Though musicals and plays can come to Broadway via many different routes, the majority of them transfer from regional theaters, off-Broadway, the West End, or national tours. In this 2023–24 season, there are 20 musicals premiering on Broadway, including brand-new shows and revivals. Every single one of those productions was previously staged somewhere else.

This tactic has become even more common in the wake of pandemic shutdowns, as the financial risks of mounting a show have increased. The producing and creative teams can get a feel for how their show works in an environment that has less pressure and requires less money. They can take time to gauge audience reactions to the work, read reviews, and analyze public interest and ticket sales. And the process can ultimately lead to big career opportunities for the dancers and actors involved.

Theater Matchmaking

Pre-Broadway runs of a show can help more experimental, outside-the-box productions find financial investors and Broadway theater owners who are interested in helping them have a future life. Mandy Hackett, the associate artistic director of The Public Theater in downtown Manhattan, has helped shepherd 15 shows from the famous off-Broadway venue onto Broadway, including Hamilton and this month’s Hell’s Kitchen.

“Broadway has expanded a lot over the past 20 years,” she says. “More diverse work is coming from the nonprofit world, and producers are getting more comfortable taking risks with putting up a wider range of adventurous work. But that means there are so many shows vying for theaters, and theater owners are getting pitched from all different places day in and day out.” Previous runs give everyone a better sense of which shows and theaters might be good matches—aligning what’s right artistically for the show with what’s smart for the business of the theater.

A Feat of Logistics—and Creativity

Once a theater gets officially locked in, the real heavy lifting of the transfer begins. It’s a massive undertaking that, among other things, includes the public relations team finalizing the show’s artwork for marketing and advertising, the box office setting ticket prices and rolling out a calendar for announcements and sales, and the production team planning when their load-in can start and what the company’s rehearsal schedule will look like.

While all of this is going on behind the scenes, the show’s creative team is also hard at work. Initially putting up a full-scale version of their show somewhere other than Broadway gives them a chance to see what doesn’t translate effectively from the page to the stage. This information is then used to make changes to the piece in another workshop or during their Broadway rehearsal process. These could be small tweaks, like script and choreography edits or a costume redesign, or there could be bigger restructuring involving cutting, adding, or rearranging entire scenes, songs, or characters. Sometimes creative-team members can also change—a new set designer is brought in to shift the aesthetic, or a different choreographer is brought in to adjust the movement style.

The new Broadway revival of The Wiz toured 13 cities over the past seven months before it sat down on Broadway this month. Matthew Sims Jr. is a swing in the company, and he’s glad their show had an opportunity for a test drive. “Since COVID, it feels like a lot of shows are hanging on by a thread. Closing notices come quickly, it’s more expensive to put up a show and harder to get audiences to come,” he said. “But with touring, we’ve gotten to see what speaks to people from different places and from different demographics before putting it all together on Broadway.”

Choreography, especially, often undergoes significant revisions during the transfer process. I’ve had the pleasure of working on the choreography team of two shows that transferred to Broadway from out of town: How to Dance in Ohio, which premiered in September 2022 at Syracuse Stage and transferred to Broadway this past fall, and The Who’s TOMMY, a revival that we staged at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago last summer and is opening on Broadway this spring. While preparing for these transfers, there were a few things we needed to consider: What are the dimensions of the new stage and how will that affect the spacing and movement we created in the regional versions? Were there any parts of our choreography that we weren’t fully satisfied with last time that we now want to update? If we have new set pieces, new dancers, or new costumes, what changes do we need to make to accommodate the updates being made by other departments? For both shows, our dance teams did a lot of work in the studio to revisit what we initially created and brainstorm new ideas we wanted to implement for the next iteration.

Casting Variations

Changes may also be made to a show’s cast between a preliminary run and Broadway. Sometimes cast members need to be replaced for various reasons—the director or choreographer may feel that a performer wasn’t properly suited to the show, or maybe the dancer has booked another job that’s happening at the same time. Frequently, auditions are also held to add additional swings and understudies to bulk up coverage for a longer run. In the case of a transfer from London, using international talent can get complicated and expensive with visas, unions, and housing relocation fees, so often almost an entirely new company of American workers is needed.

Claire Burke, a casting director with Tara Rubin Casting, helped usher in last summer’s hit show Back to the Future from the West End. “While casting a transfer, there is already existing choreography and a set of skills that have been determined,” she says. “So instead of building a brand-new piece in collaboration with whoever we choose, we have to cast people who are able to do exactly what has been previously established. There can still be creative freedom and different interpretations, but it’s a balance between finding someone unique and still honoring the original piece.”

The Broadway Boost

The cast of a Broadway transfer will often, however, include many of the artists who have been attached since its early stages. The original dancers, specifically, tend to be integral to the creation of the show’s movement, and a lot of times the choreographer prefers to keep their ensemble intact.

And while a transfer is certainly not the goal for every show, being in a Broadway house brings with it the perk of potential widespread success, which can ultimately trickle down to all the hands that touched the production. Sims, who is making his Broadway debut with The Wiz, says he’s proudly enjoying the feeling of reaching the pinnacle of the industry and is excited for where it will all lead him.

The sense of community that can come from a big Broadway audience is also a boon for many artists. “I remember being in the Broadway house of one of the earliest transfers I worked on, and feeling how many more people were there laughing and applauding,” said Hackett. “Of course it’s equally as magical downtown at The Public, but there is something so cool about the increased scale of people gathering in that theater, on that day, to share in that moment together. It sticks with you.”

The post The Whys and Hows of Broadway Transfers appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Broadway choreography has long been an amalgam of different social dances and forms like jazz, tap, and ballet. But today’s shows are increasingly using movement makers from genres outside the musical theater world altogether, like experimental dance (David Neumann, Annie-B Parson, Raja Feather Kelly), commercial dance (Sonya Tayeh, JaQuel Knight, Keone and Mari Madrid), modern dance (Camille A. Brown), and physical theater (Steven Hoggett).

“There’s a whole cadre now of choreographers who never were in a Broadway show, who never danced in A Chorus Line,” says veteran Broadway journalist Sylviane Gold. “And they’re bringing something different.”

Traditionally, musical theater dance had “artistic aspirations but with popular appeal,” says Appalachian State University professor Ray Miller, author of Dance on the American Musical Theatre Stage. Broadway is, after all, a for-profit business. While today’s musical theater choreographers still face pressure to sell tickets, those coming to Broadway from other traditions are sometimes less oriented toward popularity. And that can lead to more risk-taking.

For instance, when Neumann choreographed Hadestown, he brought the narrative to life by leaning into abstraction and subtlety, creating simple movements—like loose, rhythmic walking—that had a magnetic pull. “I don’t want to dictate the audience’s entire experience,” Neumann says. “I want them to lean in and become curious.”

