Boy Dancer

This chapter explores the foundation of Bob Fosse’s dance style through his years as a young performer in the waning days of vaudeville, his teenage appearances in Chicago area nightclubs and burlesque houses, and the dance act he formed with his first wife, Mary Ann Niles. Fosse appeared in three films at MGM, the last of which, Kiss Me, Kate, featured a short sequence of his choreography that displayed aggressive jazz stylings, burlesque traces, and witty comic touches. It also showed the influence of Jack Cole, the American dancer and choreographer who had created his own dance idiom incorporating movement from Middle Eastern, Indian, Afro-Cuban, and other ethnic dance traditions into an athletic, sexually charged jazz dance style that was highly influential.