A highly influential film on me when I was a late-teenager was Fosse’s semi-autobiographical “All That Jazz”.  The jazz dance numbers were so well danced and filmed that the movie pushed me toward taking more jazz and tap dance classes.  I almost declared a dance major when I was at Lansing Community College (right out of high school).   Ultimately, I didn’t do a dance major–I majored in creative writing as a transfer student to the University of Michigan Residential College.

Recently watching the Fosse-choreographed dance numbers affirmed that I still love watching jazz and other “vernacular” dance forms and I think about taking a class, even though I probably won’t.

The other element of this sort of retrospective of big MGM musicals, is that when I was a kid, we went to Michigan State to the classic film series, including these great musicals.  Occasionally, the Monday night films shown at the East Lansing Public Library would include a big musical movie.  Going down memory lane and viewing these movies as an adult gives a different perspective, but ultimately, the talent is still completely evident.

Kent and I have also been doing an Alfred Hitchcock retrospective.  This is a fun way to structure retrospective viewing–by director, or by a particular star.  My friend did an Audrey Hepburn retrospective a while back.

One last thought:  I tried watching the movie “Sweet Charity” from the beginning, but I could only get through the first ten minutes it was so-o-o-o bad.  Finding the dance numbers on YouTube is so much better.  When I was 18, the summer after my first year at LCC, I performed in the stage musical “Sweet Charity”.  I was one of the taxi dancers in the “Big Spender” number.  I remembered the song, but at the time I had no idea Bob Fosse was the original choreographer and that the Broadway musical starred his wife, Gwen Verdon.

What have you been watching and why?