You will be redirected to OpenEdition Search. She is. Most straightforwardly, she is impersonating a specific dancer, so the blackface and drag aspects culturally loaded as they may be are external aspects to her performance, a way of building the impression of Bill Robinson for the audience. This kind of challenge is common in tap culture Constance Valis Hill begins her discussion of turn-of-the-century show dancing with a particularly high-stakes example involving Robinson at the beginning of his career , 1 but throwing down the gauntlet is audacious in the context of Hollywood glamour, which depends on a kind of airy disengagement from reality.
And the number is transgressive in its crossing of the gender boundary β though also participating in a new style of femininity in the s that can likewise encompass a breezy Katharine Hepburn in slacks and a knowingly seductive Marlene Dietrich in a tuxedo. It is not unexpected to see Powell in trousers; it is, however, surprising to see her imitating a specific African-American man. Jack Haley Jr. Together, the three argue that the genius of Astaire outshines the discredited performance practice.
Despite recent flowering of scholarly literature on Powell, no such efforts are made to recuperate her Robinson tribute, despite her being the only person to whom Robinson granted permission to perform his signature dance [CLIP 5].
Some things are distinctly individual; others are enculturated through social interaction, like a dialect; still others are chosen for particular contexts. Dance, even more than voice, is enriched and complicated by its intimate relationship with music. It has only been in the last decade or so, however, that Powell has finally garnered some scholarly attention. In fact, there were black tap dancers whom Astaire admired much more than Robinson: notably John W.
Bubbles, whom he found truly great. But Robinson, thanks to his movies with Shirley Temple The received meaning of these shadows is that Astaire is paying tribute to the history of black dancing on which he builds as a tap dancer.
