I’m not sure when the term “dansical” was first coined, but it might have been for Susan Stroman’s Lincoln Center show Contact that had a book but no dialogue or lyrics, providing a narrative purely to dance that saw it win the 2000 Tony Award for Best Musical. It was subsequently adopted as a term to describe the work of both Twyla Tharp (with her 2002 show Movin’ Out, which created a new narrative ballet out of the music of Billy Joel) and Matthew Bourne (when he brought the Tim Burton film Edward Scissorhands to the stage in 2005).
Now it is also being applied by Danish director/choreographer Peter Shaufuss to the “dance concert” Satisfaction that he has built around the repertoire of the Rolling Stones that opened last night at the West End’s Apollo Theatre. But watching this non-narrative revue – which I was reviewing for The Stage – it reminded more of something that long pre-dated Stroman, Tharp and Bourne’s inventions and interventions in the form: the 80s dance revues of Wayne Sleep with his company Dash.
Sleep was also the first star of the Anthony van Laast choreographed dance half of Song & Dance in 1982, which set Andrew Lloyd Webber’s ‘Variations’ to dance. (When the show went to New York in 1985, Peter Martins, who is now director of New York City Ballet, did the choreographic honours). Perhaps that was the first dansical?
But why get stuck on terms anyway? It’s all theatre, and the only difference is which critic is sent. Last night, I felt myself surrounded mainly by dance critics – though I was joined by my theatrical colleagues from both of the Mails with Quentin Letts from the Daily and Georgina Brown from the Sunday, as well as LBC regular Roger Foss. It will be interesting to see how different the critical reactions between the two groups is. Stay tuned!
