The song, from the 1975 musical Chicago, which has been in my head constantly the past couple of days, thanks to my coming across a vein of brief retro-choreography performances of it by the dance pair Twinsauce. Just delightful, even more so when you see them doing their shtick (infused with energy and enthusiasm) in a wild variety of settings (and in an assortment of costumes): for example, in a pouring rainstorm in NYC (video here), on the snowy sidewalks of Chicago (video here), in a shoe store (with beautiful wood flooring) (video here), and in a cobblestoned passageway, as Rat and Mouse (video here).
(#1) Rat and Mouse hoofing “All That Jazz”; great fun
Background: the idiom: and all that jazz ‘and other such things’, ‘and all that sort of thing’ (allowing for a side allusion to jazz music). But then there’s the slang idiom:
‘enthusiastic or lively talk, especially when considered exaggerated or insincere’: all this jazz about how they can’t afford it is preposterous (NOAD)
And there’s the slang verb jazz ‘to have sexual intercourse, to fuck’ (orig. US black, according to GDoS, which has it back to the 19th century); both blacks and illicit sex are relevant to the musical’s book.
Background: Twinsauce. Extracted from a WGN (Chicago tv) news interview from 5/29/25: Paul and Luke Harwerth are identical twin dancers who go by the name Twinsauce on social media, where they have more than a million followers. The twins, who who live in Kansas City MO, are self-taught, from retro dancing that they enjoyed; they specialize in short-form dance content, with plenty of facial acting and hand movements as well as footwork.
Background: the music. From Wikipedia:
“All That Jazz” is a song from the 1975 musical Chicago. It has music by John Kander and lyrics by Fred Ebb, and is the opening song of the musical. The title of the 1979 film, starring Roy Scheider as a character strongly resembling choreographer/stage and film director Bob Fosse, is derived from the song.
The musical, from Wikipedia:
Chicago is a 1975 American musical with music by John Kander, lyrics by Fred Ebb, and book by Ebb and Bob Fosse. Set in Chicago in the Jazz Age, the musical is based on a 1926 play of the same title by Maurine Dallas Watkins about actual criminals and crimes on which she reported. The story is a satire on corruption in the administration of criminal justice and the concept of the “celebrity criminal”.
The lyrics for the first section (followed by a dance break and then the second section), which will give you the favor:
(#2)
And then, from many amazing recorded performances of the show, “All That Jazz” in a 2024 Australian production, at the Capitol Theatre in Sydney (video here). A still:
(#3) This production stars Anthony Warlow, Zoë Ventoura, and Lucy Maunder, along with Peter Rowsthorn and Asabi Goodman; that’s Ventoura out in front
(I don’t know who the male dancer is next to Ventoura, but he’s wonderful to watch. Also as sexed-up as the director could make him.)
One more step, the film. From Wikipedia:
All That Jazz is a 1979 American musical drama film directed by Bob Fosse and starring Roy Scheider as an obsessive film and stage director. It is a semi-autobiographical fantasy based on aspects of Fosse’s life and career as a dancer, choreographer and filmmaker. It was also the final work of its producer Robert Alan Aurthur, who wrote the screenplay with Fosse and died a year before its release.
The story draws from Fosse’s experience editing his 1974 film Lenny while simultaneously staging the Broadway musical Chicago, which he directed, choreographed and co-wrote.
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