2023 Bruce Kirle Panel Introduction

Look, they made a hat! The excellent essays from the 2023 Bruce Kirle Memorial Debut Panel contribute to musical theatre and dance studies by offering Black feminist critique, deep dramaturgical analyses, and careful pedagogical performance practices. I felt honored to respond to the conference papers and mentor these authors, since I had served as a Graduate Student Representative for the Music Theatre Dance Association a decade earlier. As a feminist killjoy who has written on Black performance, US regional theatre, and feeling yellow, these essays resonate with me, and I hope they will with you, too.

First, Ashley Dunn makes an urgent intervention into scholarship that tends to celebrate the supposedly liberatory subversiveness of white women in burlesque at the expense of Black women. To understand neo-burlesque today, she looks back. She spotlights Black foremothers and argues that they challenged racist and sexist representation. Rather than reify normative ideals of respectability politics, they engaged in gender-bending to make fun of patriarchy and to make a living. Studying the economy of embodied performance, Dunn builds on the work of Jayna Brown, Daphne Brooks, and Anthea Kraut.

Next, Andy Colpitts offers a compelling history of Hadestown on its journey from rural Vermont to Broadway. His methodology features close readings of songs, quotations from the creative team, and images from scenic designs to marketing materials. By documenting changes across productions, he demonstrates how the musical moved from a rural, communal dramaturgy of anti-capitalist ethics to a more typical big-budget commercial show that focuses on well-drawn individuals in a largely dematerialized urban setting. His research builds on recent publications that privilege spaces outside New York City, like Stacy Wolf’s Beyond Broadway (2020).

Finally, Natasha McCandless stresses the importance of embodiment and emotions in teaching movement. She offers the “choreographic piece” Made of Water as her case study, walking us through the production process, intimacy best practices, and the personal reactions of her collaborators and spectators. Her thick descriptions successfully capture choreography on the page. She thoughtfully situates herself amid existing scholarship in dance studies, affect theory, and women of color feminism. Ultimately, she invites us to acknowledge and incorporate our feelings into our work across the classroom, studio, and stage.