When Artistes Have Dancers On Stage

I've noticed many musical acts use a dance troupe on stage ie. Madonna and many other pop outfits and it does nothing for me , in fact I really quite dislike this type of performance but then I watched this...



...I got a slipped disc just watching it! Wild!

 

David Byrne had dancers on stage with him when I saw him a few years ago doing the songs of Byrne and Eno (around the time of Everything That Happens Will Happen Today), and it was one of the best gigs of my life.

 

It's better than when they do it themselves:

 

Hawkwind?

 

I like when Queen Bey does it

 

The Stranglers had strippers on stage.......as a hormone ridden 15 year old

 

That is the first thing that popped into my head - Nice 'n' Sleazy

How about Tina?

 

The Fall made it work with the Michael Clarke Ballet company for a while.

 

Helge Schneider has got Sergej Gleithmann, and Happy Mondays have got Bez.

From the 80s, a lot of pop music has been mainly about dance moves. That's why the shows of artists like Madonna and Britney Spears are more dance shows than concerts. Sometimes, choreographers have turned into pop artists, such as Paula Abdul who used to be a choreographer for Janet Jackson before her own singing career.

 

I was at a 3 day iHeartRadio festival a few years back.. lotsa dancers on stage.. Katy Perry, Keisha, Chris Brown etc etc...

Elton John & Paul McCartney blew them all away.....

 

The Byrds with go-go dancers....

 

Here's the dance troupe from the OP. They were known at the time as LaLaLa Human Steps:

 

I enjoyed Bez's uncoordinated stumblings with Happy Mondays, and the Butthole Surfers with their caged go go dancer.

 

I first remember La La La Human Steps working with David Bowie.

The Tubes had Re Styles, of course, plus a few other dancers at various times.

The Beastie Boys had a few girls in cages when they toured after Licensed To Ill, but as the only show I saw was the legendary Liverpool riot show they weren't on stage very long before the show ended in a cloud of tear gas!

 

Madness had Chas Smash, who was a dancer/mascot/hype man

like the rest if the band, he was actually a talented musician and songwriter

Here is his definitive Nutty Dance

 

On one level, it's no different than Pink Floyd or The Jefferson Airplane doing a light show. Nothing whatsoever to do with the MUSIC, but an attempt to create a multimedia experience that extends beyond ONLY the music, or ONLY the visuals, to create a new third thing.

I'm really glad to see The Fall and Frank Zappa as examples here because I think it gets trivialized as the domain of women pop stars who don't have the musical chops to stand on their own. Did Peter Gabriel NEED costumes? No. They literally got in the way when he couldn't get close enough to the microphone during some of the Lamb shows. But it was part of the spectacle.

Back to dancers, I've really enjoyed what Todd Rundgren has done with with a couple of dancers on his Global tour.




There, they're pretty much just visual candy, but hey, I like candy. That's actually a rather stripped down version of his approach to the very same song when it was newer, with THREE women instead of two, although they were more prominently featured vocally...but still, in practice, primarily as dancers, and I think it worked really well. Here's a clip.

I'm looking forward to more examples!

 

It has pretty much always been thus since the 1960's.
I never liked the idea of having go-go dancers thrashing spastically about around a band that was performing or lipsynching. Today we have fly-girls. Same thrashing, different name for it.
Some Beatles TV performances had this, as well as lots of other bands. The Knickerbockers Lies video comes to mind.

 

Google "Hawkwind" and "Stacia." I'm not really able to post a video or image her, because, well, you'll see.

 

One of my favorites
Revolting Cocks-Attack Ships on Fire

 

I didn't the mind strippers at kid rock, motley crue, beastie boys etc.

 

Joanne Catherall and Susan Sulley were originally brought into the Human League in late 1980 to be singers and dancers. After being spotted in the Crazy Daisy Disco by Philip Oakey and Adrian Wright they visited the band's studio the next day I think. Apparently after hearing them Philip said "Erm well there won't be much singing". But it was their ordinariness that made them a hit with audiences, they were literally the same teenage fans unselfconsciously dancing and singing along like many would do in the bedrooms or discos, but actually on stage.

Despite having the additional visual appeal of Adrian's slides, the Human League live were rather static, so it was part of Philip's plan to have something more interesting for people to look at on stage.

 

Fair points, but where they (acts with dancers on stage) lose me is when they aren't even singing live. Then its no longer a musical performance, its just a dance show. Whatever Bowie or Gabriel had on stage, they were singing live to music performed live by a band. This isn't the case with Britney Spears or Jennifer Lopez, though there are plenty of female pop artists with dancers on stage who DO actually sing.