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"The Watchmen" and the Unsolvable Problem

10/23/2019

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From "The Watchmen," Tulsa bombing from air.
Jitterbug! began as a fictional romance inspired by American pop culture history. After many drafts, a series of subplots emerged, the most underlying one being race in America. Although the dancical  touches upon lynchings in Georgia in conversation and implies racial tension between the white mobster owners of the Cotton Club and its black artists, it also shows how working together can create magic, ie,  Cab Calloway's Orchestra plays music written by Harold Arlen and Ted Koehler, two nice Jewish boys working for the mob, tasked with putting together a new Cotton Club hit revue. This symbiotic relationship also extends through the music from that period which is used in the dancical: 7 of the 17 songwriters are white-- and Jewish. 

Damon Lindelof, creator of the new HBO series "The Watchmen," is quoted in Esquire  as saying that today "it feels like you can't tell a story about America in any kind of real, historical context that doesn't talk about race." He goes on to say that "in order for this to be Watchmen, we have to start with an unsolvable problem, a problem that the most well-intentioned superheroes and vigilantes actually cannot solve." And that is racism. 

Unlike comic book fiction, my heroes Billy Rhythm and Tharbis Jefferson can't rely on their superpowers to solve that unsolvable problem, in this case a much simpler one, winning the climatic dance contest amidst death threats-- and actual acts of knives and razors unleashed upon them as they dance. Of course, their dancing could be considered a superpower-- which surely helps them win the dance contest-- but it's what they bring to the legendary Savoy Ballroom dance floor that really wins it for them: human courage, the kind that bleeds when facing death.

Although Billy and Tharbis may not have solved that "unsolvable problem"-- something that may never be solved even with the greatest superpowers at hand-- they do manage to dance around it by bringing the black and white Savoy audience to tears and agreement that what they had just witnessed was... stunning and unforgettably beautiful.

And courageous, too, when these ordinary heroes, beaten and bloodied in the final moments, stand up to the bad guys-- both black and white-- to end the show triumphantly, gifting the audience as they exit the theater with a sense of... hope.
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There's something about Shakespeare...

10/15/2019

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If you read him or seen his work, you can't shake the Bard from your mind. In West Side Story, it was intentional, appropriating Romeo and Juliet into a romance about Tony and Maria from different sides of the street on the west side of Manhattan with warring gangs replacing warring families-- reinforced with great music and dancing worthy of Shakespeare's timeless work. Only in reflection did I realize I did the same-- but without an original score. Jitterbug!s music comes from 16-hits from the Great American Songbook (performance rights secured) and its choreography from the current Jerome Robbins in our midst, men and women who can deliver dancing that includes swing, tap, and current styles (hip hop, dubstep, voguing and more for the jitterbug's breakaway-- the unexpected stuff ripped from the future that blows the jaded Savoy Ballroom regulars minds and helps my hero and heroine-- Billy and Tharbis-- win the dancical's climatic dance contest). 

The first image reflects Billy and Tharbis at the end of the dancical running triumphantly away from the Savoy Ballroom where they faced down death and won the dance contest, freeing them for a better life. It shamelessly borrows West Side Story poster imagery. And, like the immortal play, it's warring families have been replaced with warring gangs, one white, the other black.

The second picture borrows from the "Balcony Scene" but with a twist: Billy uses his dancing to express his love for Tharbis as she watches him tap dance under the streetlight outside her Harlem tenement apartment. No words, no singing (or rain), just dancing. Oh, yeah, at one point Billy reaches into the future and borrows from Gene Kelly and Singing In The Rain by jumping up on the streetlamp-- but jumps off and lands in a split in homage to the Nicholas Bros.*

Like the above-the-title copy says, this is a "Celebration of America."

*Jitterbug! doesn't require "triple threats" from any of its performers. It just needs actors who can dance really, really well. :)
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    DC Copeland

    Multi-hyphenate with a penchant for writing.

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