To listen to Rivera, it would seem that Fosse found his perfection in Verdon. It was those tiny little things that were so important to him. Bob wasn’t a cruel guy, but he knew that she wasn’t going to work out. Well, the next day of filming, she wasn’t there. This girl just couldn’t stop blinking her eyes and selling herself. We were told that, when the everyman walks into the dancehall, we had to stop and stare at him and not blink our eyes. Like Vereen, Rivera was cast in Fosse’s film Sweet Charity, the story of a group of taxi dancers dreaming of a better life that included Cy Coleman’s brassy showstopper “Big Spender.” As Rivera recalled, “There was a gorgeous girl in the cast.
You couldn’t let Bobby’s style carry the move. You had to fill the vessel with your spirit and energy, and you had to like what you were doing with every single movement. “It was the difference between someone yelling and someone whispering - and it was very sexy. “The moves had to be as small as he wanted,” Rivera explained. Still, she remembers how challenging it was to perfect Fosse’s style. She had also worked closely with choreographers Jack Cole, Michael Kidd, and Jerome Robbins. He gave us style and taught us that less is more - but his less was so precise.”īy the time two-time Tony winner Chita Rivera met Fosse, she was already an accomplished performer, having starred on Broadway in West Side Story and Bye Bye Birdie. “I was all over the place, but Bob told me not to worry about it. Vereen recalled with fondness that “no matter what background you came from, Bob would spend time to make sure that you got it.” As a modern dancer, Vereen found Fosse’s moves difficult. My reading wasn’t very good, but Bob said, ‘So what?’ Next thing I knew, I was doing Pippin.” Under Fosse’s direction and choreography, Vereen clinched a Tony Award for his performance. … I just wanted to show Bob what I had learned. “I didn’t go into the audition to get the role,” Vereen said, “but rather to show Bob how much I had grown since he first saw me. “He told me, ‘There is no chance that this is gonna make it.’” Vereen defied his agent, declaring, “If Bob’s doing it, I’m doing it.” Not that he necessarily expected to be cast. Initially, Vereen’s agent tried to talk him out of it. In 1972, a new opportunity came for Vereen when Fosse asked him to read for Pippin. He was very smooth like that.” Vereen got the part in the touring production and later in the 1969 film version - followed by lead roles on Broadway in Hair and Jesus Christ Superstar.
Bob taught the whole dance combination with a lit cigarette in his mouth. “I first met Bob at the Palace Theatre in New York,” Vereen said. The Chicago native began his career in the early 1950s with shows like The Pajama Game (1954) and Damn Yankees (1955), but it was his projects from the late 1960s and 1970s that catapulted the Fosse style to the masses, evidence of his strong work ethic and relentless drive for perfection. Thirty-two years after his passing, Fosse’s legacy continues to serve as a blueprint for today’s talent, from Beyoncé’s 2008 video for “Single Ladies,” which features Fosse steps, to the current Broadway musical The Prom, in which a character sings, “Ask what would Bob Fosse do? He’d make the people have a step-ball-change of hearts.” Lin-Manuel Miranda, Thomas Kail, and Steven Levenson served as the executive producer, executive producer/director, and writer/show runner, respectively, for the series, which was based on Sam Wasson’s award-winning biography Fosse.ĭramatics spoke with Broadway performers Ben Vereen, Chita Rivera, and Michelle Potterf about the nine-time Tony Award-winning director, to hear their favorite Fosse stories and their insight into why his influence continues to shine.
#Slow burn theatre series
This spring, a team of Broadway talent joined forces to tell the story of that power couple in Fosse/Verdon, an eight-episode cable TV series that premiered on FX in April. Although he was only 60 when he died, Fosse had created a vast and influential body of work, much of it in collaboration with his third wife, actor and dancer Gwen Verdon.
In 1979, Fosse released his iconic autobiographical film, All That Jazz. IN 1973, Bob Fosse became the first - and still the only - director to win a Tony (two, actually, for the direction and choreography of Pippin), an Oscar (for Cabaret), and an Emmy (for Liza with a Z) all in the same year.
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