Dancing in the dark: quando a Dança-Teatro encontra o Vaudeville

The Band Wagon (Vicente Minnelli: 1953) starring Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse is a MGM musical that, as a substantial percentage of the musicals produced in Hollywood in the forties and fifties, has as main narrative line the backstage variety where putting on a show provided the strongest impetus for the plot. Though “The Band Wagon” also involves a love story, the putting-on-a-show theme tends to be central and the romantic plot becomes incidental. The film deliberately uses Astaire and Charisse as characters posing the question of whether they can dance together (with all that implies). The film suggests an idea of fusion of difference within dance identities replicating what was happening in the musical films industry: the shifting from vaudeville to a ballet-theatre style. Our main aim with this paper is to analyze the number “Dancing in the Dark” taking in account that the dancers, as characters and stars, represent two sets of values explicitly embodied in their dancing styles. He is the old Hollywood musical representing the purpose of “pure entertainment”; she, with her background in ballet, represents the new Hollywood musical, with its infusion of Ballet Theatre and its aspiration to be meaningful as well as entertaining.