Dance Elements
The highlight of the original production was a long (7-10 minute) ensemble dance number ("The Bathing Beauty Ballet", to the song "On a Sunday by the Sea") at the beginning of the second act. Choreographer Robbins staged this number in the manner of a Mack Sennett silent slapstick film. It uses the music of "On A Sunday By the Sea", Liszt's Second Hungarian Rhapsody, and Offenbach's can-can from "Orpheus in the Underworld". "This number was so basic to the show that deleting it would render the evening incoherent. It was a major evocation of a period, a tribute to silent-film comedy." Amanda Vaill, in her biography of Robbins describes this dance number: "The actors careen across the stage, in and out of a row of boardwalk bathhouses, slamming doors, falling, rolling, leaping to their feet, colliding with one another, in a masterpiece of intricately plotted chaos that bears all the marks of the developing Robbins style: wit, character, drama, and precision."
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