It’s not just the steps that have changed. The role dance plays in musicals has also shifted. “Theater choreography used to be more about literal storytelling,” says longtime Broadway choreographer and director Susan Stroman. “Today the choreography is more about atmosphere, capturing the essence of the emotion that’s happening onstage, whether it’s tension or romance.” She credits Andy Blankenbuehler’s work on Hamilton and Camille A. Brown’s Choir Boy in particular for spurring this development.

This more abstract approach has meant less choreography featuring characters dancing as individuals and more collective ensemble movement, says Stroman. When someone does break out for a solo, “the choreography today has unbelievably interesting and very intricate steps,” Stroman says—a trend that might reflect the distinctive showmanship of social media dance. “Younger choreographers are able to tap into video and TikTok and Instagram, where steps are mostly the stars,” Stroman says.

The 2020 sea change also had an impact. Since COVID-19, older audience members—who got used to safer and more convenient entertainment options—have become less-dependable ticket buyers, says Stroman. That means producers are sometimes willing to take a chance on something different, hoping to draw in younger audiences. And following big pushes from social justice movements, producers are also hiring directors from a variety of backgrounds, who are in turn seeking out choreographers from different genres—which is changing the type of movement that ends up onstage.

“We’re telling more diverse stories,” says Ellenore Scott, who choreographed Broadway’s Funny Girl and Mr. Saturday Night in 2022. “We’re using voices that were not heard back in the 1940s, 1950s.”

And a wider array of creative perspectives—both on Broadway and well beyond it—is part of the path to progress. As Neumann says, “An art form is only as strong as the number of voices able to tell stories and speak through their particular weird proclivities.”

What About Tap Dance?

Tap dance has been an essential component of Broadway dance since the 19th century, and as far back as the late 1700s dancer John Durang brought soft-shoe–style elements to the Great White Way, says historian Ray Miller. By the 1930s, musicals like Anything Goes and the original film version of 42nd Street were chock-full of crowd-pleasing tap numbers. But the iconic genre is no longer an expected staple of new musicals.

“Tap’s role kept changing as musicals changed,” says arts writer Sylviane Gold. “Today, tap can be a specialty number that is thrown into a show with a wink, as a little gift to the audience, even though it’s clearly out of place—as in Aladdin. It can be used as a dramatic element—as when the Irish and Black characters in Paradise Square stage a tap challenge.”

Choreographer Susan Stroman points out that there are fewer big ensemble tap numbers today: “It’s more about the strength of an individual tap dancer coming out and starring in a moment.”

The style of tap has also evolved. The traditional up-on-your-toes choreography is being replaced not only by grounded, hip-hop–inspired hoofing, but also by more complex steps and rhythms. “I think people are starving for more interesting rhythms, a new way to do something that’s old, trying to take something we’re familiar with and flip it on its head,” says Stroman.
Tap dance isn’t going away anytime soon. “As long as there are Broadway musicals, there will be some kind of tap,” predicts Gold. “But it won’t necessarily be performed by an ensemble doing time-steps in dazzling unison.”

Where Could (or Should) Broadway Choreography Go Next?

“I get excited by things like American Utopia that are really off the beaten path. I want choreography to be more inclusive and to say, ‘This can work, and this,’ looking for different ways to share what we think about our experience being alive on the planet.”
—David Neumann,
choreographer

“I would love Broadway to take a chance on the dance narrative, like it did at one time when I was able to do Contact or Twyla Tharp was able to do Movin’ Out.”
—Susan Stroman,
director and choreographer

“Just show me something I haven’t seen before. That’s what excites me. And that’s not to say that it isn’t absolutely wonderful to see something familiar brought to a new level of execution or excellence. But theater is about sitting in the audience and being surprised.”
—Sylviane Gold, arts writer

“I hope that Broadway creative teams take chances on different styles of movement as a way to tell a story. You can have one script and tell it 1,000 different ways depending on how that show is choreographed and staged and directed.”
—Ellenore Scott, choreographer

“Straight plays are beginning to pay attention to ecology, and I’m sure that it will happen on the musical stage, too. We now have the talents and the tools to create musicals that address climate and other environmental concerns. We need more stories to help us to conceive more sustainable ways of being.”
—Ray Miller, historian

The post What Does “Broadway Choreography” Mean Today? appeared first on Dance Magazine.

A Little More Mascara

Dennis Callahan (Monique): I think there were between 800 and 1,000 at the original open call. Scott Salmon, who was the choreographer, was not a New York person. So it was really like a clean slate as far as what he was seeing at these auditions.

David Engel (Hanna): I was only being seen for Jean-Michel [one of the leads]. Then they said, “We need to see you dance and in drag.” I didn’t know why. I came to the final dance call. Everybody else had learned all this choreography. I learned it on the spot.

Dan O’Grady (Odette): It got down to maybe 25 of us at the end. I had never done any drag, but I decided to show up in drag [for the final audition]. It was really, really funny. When I got into the cab, the cab driver got out, opened the door for me, called me ma’am. Then I went into the theater, and they didn’t know who I was. No one else arrived in drag.

DC: From 10 in the morning to 4 or 5 in the afternoon, we did all of the dancing in drag. And at the end of this long day, we were 12 and 12 across the stage.

DE: Basically, it was like the end of A Chorus Line. We were all lined up across the stage. And then they’re like, “Rehearsals start on this date—congratulations.” Everybody’s jumping up and down screaming, and I’m like, “What’s happening? What’s going on?”

DC: After the others left, they had the 12 of us gather around the piano and sing “There’s No Business Like Show Business” in real short-clipped piano voices. [Composer] Jerry Herman said, “This is the style of La Cage’s opening song, ‘We are What We Are.’ ” It was such a cool moment to be around the piano with Jerry and [music director] Don Pippin, all of us in drag.

Not a Place We Have to Hide

DE: The very first day of rehearsal, [director] Arthur Laurents said, “We are not doing this apologetically. We are proudly playing these roles.”

DO: He gave us all storylines. Some were more developed than others, but we all had a bit of one. He really instilled in us that we were important to the story.

DC: Though I don’t think any of us had any experience doing drag, I don’t think any Cagelle would say it was hard. The atmosphere in the room was so supportive and nurturing that none of us felt any fear of being judged.

DO: I remember Arthur working on “I Am What I Am” with George Hearn [who played Albin], a straight man. The amount of pride and dignity that Arthur conveyed not just to George but all of us was very powerful. It moves me even just to think of it now.

DC: The Cagelles were given the last bow. When does that ever happen? We each just took a humble bow as ourselves. The sound of the audience was unbelievable.

Sometimes Sweet and Sometimes Bitter

DE: We had a whole warm-up area in the basement, and at intermission, we’d dress up, we’d be ridiculous. We just kept creating and playing.

