Livent has acquired worldwide rights to all of the choreography created by Bob Fosse which will be featured in a brand new, still untitled musical retrospective now in development. From July 29 a cast of 26 young dancers, led by Fosse protege Chet Walker and Fosse's wife Gwen Verdon, the legendary Broadway star for whom he created New Girl in Town, Damn Yankees, Redhead, Sweet Charity, and Chicago, have been in residence at York University in Toronto fo a four week workshop on the new Fosse project.
For the past three summers York University has been the home of Livent's annual summer festival of new work. This is where Ragtime was first read and where Leslie Arden's The House of Martin Guerre was workshopped. Garth Drabinsky, CEO of Livent said "We are looking forward to getting the Fosse musical up on it's feet and we are delighted that all of the people who are closest to Fosse personally and who worked with him, have rallied together for this project and honoured that they have entrusted us at Livent with it."
The Fosse workshop is planned to highlight dancing and musical numbers from the choreographer's earliest work on television, created for himself and dance partners Carol Haney and Gwen Verdon for the Ed Sullivan Show, and several Bob Hope specials, and to showcase such classical Fosse dance numbers as 'Steam Heat', from Pajama Game; 'All that Jazz' from Chicago; 'Big Spender' from Sweet Charity; 'Bye Bye Blackbird' from 'Liza with a Z'; 'Dancin' Man' and 'Sing, Sing, Sing' from Dancin'; and 'Beat Me Daddy' and 'Eight to the Bar' from Big Deal, Bob Fosse's final Broadway show.