Coffee House | A Ballet by Henry Mancini
Choreography: Gene Kelly
Music: Henry Mancini
Notable Dancers: Claude Bessy (Paris Opera Ballet) |
Gerd Andersson (Royal Swedish Ballet) | Judith Dornys (Berlin Opera Ballet)
Premiere: The Gene Kelly Show| 24th April 1959
Duration: 8 minutes, 3 seconds
It is no secret that Henry Mancini wasn’t exactly known for composing music for ballet. His talent and style flourished in the many movies and television shows for which he composed. Nevertheless, when I discovered that he had composed the music for a rather short and quite unusual ‘ballet’ titled ‘Coffee House’, I had to look into it.
Unlike most ballets, Coffee House was not performed nor premiered in a theatre, but instead on Gene Kelly’s own television show; a format that was much more familiar to Henry Mancini and one that is arguably far more flexible, allowing for quicker scene changes and carefully constructed camera angles, in contrast to the comparative ‘vulnerability’ of the theatre. It appears this ballet was created purely for the purpose of The Gene Kelly Show, and never sought to have a life outside of it, likely because of its short duration, unique aesthetic, and reliance on different film techniques in order to convey the narrative.
Synopsis
Watch Here: Coffee House
The ballet’s story depicts ‘a case for a private eye’, opening with a short scene complete with gangsters and gunshots, before cutting to the ‘Cha Cha Coffee House’. Inside, the detective Peter Gant (Gene Kelly) is sitting having coffee before a man is shot, and in a humorously over-dramatic death scene manages to give an ‘ominous’ note to Peter, farcically inscribed with the words ‘Cha Cha’, before lying down dead. Cue first dance interlude.
A mysterious woman in a trench coat crosses the scene and exits out of a door on the other side. Peter follows her and chases her up some stairs, only for her to disappear into a different room. He goes to open the door, but before he has a chance, a beautiful woman inside opens it for him, wearing what appears to be a floaty dressing gown or dress, with her long blonde hair flowing down her back. She invites him in and they sit on the sofa together. Cue a more teasingly romantic pas de deux interlude.
You would have thought that the beautiful woman was the mysterious lady in the trench coat in different clothes, but no! While the two are dancing, the mysterious trench-coat clad woman appears out of the wardrobe and sneaks back out the door, where she drops her hat on the stairs. Peter follows her out into the stairwell and back into the coffee house, retrieving her hat on the way. The coffee house is now empty, except for the trench-coat lady sitting on a chair seductively puffing on a cigarette and holding a gun. Cue a slightly sexier dance interlude.
Peter disarms her and she falls unconscious for a moment before they briefly return to their sultry dancing. They kiss, and you wonder, is this love? But no, Peter had discreetly handcuffed her wrist to his, and so the ballet ends with him leading her off to jail, as we assume she was the culprit for the many gunshots and the death in the beginning.
A Blend of Styles
Stylistically, Coffee House is far from the aesthetics of a traditional, classical ballet. However, as ballet has quite an expansive definition, with the practice of telling a story through the art of movement certainly being one aspect of it, Coffee House, in its loosey-goosey, liberal way, does, in fact, fulfil that brief.
Punchy, vivacious, and entertaining, the combination of the composition and the dancing brings forward the personalities of the two gentlemen. The choreography is undeniably Gene Kelly and the music is indisputably Henry Mancini. It is a great collaboration, a marvellous blending of styles, in which we get to hear their spark, their flare, and their charisma, unique to them and only them. Therefore, there is no confusion as to why the ballet is a light-hearted and comedic one, since both men were known for their panache for drollness, elegance, and fun.
As I have alluded, the music is very Henry Mancini, very jazzy, very hip, and very modern, at least for its time. And I imagine that it is the music that may have inspired the dancing, since there is no way one could attempt to choregraph something deep and classical to such upbeat and cheerful music, not that Gene Kelly necessarily would have wanted to. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that music lends itself to the more contemporary and freely expressive choreography that Gene Kelly created.
That being said, the era of the late 1950’s to 1960’s, in which this ballet was created, was the peak of the Beatnik epoch. The Beatniks, at this time, were people who ‘participated in a social movement that stressed artistic expression and the rejection of the expectations of conventional society.’ Although the movement grew out of America, specifically New York and San Francisco, unquestionably there were inspirations derived from French culture, literature, and style, with much of the Beatnik ‘uniform’ including berets and striped tops- both worn by our protagonist, Peter Gant.
Coffee House is incredibly Beatnik, choreographically speaking. Set in a coffee house with a gangster-style detective narrative supposedly in somewhere like downtown New York, lays the foundation for a very bohemian atmosphere. Gone are the perfectly practiced steps of the classical ballet and in their place are the deliciously fun, avant-garde, and quirky mime-inspired movements that certainly promote the notion of free artistic expression over and above the conforming to social convention. In fact, this ballet is quite reminiscent of the renowned dance scene titled ‘Basal Metabolism’ from the 1957 film Funny Face, starring Audrey Hepburn and Fred Astaire, with music by George Gershwin. This scene sees Audrey dressed in another quintessential Beatnik outfit of a black polo-neck jumper and cigarette pants, dancing a crazy dance to zany jazz music, with two Breton-striped backing dancers while in a smoke-filled existentialist bar in downtown Paris. It is very Beatnik, very free, and has many similarities with our Coffee House ballet. In both cases, you can certainly see the sixties on the horizon.
Even though this ballet is part of a television show, it seems it was performed to a live audience, as you can hear their laughter throughout. The scene changes clearly required separate camera angles to get different shots, though I wonder whether this was all laid out on one stage for the dancers to move between, creating a cohesive performance for the audience, or whether each scene was filmed separately with resets in-between. I cannot tell. Since the duration is short, the story is enhanced with humorous quips in the form of voice-overs, usually illustrating the inner thoughts of Peter Gant, with Gene Kelly adding facial expressions and mime, augmenting the absurdist comedy.
All in all, it is a very fun, very chic, and very sweet little ballet, that is unlike anything else I have seen under the ballet umbrella. It is a shame it was never expanded into something a little bigger or more stage oriented, since the story is entertaining enough to be fleshed out into something longer and more detailed, maybe not two acts worth, but half-an-hour, perhaps? It is also a shame that Henry Mancini never sought to compose any more music for ballet and dance. Of course, his sound world was very unique and typically ‘un-ballet’, but since his music was based on many Latin dances, I am sure that with the right choreographers, many fabulous and distinctive projects could have been created. Even though that clearly wasn’t meant to be, we should remain heartened by the fact that we have this one example to give us an insight into what a Henry Mancini ballet would have been like.
Lastly, I thought I should mention that Mancini repurposed the music of the "Cha-cha-cha" segment (2.03- 3.43 in the ballet) to create the track “Cowbells and Coffee Beans" that appeared on his 1961 "Mr. Lucky Goes Latin" album. I have a shared a link to the track above so you can listen to it!
Read more about Henry Mancini here:
