Crapshooters’ Dance from Guys and Dolls

The crapshooter of New York - tolerated by neither the police, for legal reasons, nor the Salvation Army, for moral reasons - have a hard time finding somwhere round Times Square to hold their gambling sessions. So, thrown out of the Mission hall, they are forced to resort to the sewers - a situation which, to judge by their exuberant dance, does not dampen their spirits or even sour their taste for the game of craps. Since the music of the Crapshooters’ Dance is based on the tune of the next big number in the show, “Luck be a Lady Tonight,” they clearly lose nothing of their optimism either. That represents only a fraction of the creative energy invested by Frank Loesser in the most successful of all his shows, which was first performed in New York in 1950 and - thanks to numbers like “A Bushel and a Peck,” “I’ve never Been in Love Before” and “Sit down, You’re Rockin’ the Boat” - has been regularly revived in a variety of award-winning stage and screen versions ever since. Damon Runyon, on whose stories the book is based, deserves some of the credit too.