The document provides context about the musical Chicago and the song "Cell Block Tango." It discusses the plot of the musical, which is based on real-life murders and scandals in 1920s Chicago. It then summarizes the scene in which "Cell Block Tango" occurs, describing how each of the six women sing about murdering their husbands or lovers. The remainder of the document discusses a student performance of the song, including character and choreography details.

1. Chicago - Cell Block Tango - Contextual Analysis
The musical Chicago is based around the celebrities, scandal and
corruption in Chicago during the Jazz era. It follows the real life murders
and trials that went on in the 1920s. The musical falls under the genre of
Jazz/Dark Comedy, due to its content of murder. The routine Cell Block
Tango is about six female murderers and why they committed their ‘not
crimes’, throigh the eyes of the charcater Roxie who believes she is living
in a musical. The piece explains each females story of why they ended up
in Cook County Jail, and why their murderers are justified according to
them.
The character I am playing is June (aka Squish). Her story is that she killed her husband
with a carving knife as she was carving up a chicken for dinner, after he came in shouting at
her for cheating on him with the milkman.
The song Cell Block Tango is in Act one of the musical, near the very start of the musical
after the other routines Funny Honey and All that Jazz. All that Jazz comes first, and is a
performance performed by one of the main characters of the production ‘Velma Kelly’. This
number occurs as one of the other main characters ‘Roxie Hart shoots Velma’s lover for not
introducing her to a nightclub producer who could give her the potential opportunity of
fulfilling her dreams of being an aspiring Vaudeville performer. Roxie then convinces her
husband that it was in self defence against an intruder and begs him to take the blame for
the murder. The officer convinces Roxie's husband that there was no intruder and that she
was just cheating on him in the routine ‘Funny Honey’. This is the point in the musical where
Roxie is then arrested and taken to the Cook County Jail where the routine Cell Block Tango
then takes place.
Within the routine Cell Block Tango, there are the three key elements of musical theatre e.g.
acting, singing and dancing. The acting and singing elements are used to portray the stories
of the six women in the Cook County Jail, and the murders they committed. They each sing
through their stories, justifying the reasonings behind the murderers they comitted. As they
are singing about their stories, they are dancing at the same time, which gives the piece a
sense of the Jazz dance style to incorporate the third element of musical theatre. However,
our group that is performing this piece are predominantly dancers, therefore we are only
using dance to portray the story of Cell Block Tango. Within this piece, we will need acting
skills to create the story line, in which we will use things like; characterisation, facial
expressions, gesture, mannerism and posture. For the dancing within the routine we will
need many different skills like; coordination, balance, weight placement, control, spatial
awareness, movement memory, dynamics, use of space, musicality, breath control and
rhythm. Within this routine, we are using chairs to dance with, which means that we will have
to have a good idea on how to use the chairs as a prop to incorporate them into the dance.
In our rehearsals for Cell Block Tango, we started off by selecting which characters we
wanted to play. As there are only five of us, we decided as a group that I was going to cut
the solo that the character Liz (aka pop) has, as it is the first solo in the song, and no one
picked that character. Cutting this section of the song out means that it will be easier to finish
the routine in time for the showcase, as instead of being seven minutes long it is now only

2. six minutes. We have slowly been going through the whole group sections of the song,
making sure to incorporate the chairs into the routine, and when the different solo sections
come into the song, we make sure to change the style of the dance a little bit to fit with the
different tempos of music in the song. We also have made sure that when the solo sections
come in, we slow our movements down so that we don't distract from the soloist explaining
the story of their character.
In the rehearsals of Cell Block Tango, I have set myself the targets of helping out with
choreography and helping others with learning the choreography. As we are creating this
routine on our own without any help from the director, I have had to step up and almost take
a leadership role in the choreography of the piece. This will be challenging for me as i have
to focus on making sure everyone else is understanding what they are doing as well as
myself, whilst thinking of choreography at the same time.
Overall, as a group we are on track with the progress of this routine, making sure it will be
ready to perform at the showcase on the 23rd June 2022, making sure to focus on our key
skills we need to have in the performance to make it successful and achieve our target
grades.