In this episode, we interview author Kevin Winkler and talk about his new book, Everything is Choreography: The Musical Theater of Tommy Tune.
Kevin Winkler enjoyed a career of more than twenty years as a curator, archivist, and library administrator at the New York Public Library, prior to which he was a professional dancer. His book, Big Deal: Bob Fosse and Dance in the American Musical, won the TLA 2018 George Freedley Memorial Award Special Jury Prize for an exemplary work in the field of theatre or performance, and was a finalist for the Marfield Prize, the National Award for Arts Writing. Kevin has served as a consultant for Lincoln Center Education, curating resources to accompany PBS Lincoln Center Live performances available throughout New York City public libraries. He has blogged for the Huffington Post and is a MacDowell Colony fellow. Kevin is an on-camera commentator in the new documentary Merely Marvelous: The Dancing Genius of Gwen Verdon. His new book is Everything is Choreography: The Musical Theater of Tommy Tune, published by Oxford University Press.
From Amazon.com…
Grand Hotel. My One and Only. Nine. The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. A Day in Hollywood/A Night in the Ukraine. The Will Rogers Follies. For two decades, Tommy Tune was the maestro presiding over a string of glittering Broadway musicals that took the tradition of complete musical staging by a director-choreographer into a new era defined by spectacle and technology. He was last in a grand lineage led by Jerome Robbins, Gower Champion, Bob Fosse, and Michael Bennett, but also provided a link to a new generation of choreographers-turned-directors like Susan Stroman, Jerry Mitchell, and Casey Nicholaw.
Unlike his fellow director-choreographers, Tune also maintained a successful performing career. His nine Tony Awards (plus a tenth, for Lifetime Achievement) were earned across four categories, not only for choreography and direction, but also as both featured and lead actor in a musical, for Seesaw and My One and Only –a distinction no one else can claim.
Tune took the musical forward by looking backward, bringing satiric energy and contemporary style to a trove of show business antecedents–from clog dancing to showgirl formations, from precision kick lines to Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers-style ballroom glides. He did the same with his concert and cabaret performances, drawing on classics from the Gershwins, Irving Berlin, and Cole Porter and performing them not as nostalgia but as vital, immediate statements of personal philosophy.
Everything is Choreography: The Musical Theater of Tommy Tune is the first full scale book about the career of this prodigious artist. It celebrates and examines with a critical eye his major projects, and summons for readers a glorious period of dance, performance, and theatrical imagination.
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