It was the best of times. And it was the worst of times.

DO: I first started hearing about the “gay cancer” when we were in Boston. Nobody knew what it was.

DE: I remember thinking to myself, if I went to a gay bar, I would hold my breath. You just didn’t know. It was everywhere, and if you tested positive, it was a death sentence, definitely. And you could go quick.

DO: I think David Cahn [Chantelle] was the first of us Cagelles who got sick and left, then John Dolf [Nicole].

DC: I don’t remember any conversation between the rest of us about the boys being sick. I think it was sort of a feeling of: If they wanted to talk about it they would, and they’re not, so neither should we. And maybe there was also a fear.

DO: We felt the loss from the inside, and I think that’s what sort of led us to start thinking about the Easter Bonnet competition. Howard Crabtree and the other costume folks did these silly Easter bonnets, and we had folks donate. In the beginning it was just the cast, the crew, and the orchestra.

DE: We did the Easter Bonnet pageant in the basement and a Queen of Hearts pageant for Valentine’s Day, both just among ourselves, and raised money for Gay Men’s Health Crisis. The next year we decided to bring the Easter Bonnet pageant onto the stage and invited other casts to come—A Chorus Line, Cats, there were a few companies. I remember when they flipped over the cards at the end, we had raised $17,000. I was sobbing, sobbing.

DO: I think we needed a sense of agency. Because there was no hope. There really wasn’t. Our friends were dying, and we couldn’t do anything about it. But we could dress up and act silly and ask people for money.

DC: Teddy Azar was instrumental in the whole look of the show makeup- and wig-wise. He was one of the first in the company to come down with AIDS. He was at St. Vincent’s, and David [Scala, who played Phaedra], Sam [Singhaus, Clo-Clo], and I got some nurse drag with these giant hypodermic needles and resuscitation devices, just ridiculous stuff, and we went down there. People who worked there came up to us and said, “Could you please come bring some of this joy into some of the other rooms?” And we went in and out of these rooms, these three big old drag queens in nurse drag, and it was joyous. The whole thing was joyous.

DE: I had plenty of hard losses, but the hardest was [executive producer] Fritz Holt. At the show that night, we silently got in place, and one by one we turned around in the opening number and we all started singing “We Are What We Are.” But then one by one voices were dropping out. We just couldn’t sing. We were all crying. The cast members in the wings on both sides were singing for us, trying to keep it going.

We Are What We Are

DC: When we would turn around one by one in the opening number, you could feel, physically, this sort of crossed-arm, furrowed-brow feeling from the audience. They were probably wondering if maybe we’re too close, we’re going to get [AIDS].

By the end of the show those same faces were leaning into the stage, wide-eyed. I left every night thinking, Wow, I think I was part of something that changed what people think about homosexuals.

DE: I came out to my mom when I was 18, and she really struggled with it. She couldn’t understand what she had done wrong. And it was La Cage that turned her around. It let her know that you can have love and family being gay. She became a mother to all of my gay friends that had parents that disowned them. They adored her, and she loved all of them.

DC: From the beginning my parents saw something in me. They would take me to the Muny Opera, to the Starlight in Kansas City, and nurtured that in me. But at the same time I didn’t ever feel like I needed to tell them I was gay. I thought the words and the situation would hurt them. And they knew.

When they saw the show, that was my way of being able to tell them and show them that I was going to be okay.

DO: La Cage changed my life. I got to work with Harvey Fierstein and Jerry Herman and Arthur Laurents and Fritz Holt and Barry Brown and Don Pippin, and George Hearn and Gene Barry [Georges] and Merle Louise [Mme. Didon]. I also learned so much from Linda Haberman [Bitelle] and Jennifer Smith [Colette]. The work ethic, the creativity, and the artistry was like nothing I had ever been exposed to.
DC: At the 40-year reunion, we sang “The Best of Times.” There were two older gentlemen sitting next to each other in the audience, and they were bawling. And I thought, god, this show affected more people than we will ever know. It’s so special to have been a part of something like that.

The post <i>La Cage aux Folles</i>’ Cagelles, 40 Years Later: Something About Sharing, Something About Always appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Evans-Krueger, who graduated from Wright State University with a BFA in dance, possesses a magnetic presence, ethereal movement quality, and contagious passion. She will bring this winning trifecta to The Outsiders (which opens April 11 on Broadway) as both a performer and associate choreographer.

Food for the Soul

“The workload within this industry can be exhausting. But at the same time, when you’re performing as part of a show that you really believe in, night after night, it feels like it’s for a reason and a purpose. When a show sits right within your soul, even the hardest workdays are beyond worth it, and that’s what so many of us are searching for in life.”

Making the Space

“I am very observant. I’m good at reading a room and fitting into wherever someone needs me. I want to be open and I want people to feel free to express themselves in a space. To prepare for my leadership role with The Outsiders, I make sure I do what I need to do—like journaling, taking my morning walk—so that I am grounded within myself before I step into a space where I am expected to be a support system for other people.”

All the Right Questions

“I’m very curious about why I am the way I am, and why people are the way they are. Digging into my humanity and diving deeper into what makes me me is an inspiration for the work that I do. When it comes to choreographing, I ask myself: ‘What do I need to heal? What do I want to discover about relationships?’ I feel like my life’s work is about breaking down all of the things I grew up on so I was and am able to build a foundation that works for me.”

The post Broadway Dancer Tilly Evans-Krueger Seeks Authenticity Above All appeared first on Dance Magazine.

“There’s a little bit of everything,” he says. “Tap is probably the only thing we don’t have.”

It may be an exaggeration, but not by much. In the show’s ballet- and contemporary-inspired tornado scene, a storm of dancers destroys Dorothy’s home and sends her off to Oz. Once she gets there, she’s swept up in a New Orleans–style second line that leads her down the Yellow Brick Road, where she meets a Tinman who pops-and-locks. Eventually, she is ushered into the Emerald City amongst a dizzying array of dances from the Black diaspora, from street styles out of Atlanta to Afrobeats to the South African amapiano. 

Though The Wiz may have one of the most versatile casts of dancers on Broadway right now—and, in Knight, a choreographer who has shown from his expansive commercial career that he can do pretty much anything—the show’s pull-out-all-the-stops movement isn’t about showing off. Instead, it’s a form of placemaking, says director Schele Williams, grounding Dorothy in elements of Black culture as she journeys through Oz and back home again.

“I liken Dorothy’s journey to a walk through the woods,” she says. “You can turn a corner, and it’s a gorgeous meadow. And then you can go another 40 yards and all of a sudden there’s a lake. Every turn, you can be in a new location with its own set of rules. It gives us permission to fully immerse ourselves in a new location.”

