This is the first image of I Won’t Dance.

What appealed to me with this music, besides the up beat tempo,  is the back-en-forth dueling story telling between more than friends.  The music says this couple has a history playing out for our ears to enjoy.  Here is I Won’t Dance from the 1935 movie Roberta with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers:

This is new version of I Won’t Dance by Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga:

In this cover the Woman Won’t Dance featuring  Jane Monheith with Michael Buble:

This jazz standard by Jerome Kern,  comes alive, even without the girl, in this outstanding live Frank Sinatra cover featuring the Buddy Rich orchestra.

I could not leave out this soft and easy to listen to, I Won’t Dance,  song by Fred Astaire:

I than became curious so I came up with a few other dueling duets: from 2011,  Gotye, Somebody I use to know:

Although, less combative, here is Elton John with Kiki Dea singing Don’t Go Breaking My Heart from 1993.

A little farther back, to 1981, is this sharp conflict song from Human League,  Don’t you Want me:

I might have even watched this wonderful performance from Neil Diamond and Barbara Streisand at the 1980 Grammy Awards, You Don’t Bring Me Flowers:

It is hard to leave out Johnny Cash’s  Jackson.  Here he is with June Carter from Folsom Prison, 1969.

Lastly, I had to dig this one up, Anything You Can Do I Can Do Better,  from the 1950’s movie Annie Get Your Gun,  by Irving Berlin:

Composed of four canvases, I Won’t Dance has a total height of twenty-six inches by fifty-three inches in length.  Because of the overall date of the movie, and style of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, I am going with an Art Deco look.  Already, In this first image you can see the that direction with the mix of sharp lines and circles.  To enhance the Art Deco look I am going to create a font in that style for the words of this artwork, which will be, dance, dance, dance. I usually try to use an entire phrase of the music in the artwork, but that made this artwork go way belong my goal. My wishful length for small artworks is forty-eight inches in length.  In this work, not so, but since I have pretty much reach my smallest downsize of the musical flow, cutting the phrase turned out to be the next easiest option, to get it close. I am thinking, for now, smaller is better,  for these reasons: artworks at four feet or less are easier to sell, easier to paint, and quicker to complete. One thing that never changes is the decision-making process for any work no matter the size. The time-savings is that those decisions have less canvas to fill on smaller works.  For the next few months, I would like to produce a new artwork a month.  I guess the Vivaldi series with pieces taking two to three or months to complete has exhausted my drive. Turning around these smaller artwork, will be refreshing, and will give me an easier excuse to try new ideas.

 

Scott Von Holzen