Margery Beddow is thrilled to have been included in Robert Simonson's article "Beyonce and Beyond". Please scroll down to watch Bob Fosse's original choreography for Gewn Verdon in Mexican Breakfast and also an interesting compilation of dancing styles to the tune of Beyonce's "Single Ladies" with Gwen Verdon on "The Ed Sullivan Show", Shirley Maclaine in "Sweet Charity" and of course, Beyonce.Channeling Fosse: Beyoncé and Beyond By Robert Simonson
(SOURCE: please click on the title above to read the complete article at Playbill.com)
...While Beddow is happy that the Fosse influence lives on, she feels like something is being lost in translation.
"Fosse would appreciate the fact that they're beautiful and are looking very sexy," she said of the "Single Ladies" video. But "they really needed to go a bit deeper into what Fosse's style was. The point of his work was it was all about acting. Whether you're singing and dancing, you're acting. You're in the business of communicating ideas. Fosse had a subtext to the steps, so that you would be doing something with your hips, but with your eyes and your head, you're thinking 'How do you like this?' Something would be challenging, something would be 'Ha, ha, ha. I’m going to walk away now.' There was something you were thinking in each section."
Beddow said she could see that Beyoncé and her companions, "were thinking sexy, but it was one color. Fosse always said the head and the eyes develop last. They look out at the audience. They're landing it on the audience.
"He said, 'If a dancer isn't also an actor, it's just so much animated wallpaper.'"