Tapping into his encyclopedic knowledge of dance genres to create a unique vocabulary was nothing new for Knight, who has spent years choreographing for top pop stars, most notably Beyoncé. What was new for him: the genre of musical theater, and the task of using those dances to tell a story.

And not just any story. The Wiz, a retelling of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and a staple of Black culture, was revolutionary when it premiered in 1975 with choreography by George Faison, winning seven Tony Awards, including Best Musical and Best Choreography. A film adaptation starring Diana Ross and Michael Jackson, with choreography by Louis Johnson, came three years later. Several efforts to reignite a Broadway production have been in the works since, including a revival in 1984 that only lasted 13 performances, and another attempt in 2004 that never got off the ground.

This time, The Wiz team predicts, will be different. Williams believes the world needs this show, with its joy-infused score and hope-filled message, right now. And by taking the production out of the ’70s and adding some contemporary innovations—in addition to Knight’s genre-bending choreography, there are updates to the book by comedian Amber Ruffin; costumes by Sharen Davis (of “Westworld,” “Watchmen,” and Dreamgirls); a dazzling set by Hannah Beachler, of Black Panther; and a modernized score by music team Joseph Joubert, Allen René Louis, Adam Blackstone, and Paul Byssainthe Jr.—they hope it will become timeless.          

“I really wanted to create something that didn’t feel super ‘now,’ ” says Knight, “but takes you on a journey of Black dance. Throughout the show you see how these people live, how they move, how they celebrate, how they mourn, how they support each other, how they find a family.”           

Knight began building the show’s choreography in October 2022. He workshopped movement in Los Angeles with some of his go-to commercial dancers. “I dreamed as big as I could,” Knight says. “For me, it was about, How do we keep the essence­ and energy of what George Faison did, and also bring JaQuel Knight to the table?”

Broadway veteran and The Wiz dance captain Amber Jackson says the dance call was one of the most intense she’s experienced, with long, fast combos that constantly switched between styles, and rooms jam-packed with a who’s who of Black dance talent. A dance workshop with the chosen few—many of whom were Broadway newbies like Knight—followed, then rehearsals, then the national tour, then another round of rehearsals and tweaks before Broadway previews.

Reviews of the tour seem to agree that the production is highly entertaining, if a bit flashy. But as far as the choreography is concerned, nothing is flashy for flashiness’ sake. “I think the movement does a really beautiful job of not letting the audience feel detached from it,” says ensemble member Maya Bowles. “It’s not so codified in technique that it’s like, ‘That’s so impressive.’ It feels familiar. It feels like home. It feels like something that’s inherently in us as a Black community. It’s something you can be a part of. The invitation is open.”

From Beyoncé to Broadway

Theater was already on Knight’s bucket list when he got the offer to choreograph The Wiz, a call that, he says, made him “lose his mind.” Moving from commercial dance to Broadway presented a new opportunity: Knight, who is so often tasked with executing the vision of another artist—whether Beyoncé, Megan Thee Stallion, or Britney Spears—had a chance to discover his own vision. “I feel like I’m given room to explore my creativity and shape my voice as a movement artist,” he says. “And I’m enjoying that.”

Being new to theater, and therefore not beholden to ideas of how things are “supposed to be” done, has given Knight freedom to push the boundaries of what dance on Broadway can look like, says Phillip Johnson Richardson, who plays the Tinman. “He has the audacity to reinvent the whole thing,” Richardson says, “and not think of it like, ‘We can’t touch that, that’s classic material.’ ”

A New Kind of Tinman

In most productions of The Wiz, during the song “Slide Some Oil to Me,” the Tinman shows off his newly lubricated joints with a tap dance. But in Knight’s interpretation, the dance break becomes a showstopping hip-hop moment that Richardson, who plays the Tinman, says revealed the whole character to him.

The movement—lots of popping, locking, and waving—felt familiar to Richardson, reminding him of dances he watched growing up. “It was like, ‘Oh, I know who this guy is,’ ” says Richardson. “ ‘And I know how I can approach this guy.’ It informed how I wear my hat—I was originally supposed to wear it to the front, and I was like, ‘Nah, he’d wear it to the back or the side.’ He’s a lot closer to me than I originally thought.”

The post <i>The Wiz</i> Returns to Broadway Nearly 50 Years After Its Premiere With More Dance Than Ever appeared first on Dance Magazine.

But there’s no doubting the rigor and penetration of his eye as he asks a dancer with a paintbrush to tackle his easel with “more velocity,” urges a couple to make a lift “sharp,” and encourages a leg into a clearer diagonal as the bustling number evokes kaleidoscopic images of the City of Light.

Later, in separate interviews, Kelly and Chavkin talk about Lempicka the show, Lempicka the artist—Chavkin knows many audiences likely won’t recognize Lempicka’s name, but suspects they will recognize her art—and their own collaboration on the musical. At times, they’re like he-said, she-said accounts of the same happy marriage. Below are a few excerpts from those conversations, edited for length and clarity.

On Lempicka’s Paintings

Kelly: There is so much movement—the way that curves move forward and backward, how diagonals are made in the body. And I think any dance person could see the épaulement in the paintings. I told them [Chavkin, Kreitzer, and Gould] that épaulement is the central movement language to begin any choreography for this work.

Chavkin: He explained to us what “épaulement” meant, and it was, “Oh, my god, that’s it—we were meant for you, and you were meant for us!”

On Storytelling With the Body

Kelly: I’m a postmodernist, and I am a contemporary dancer. I have to use everything I’ve learned to find a new language—I have to use postmodernism, I have to use lyrical, I have to use jazz. And I’m always going to tell a story, no matter what.

Chavkin: When I first encountered [the theatrical training technique] the Viewpoints in college, I was like, “Oh! I get how to do this!” I get that story is communicated through the body, through the physical state of the performer, through the physical state of the stage, and tension and line—all of the things that are absolutely principles of dance but that are also principles of staging.

On Working Together

Kelly: What’s exciting for me is that now, in 2024, she really does trust me. We’ve been doing it for almost eight years, and I think she trusts my understanding of the show. I tend to take care of the ensemble, and she leaves me to do that. Then we come together, and we note each other. Sometimes I’m offering her behavior for scenes, because I love for it to blend—so that the show doesn’t go from scene to dance. So that the whole show is alive with the same behavior. It can’t happen unless we’re working both in tandem and also separately, because we might have a different point of view on something. I’m certainly not a choreographer that just makes dances.

