Redressing the Black Crook: The Dancing Tableau of Melodrama

This article claims that modern musical theatre began when dancers transformed the static tableaux of melodrama into episodes of singing and dancing. Though static, the melodramatic tableau had long been understood as suggesting incipient action; the musical distinguished itself generically by realizing this potential energy. The tableau vivant and the pose plastique had already laid the groundwork by deploying women’s bodies to depict the melodramatic realm of ideality upon which melodrama focused. However, while melodrama valorized the arresting of a woman’s body, the musical celebrated instead her performing power. It is precisely this use of women’s bodies simultaneously as signifier of a mythic realm of melodramatic virtue and as eroticized yet empowered spectacle that creates the musical’s affective disintegration. This genealogy demands that we reconsider the role of The Black Crook in theatre history, since it links the traditions of melodrama, posing entertainments, and musical theatre.