)
But pop music and musical theater are all about the soloists and their individual characters. That makes it easier for these genres to create individual stars. And careers are a lot longer. There's no Mick Jagger among dancers.
Even though she came in second, I think Susan Boyle will do just fine.
Pretty much all dance in the 20th century was influenced by the Ballets Russes, not just "elite". They in turn were influenced by Isadora Duncan - and how about her for a cultural icon!
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