Chavkin: There’s a dance that every single director-choreographer team does once they get to know each other. Raja and I had the necessary luxury of many years and multiple incarnations of this project to figure out whose territory is whose. What’s been so exciting and so helpful is I tend to think in large movement of bodies and energy in the space—where do we need chaos, where does it need to be more stable, et cetera, et cetera. And Raja is so exquisite on human specificity and detail. It’s a big-picture/intimate-picture kind of dialogue between us. He gives it more shape, more line, further articulation. It’s so satisfying when you meet someone who can pick up what you’re putting down.

The post Raja Feather Kelly and Rachel Chavkin on <i>Lempicka</i> the Show and Lempicka the Artist appeared first on Dance Magazine.

A Lake of Nightmares and an Android Coppélia

ON TOUR  Les Ballets de Monte Carlo brings two twists on ballet classics by artistic director Jean-Christophe Maillot stateside this month. Lac, which probes Swan Lake’s inherent dichotomies, lands at New Orleans’ Mahalia Jackson Theater March 1–2. Coppél-i.A., which updates the narrative so the lovers’ relationship is threatened not by a lifelike doll but, instead, an artificial intelligence, follows March 7–10 at Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa Mesa, CA. balletsdemontecarlo.com.

Like Rabbits

NEW YORK CITY   A surreal contemplation of childhood attachments and the nature of desire, Pontus Lidberg’s On the Nature of Rabbits makes its North American debut at The Joyce Theater March 6–10. joyce.org.

Dismantling Classic Cinema

SAN FRANCISCO  How do the archetypal roles in classic genre films—the romantic lead, the hard-boiled detective, the femme fatale—shift when embodied by BIPOC performers? Kayla Farrish is joined by five other dancers and musician Alex MacKinnon to explore the question, pushing back against the erasure and marginalization of non-white actors in Hollywood’s golden age, in Put Away the Fire, dear, which premieres at ODC Theater March 8–10. odc.dance.

Eating Its Own Tail

CHICAGO  Ouroboros, a new evening-length dance-theater solo from Nejla Yatkin, draws inspiration from Middle Eastern snake dances and the choreographer’s nomadic ancestry. Set in the round, the work invites audience participation as it incorporates multiple languages and movement styles, all connecting to, in Yatkin’s words, “heal the sacred thread of the feminine.” March 8–10. ny2dance.com.

Statement Begins

VANCOUVER AND SURREY  Ballet BC’s NOW program features a pair of commissions—one from Micaela Taylor, the other by choreographic duo Out Innerspace (Tiffany Tregarthen and David Raymond)—alongside the return of Crystal Pite’s darkly political dance theater work The Statement. The program premieres in Vancouver March 7–9 and repeats in Surrey March 22–23. balletbc.com. 

Intimate and Explosive

NEW YORK CITY  Doug Varone’s two-part To My Arms/Restore plays with contrasts. The first half, set to a suite of Handel arias, evokes intimacy, love, and loss, while the second focuses on visceral, explosive physicality to the beats of Nico Bentley’s “Handel Remixed.” With live music by MasterVoices and New York Baroque Incorporated, the new evening-length premieres at NYU Skirball March 22–23. nyuskirball.com.

New at NW

PORTLAND, OR  Associate choreographer Joseph Hernandez, former Luna Negra Dance Theater artistic director Gustavo Ramírez Sansano, and independent dance theater choreographer Nicole von Arx each contribute a premiere to NW Dance Project’s spring program, Secret Stories. March 29–30. nwdanceproject.org.

Books on Broadway

Two page-to-stage adaptations sing and dance to the Great White Way.

The Notebook

Based on the novel by Nicholas Sparks and the blockbuster movie it inspired, the musical adaptation follows Allie and Noah as their love repeatedly brings them back together in spite of the forces trying to keep them apart. Katie Spelman (associate choreographer on Moulin Rouge! The Musical) choreographs to music and lyrics by Ingrid Michaelson. Opens at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre March 14. notebookmusical.com.

Water for Elephants

A young man jumps on a train with no idea of its destination and finds himself swept away by a traveling circus. As in the novel by Sara Gruen, the adventure is recounted through the memories of the main character’s older self in the musical adaptation, which brings the circus to life through choreography by Jesse Robb and Shana Carroll (who also acts as circus designer). Opens March 21 at the Imperial Theatre. waterforelephantsthemusical.com.

The post 9 Performances on Our Radar This March appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Current project: Madonna’s The Celebration Tour

Age: 30

Hometown: Layton, Utah

Training: Dance Impressions (Farmington, Utah), New York City Dance Alliance, Marymount Manhattan College

Accolades: Chita Rivera Award for Outstanding Dancer in a Broadway Show, for Bob Fosse’s DANCIN’

Inspiring others: Andy Pellick vividly remembers noticing Love’s “special sauce” when she was around 12 years old taking his jazz class at NYCDA. Over the years since, when working on choreography “she gives you what you didn’t know you wanted,” he says. “She inspires a choreographer or a teacher or another dancer by doing moves in a way that you didn’t even know was possible. She’s able to be a muse for a lot of people, myself included.”

Swing success: Love was an ensemble dancer in the national tour of Wicked before the pandemic shutdown, and when the show returned, she rejoined as a swing. “The more tracks I learned, it was actually easier to remember them all, because I could understand where everyone was at any given time,” she says. “Swinging almost feels like an out-of-body experience. I can see things in slow motion.”

Dancin’ dreams: Love won a Chita Rivera Award for last year’s Broadway run of Bob Fosse’s DANCIN’. “That show is the dancer’s dream,” she says. “It’s so visceral but also nuanced, and it captured all the essences of what I want to be and portray.” She also loved her castmates. “It’s a game changer when you like everyone you work with and there is a real camaraderie. That’s the first show where I fully got to be myself. We all did.”

Exploring the world: When Love joined Madonna’s world tour—currently running through April, with 79 stops across Europe and North America—it took time to get used to the schedule, which sometimes includes rehearsals until 2 or 3 am. (The choreography is credited to a who’s who of creative minds, including (LA)HORDE, Valeree Young, Matt Cady, Damien Jalet, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, Mecnun Giasar, Megan Lawson, and Nicolas Huchard.) Now that she’s up to speed, she takes full advantage of immersing herself in new cultures on tour. “I love to go to fitness studios, and I’ve been taking classes in different languages,” she says. “I’m also very interested in body language, so it’s been fascinating to sit in coffee shops and learn from the people in front of me.”

More than clothes: Love documents her funky, fun personal style on social media, and she’s found comfort in using fashion as another mode of expressing herself. She’s interested in eventually bringing some of that sensibility into costume design.

Growing and trusting: “Dance has saved me many times, gotten me through many heartbreaks,” says Love. “I’m now finding my voice more. I know I have things to offer, and I find that they’re being received. I’m trusting that even though I may not always feel like I fit in, I know that I belong.”

