I always have been an avid lover of musicals. It started innocently enough with things most kids watch like Disney movies, or Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.
Then Julie Andrews came along and messed everything up. With Julie, frolicking through the Austrian country-side in curtains or dancing on the rooftops of London seem not only like entertainment to a young, impressionable, imaginative slightly-hyper child. It became a possibility. And certainly, a preferred reality to the aforementioned child.
Then my eyes were opened to the wonderful world of Rogers and Hammerstein. Cinderella was a personal favorite of mine. Upon a recent revisiting of this musical, I realized how horrifyingly bad the vocal performances are. But hey, it was 1965, that's an entirely different musical era. (Listen to this if you want to cringe)
Needless to say, by the time I was 13 and finally introduced to Les Mis, I was desperately, hopelessly, and thoroughly hooked on musicals.
So I wonder:
Why can't choreographed singing and dancing happen in real life!?
Think about it, there are some cultural things that didn't really come from anywhere and are never officially taught, but people know them anyways. Like paper, scissors, rock. Every American child knows it is the most unbiased way to make a decision. The other night after Mr. Awesome and I used this method to agree on something terribly important, like what TV show we watched, I tried to remember where I learned it. I obviously wasn't born with an instinctive knowledge that rock smashes scissors, it was something I just picked up along the way. Probably preschool.
So why can't singing and dancing be the same way?
Sure, you learn the hokey pokey, but usually that's some poor teacher trying to get her ADD kids to blow off some steam before trying to teach them about addition. And sure, you learn "David and Katie sitting in a tree, K-i-s-s-i-n-g" the first time your kindergarten crush (jerk) is ignoring you for someone else (she was scrawny and bossy and he really should have liked me instead), but that hardly even qualifies as a song.
I'm talking about a real world, like that scene in Enchanted when everyone in central park knows Amy Adam's song. I'm talking about the scene in 500 days of Summer with the Hall and Oates song. I'm talking about fraulein Maria's voice being pumped through a train station's sound system.
THAT, my friends, is a world that I want to live in.
Here's to believing for a better tomorrow for my kids!
Then Julie Andrews came along and messed everything up. With Julie, frolicking through the Austrian country-side in curtains or dancing on the rooftops of London seem not only like entertainment to a young, impressionable, imaginative slightly-hyper child. It became a possibility. And certainly, a preferred reality to the aforementioned child.
Then my eyes were opened to the wonderful world of Rogers and Hammerstein. Cinderella was a personal favorite of mine. Upon a recent revisiting of this musical, I realized how horrifyingly bad the vocal performances are. But hey, it was 1965, that's an entirely different musical era. (Listen to this if you want to cringe)
Needless to say, by the time I was 13 and finally introduced to Les Mis, I was desperately, hopelessly, and thoroughly hooked on musicals.
So I wonder:
Why can't choreographed singing and dancing happen in real life!?
Think about it, there are some cultural things that didn't really come from anywhere and are never officially taught, but people know them anyways. Like paper, scissors, rock. Every American child knows it is the most unbiased way to make a decision. The other night after Mr. Awesome and I used this method to agree on something terribly important, like what TV show we watched, I tried to remember where I learned it. I obviously wasn't born with an instinctive knowledge that rock smashes scissors, it was something I just picked up along the way. Probably preschool.
So why can't singing and dancing be the same way?
Sure, you learn the hokey pokey, but usually that's some poor teacher trying to get her ADD kids to blow off some steam before trying to teach them about addition. And sure, you learn "David and Katie sitting in a tree, K-i-s-s-i-n-g" the first time your kindergarten crush (jerk) is ignoring you for someone else (she was scrawny and bossy and he really should have liked me instead), but that hardly even qualifies as a song.
I'm talking about a real world, like that scene in Enchanted when everyone in central park knows Amy Adam's song. I'm talking about the scene in 500 days of Summer with the Hall and Oates song. I'm talking about fraulein Maria's voice being pumped through a train station's sound system.
THAT, my friends, is a world that I want to live in.
Here's to believing for a better tomorrow for my kids!
i agree. everyone should randomly burst into song. often.
ReplyDeletehaha, you have no idea how many times i've wanted to break out into a song from the Newsies or Sound of Music or Mary Poppins here in the streets of Paris... I may have started to sing and dance a little when I threw the children's shutters open the other day (of course, after they had left!)
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