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Tap and Teeth: Virtuosity and the Smile in the Films of Bill Robinson and Eleanor Powell

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 September 2014

Margaret Morrison
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Abstract

Several films of 1935 catapulted tap dancers Bill “Bojangles” Robinson and Eleanor Powell to movie stardom. Robinson's The Littlest Rebel and Powell's Broadway Melody of 1936 utilize a cinematic formula that intercuts the virtuosic footwork of the tap artists with giant close-ups of their toothy grins. The experience for contemporary spectators can be unnerving, as magnified lips, teeth, and eyes dominate the screen and interrupt the pleasure of watching expert tap. While the close-up smile and the choreography of the camera helped the film industry reproduce the excitement of live performance, these dance scenes also mobilize constructions of black masculinity and white femininity, through editing techniques that create multilayered narratives of power, intimacy, and submission. Robinson's close-up can be read as a depiction of racial subservience, as audiences are confronted with the smiling minstrel mask and the perpetuation of the legacy of minstrelsy in Hollywood. Powell's smile in close-up emphasizes her feminine sexual availability and evokes the voyeuristic camera shots of beaming, passive showgirls. The interplay in these two movies between the extremes of the tap dancer's body, the smile and feet, offers an opportunity to examine tap virtuosity within Hollywood's rigid system of racial and gender stereotypes.

Keywords

Bill RobinsonEleanor PowellgenderHollywood musicalsracesexualitytaptap dance
Type
Articles
Information
Dance Research Journal , Volume 46 , Issue 2: Body Parts: Pelvis, Feet, Face, Hips, Legs, Toes, and Teeth , August 2014 , pp. 21 - 37
Copyright
Copyright © Congress on Research in Dance 2014 

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