The post Meet Mattie Love, Performer With Madonna’s The Celebration Tour appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Anita and Chita’s other early dazzlers—Rose in Bye Bye Birdie and Anyanka in the mostly forgotten 1964 musical Bajour—were known to me from guest spots on TV variety shows, and it seemed I’d been watching Chita be indelible my whole life. Whether she was flipping her skirt for Robbins or cocking her head for Fosse or just extending an arm for any of the other choreographers she worked with, her technique was impeccable, her energy ferocious. Her dancing had both elegance and directness, qualities not often found in combination. And it wasn’t just when she had larger-than-life roles like Claire to bite into. In Chita Rivera: The Dancer’s Life, she was just Chita, a hard-working member of the ensemble who’d lucked into some fabulous shows and worked with some fabulous people. Yet you couldn’t take your eyes off her.

When Chita was among the recipients of the 2002 Kennedy Center Honors, Hal Prince, in his introduction, described her as one of those people who “carry around their own spotlight.” And that spotlight illuminated everyone Chita played, whether the far-from-glamorous owner of the title arena in The Rink or the embodiment of showbiz razzle-dazzle in Kiss of the Spider Woman—both of which won her Tony Awards.

Speaking of awards, you may have noticed that I’m calling her Chita instead of the more journalistically formal Rivera. It’s not because we were pals. (According to her memoir, her pals called her Cheet.) But in 2017, the Fred and Adele Astaire Awards, which every year honored New York City theater dancers and choreographers chosen by a committee I chaired, morphed into the Chita Rivera Awards; for the first time, I got to see her offstage and off-script. The powerhouse charisma didn’t need a script. The remarkable amalgam of elegance and directness that had struck me when she performed was not a performance. It was her.

The post A Lifetime of Watching Chita Rivera appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Upon graduating from high school in 1951, Rivera booked her first performing job in a national tour of Irving Berlin’s Call Me Madam. Less than a year later, she made her Broadway debut as a principal dancer in Guys and Dolls. But the role that made her a star came in 1957 when, at age 24, she drew upon her Puerto Rican heritage as Anita in West Side Story. Dance Magazine put her on the cover for the first time that November. Inside the issue, writer Leo Lerman declared, “Here is a performer of enormous individuality with a dance approach quite uniquely her own.”

Her career took off, and held steady. In 1961, she received her first Tony Award nomination for her portrayal of Rosie in Bye Bye Birdie; in 1976, she got another for originating the role of Velma Kelly in Chicago. Rivera was quick to acknowledge that she greatly benefited from working with iconic choreographers like Jerome Robbins, Bob Fosse, Michael Kidd, and Gower Champion. They created the steps; she made them sizzle.

When a car crash in 1986 crushed her left leg, doctors told her she would never dance again. They clearly didn’t know Rivera. Within a year, she was performing in cabarets, wowing audiences with her signature irrepressible energy (even if the kicks were a little lower). She even returned to Broadway in 1993, in the title role of Kiss of the Spider Woman—for which she won a Tony for Best Actress in a Musical. In total, she appeared in more than 20 Broadway productions over the course of seven decades, receiving 10 Tony Award nominations and winning three.

In 2017, when the Astaire Awards—which honor dance in theater and film—needed to be rebranded, they were swiftly renamed the Chita Rivera Awards for Dance and Choreography. Today, a Chita Rivera Award is one of the highest honors for a musical theater dancer or choreographer. On the red carpet before the first ceremony under Rivera’s name, former Dance Magazine editor in chief Wendy Perron asked Rivera for her advice for young dancers. Rivera responded: “Keep caring. Keep dancing. Keep working hard. But most of all, keep loving, loving to dance.”

Rivera’s own love stayed strong until the end. When her memoir was released last year, Rivera told “CBS Sunday Morning”: “If I come back, I want to come back a dancer. That will be my second life.”

The post Remembering Chita Rivera, 1933–2024: “I Wouldn’t Trade Being a Dancer for Anything” appeared first on Dance Magazine.

As they matured, they were known as the Hines Brothers, and then—joined by their father, Maurice Hines Sr., on drums—as Hines, Hines and Dad. In the 1960s, they toured Europe, performed in Las Vegas with Ella Fitzgerald, and were regulars on “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson,” a feat for African American entertainers at that time.

When the family act broke up in 1973, Gregory moved to California to pursue music and Maurice found his place in musical theater. In 1978, Maurice joined the Broadway cast of Eubie!, a tribute to composer Eubie Blake—and insisted the producers also hire Gregory.

To expand his repertoire beyond tap, Maurice studied ballet, African, and modern, and retrained his body by working with jazz choreographer Frank Hatchett. The two later founded the Hines-Hatchett dance studio, which went on to become Broadway Dance Center.  

And he got the chance to show off his 6 o’clock high kicks when he traded places with Gregory as leading man in Sophisticated Ladies in 1981.

“Everyone expected me to dance like Gregory, but he told the chorus, ‘Get ready. Maurice is on another level. Tempos will be faster!’ ” Maurice told Dance Magazine.

With Balletap USA, a dance fusion troupe he formed in 1983 with Mercedes Ellington, Maurice continued to push boundaries and find his voice as a choreographer. In 1986 he created, directed, choreographed, and starred in the Broadway show Uptown…It’s Hot!, for which he received a Tony Award nod for Best Actor in a Musical.

The highlight of his career, however, was reuniting with Gregory in Francis Ford Coppola’s 1984 film The Cotton Club, where art imitated life as they played a loving but bickering tap dance brother duo.

“To be with Gregory again was like heaven,” he said in John Carluccio’s 2019 biopic, Maurice Hines: Bring Them Back. Executive-produced by Debbie Allen and Randolph-Wright, the award-winning documentary followed Maurice while he was in his 70s and still touring and inspiring young dancers.

Duane Lee Holland Jr.—a featured dancer and assistant choreographer for Maurice’s second Broadway musical, 2006’s Hot Feet—learned firsthand that honing young talent was one of Maurice’s greatest gifts.

“As a mentor, Maurice taught me to stay true to myself, and to my artistry,” Holland wrote in an email. “He cultivated a sense of class, integrity, fearlessness, and passion that influenced me as a man, artist, and educator. As a choreographer, he loved to feature the innovation, brilliance, and funkiness of the continuum of Black American dance.”

Maurice was predeceased by Gregory, who died in 2003 of cancer. His survivors include Cheryl Davis, his adopted daughter with former partner Silas Davis.

“Uncle Maurice was the best dad a girl could have,” Cheryl said at the memorial service. “I have so much respect for [him] as a performer.”

The post Maurice Hines, 1943–2023, Had Something Extra appeared first on Dance Magazine.

What code have these dancers cracked to achieve viral fame? Is it true that being big on TikTok is the key to getting cast in a sought-after show these days? And are there any downsides to having hundreds of thousands—maybe even millions—of people watch your videos? Five #BroadwayTok stars break it down.

Big Theater Energy

Every dancer has heard some version of the same advice: Perform for the person sitting in the very last row, all the way up in the balcony. Paula Leggett Chase, who goes by @antiqueshowgirl, thinks that charisma and enthusiasm are what’s drawing people to Broadway performers in the very different environment of TikTok. “You see the energy coming out of their pores,” she says. “They’re storytellers, and I think that speaks to people.” JJ Niemann, who with his one million followers is one of #BroadwayTok’s biggest stars, agrees: “We know how to sell it to an audience,” he says.

In 2023, Niemann happened to become a member of the original Broadway cast of Back to the Future alongside another TikTok phenom, Amber Ardolino. Like a lot of other Broadway performers, Niemann and Ardolino share funny glimpses behind the scenes of their show, like backstage shenanigans and jokes about the grueling reality of an eight-show-per-week lifestyle. “I often get comments like, ‘Oh, so being on Broadway is just like grownup theater camp?’ ” says Ardolino. “For me to show people that live theater is chaotic and fun and a mess—I love that people are getting to see that.”

Musical theater performers have also created their own TikTok-specific trends to appeal to a niche but enthusiastic audience of current and aspiring performers. Series like “roles I auditioned for versus roles I got,” or “soprano line versus alto line” have helped make TikTok a theater nerd’s paradise.

And #BroadwayTok performers give their audiences a chance to see parts of the business they don’t typically know as much about. Take Gerianne Pérez, who is currently starring as Catherine of Aragon in the national tour of SIX. She peppers in tour-specific content for her followers, like mini-vlogs about travel days and recaps of the tour’s stops in different cities. Niemann, who is a member of the ensemble in Back to the Future as well as a cover for two lead roles, gives his followers a look at what it’s like to play that kind of pivotal but under-recognized role in a show.

Fun or Career?

So is TikTok a career stepping-stone or just for fun? That depends. Niemann says he and Ardolino sometimes get more attention at the stage door than the show’s leads, and Ardolino notes that TikTok has given her the opportunity to meet other artists she admires and collaborate with them. “But I still have to go in for the same auditions as everyone else,” she says with a laugh. “Broadway is hard enough. If I didn’t love doing this, I wouldn’t add it to my plate.”

For veteran dancer Brian Ust, known as @theatredancebrian, TikTok did bring at least one unexpected opportunity to audition for a popular TV series. “TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube have become my stage,” he says. Chase, a Broadway veteran whose credits include A Chorus Line, Bye Bye Birdie, and Tootsie, says that her TikTok presence hasn’t earned her opportunities, but it has made younger performers “more open” to her. At 62, “my age group is a little invisible,” she says. “But now when I walk into something with a young cast, they know me.”

Though Niemann agrees that TikTok hasn’t really changed his stage career, it has become a business for him. And in the feast-or-famine life of a performer, that’s a gift. “TikTok genuinely is just as fruitful for me financially as my acting career and Broadway career,” he says. “And it’s really nice to have another creative outlet and passion.”

Building Community

TikTok does have a dark side: nasty comments, which aren’t unique to TikTok but which Gerianne Pérez, of SIX, says can be “outlandishly mean.” Dancer Brian Ust, for example, experienced a barrage of negative comments after a celebrity reposted one of his videos. “That was one of the worst experiences I have had,” he says.

Pérez likes to remember that trolls are often reacting to theater performers’ quirkiness—which is also what makes them good at what they do. “We have always been a little strange. It’s because we are something special,” she says. And despite Ust’s negative experiences, he still refers to his followers as a “family.” His good experiences on the platform outweigh the bad, he says.

Other #BroadwayTok performers echo that sentiment. Some of performer Paula Leggett Chase’s followers have told her that her videos inspired them to go back to dance class—or to try dancing for the first time. Amber Ardolino, of Back to the Future, adds that she meets people at the stage door who say they came to the show because they learned about it from her TikTok.
“They feel like they know us, like they’re watching a friend onstage,” she says. “It’s such a strong and special connection.”

The post Why Broadway Dancers Are Taking Over TikTok appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Do you recall when you first encountered Betty Boop?
I saw her when I was a kid. My aunts had Betty Boop this and Betty Boop that. I did see a lot of the shorts, not when I was young but when I was in college.

Are you borrowing any movement from the original cartoons?
Not really. The opening number is a gigantic tap routine. It starts as if you’re watching a black-and-white short, and then you go from watching it to being on the set where the short is being made. So it comes to life, so to speak, but it stays in a black-and-white world and it stays kind of two-dimensional.

I noticed BOOP! is being marketed as a family-friendly show, which surprised me. The promotional images suggest the early-1930s, pre–Hays Code Betty, with the garter belt and the hoop earrings. Is she the blueprint for this show’s Betty?
That, in my opinion, is the Betty. Betty was always the strong, sexy girl. She was never afraid of that.

Dozens of performers have portrayed Betty Boop in voice or image since she first appeared. Does the show nod to the many artists who are part of her lineage?
Though I think people will make those connections and find those reference points, none specifically were intended. I went looking for the character in the story that was written, and finding out how best to portray that character was how I came up with what’s in the show.

BOOP! also features a marionette by Phillip Huber, whose work on Being John Malkovich is extraordinary. What can we expect from the puppetry?
You can expect to see [Betty Boop’s dog,] Pudgy. [Laughs] Phillip and I have known each other for quite a long time. When BOOP! came along I thought, Do I call [theatrical animal trainer] Bill Berloni and get a real dog? And then I thought, No—I call Phillip and get a marionette.

I think of most choreography as some balance of attention to steps and to movement qualities. My impression, based on shows I’ve seen and interviews you’ve given, is that you want the choreography to serve the storytelling.
It’s almost always that way for me: story first, steps and style second and equally. I worked with Jerry Robbins and Michael Bennett: two great examples, right? There aren’t many similarities between the steps in West Side Story and the steps in Fiddler on the Roof, or the steps in The King and I, other than the fact that they were done by the same choreographer. Style is the last thing Jerry thought of, story was the first thing he thought of, and humor was right up there at the top, too. Michael? Same thing. Fosse was quite the opposite. Everything had his distinct style.

You’re experienced in historic dance reconstruction, through your work on Jerome Robbins’ Broadway and other projects. Has BOOP! been an opportunity to tap into those skills?
Those skills never leave me. They’re in the room with me every time I work on a show. I go home after every rehearsal and I go, What would Michael [Bennett] have thought? What would Jerry [Robbins] have thought? What would Ron Field have thought? What would Onna White have done? Right? I mean, these are all people I worked with and collaborated with and assisted when I was a dancer myself.

Is there anything else that you’d like to share about the show?
Rachelle Rak and Jon Rua are my associate choreographers who are laying it down fast and thick. We have some of the greatest dancers in a musical that I’ve had in a long time, which is important because there’s a lot of dance, particularly in the first act. It’s gonna be fun.

The post Jerry Mitchell on Bringing Betty Boop From the Past to the Present appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Expanding Her Artistry

After dancing in New York for over 20 years, Struxness made the move to Los Angeles in 2019. She had worked all over Broadway, but always on other people’s projects. She wanted to start creating her own work.

She started with improvisational dance videos. They led to a realization: “I didn’t feel like I could maneuver with my voice with the same sort of alacrity and awareness,” she says. “I wanted to be able to do that.”

The album, she explains, is “that assignment that I’ve given myself so that I can start getting to know my voice as an instrument the way that I know my body as an instrument.”

Creating the Album

Despite her musical background—she played violin as a kid—Struxness doesn’t consider herself an instrumentalist. But, alongside producer Sam Perlow and co-songwriter Ella Poletti, Struxness helped craft the sound and orchestrations of her songs by tuning in to her dancer brain. When listening to the tracks sent to her by her producer, Struxness would dance to the music to see what beats were missing, what sounds she wanted to highlight, and where she wanted “more meat.”

Now that the album is out, what is next for Struxness? “Music videos, music videos, music videos!” she says. “I basically made the music so that I could create music videos.” In the meantime, Struxness would love to see dancers dancing to Physical Attention.

The post <i>Hamilton</i>’s Betsy Struxness Shares Her Journey to Creating Her Debut Album appeared first on Dance Magazine.

McFadden Herrera grew up in northern New Jersey, traveling into New York City to train at Steps on Broadway and Broadway Dance Center. At 17, she booked her first job in the Radio City Christmas Spectacular, then performed with Mia Michaels’ New York City–based dance company. Meeting soon-to-be Wicked choreographer Wayne Cilento in 1999 at an audition for the Broadway production of Aida sparked a long creative partnership. Fast-forward three years and the two were collaborating on what would become the enduringly popular musical.

With a recently mounted production in Sydney, Australia, 2023 marks the 20th anniversary of Wicked’s Broadway debut. Even after all these years, McFadden Herrera says the show is never performed the same way twice.

At this point, Wicked is part of my DNA. Wayne and I had worked together in Aida and on a cruise ship show when he asked me to help with the choreography for Wicked. It was very collaborative; movement would come out of me and he would shape it. He’s a master at staging. The show’s initial success was unbelievable.

The show is a living, breathing thing, and it’s never performed the same way twice. That’s the beauty of live theater, but it’s also very difficult to maintain.

There’s a lot of choreography, but it looks deceptively simple and seamless, almost cinematic. Dancers can watch and just mimic what you’re doing physically. To attach meaning to it, so that we’re collectively telling the same story, is something else entirely.

When I teach the show, I don’t teach it in order. The opening is so difficult, it’s all individualized musical staging, and very acting-based, so you have to understand what your subtext is. I generally skip ahead and start with the stuff that moves more, like the Ozdust ballroom section, and then start adding additional layers once the dancers are acclimated to the show’s style.

We’re now two generations down the line, and some of the dancers we’re teaching the show to now weren’t even born when it first went up. Many of the dancers are so physically talented, but they’ve never had to act in this way before, so it’s very gratifying to help them grow in communicating their passion.

It’s a never-ending process. The show’s principals generally stay about a year here in the States, and then we try to turn them all over at once. But the ensemble is like a revolving door because of how the contracts work. I really feel for my dance captains sometimes, teaching track after track to get everybody in. They don’t always have time to watch the show, which is when I need to step in and make sure the company feels cohesive.

It’s always amazing to have director­ ­­Joe Mantello come talk to the performers. The way he speaks about storytelling and his vision­ of the show, even 20 years later, always teaches Wayne and me something new. And that helps us stay fresh and on our toes.

The show is this kind of fairy-tale fantasy, but it’s rooted in real human emotion and predicament. And I think that’s why people love it so much.

The post How Corinne McFadden Herrera has Maintained <i>Wicked</i>‘s Choreography and Staging for 20 Years appeared first on Dance Magazine.

You get the sense that Sykes, who arrived in New York in a U-Haul 20 years ago at 18, sees himself as something of a group enterprise. He studs his narrative with the names of people who’ve helped and shaped him, from his septuagenarian babysitters to the Broadway professionals who taught him the ropes.

His talent? It’s a Sykes-family thing. His career? A series of surprises. Pal Joey? More on that later. First, his story, after the parents fall in love. 

Sykes’ parents—a Baptist pastor and a schoolteacher—raised him in St. Petersburg, Florida. “Growing up in the Black Southern church,” Sykes says, “we were heavily immersed in the arts. Everybody sang, everybody danced, everybody played instruments.” He loved it, but it was his younger sister, Martina, now touring in The Lion King, who was the born performer. He “kinda tagged along and would peep in on some of her dance classes.” 

Music was his first love, and his mother, who plays the drums, started teaching him when he was around 5. His father plays piano, French horn, and trumpet, and Sykes remembers the music that filled their home with a nostalgia that sets him aglow. “I was singing and playing and dancing since I could walk and talk,” he says. “And on the weekends doing our chores, they’d throw on all the old Motown records.”

Then a ballet teacher came to his fourth-grade band class in search of more toy soldiers and mice for The Nutcracker. “They forced me to go to this audition, and that became my first ballet class,” he recalls. Surprise number one: He was told he “had a natural talent.” So he went through the Pinellas County Center for the Arts’ arts magnet school program all the way through high school, studying both music and dance, and attending summer intensives at The Rock School for Dance Education in Philadelphia and at The Ailey School in New York City.

He didn’t get into Juilliard or any of the other colleges he was hoping for, and instead accepted the theater scholarship he’d been offered at Tennessee State, planning to join the marching band. Still, he couldn’t resist one last summer at Ailey, “just to dance and hang up my shoes.” Surprise number two: At the end, he was invited to join the incoming class at Ailey’s joint BFA program with Fordham University. “Just like that,” he says, snapping his fingers, “change of plans.” 

After graduating, Sykes toured with Ailey II for a second year, but didn’t get into the main company—or any others. “All these auditions, I’d do really well, but I never crossed that boundary. It’s like God was shutting the doors to the concert life on me, and I didn’t know why, or what to do,” Sykes says. His father came to the rescue. “He said, ‘Hey, stay a little longer,’ and he put a little more money into my bank account.”

Within that week came another surprise. James Brown III, who’d assisted when Darrell Grand Moultrie choreographed on Sykes at Ailey II, was now the dance captain at The Little Mermaid on Broadway. “He said, ‘Hey, there’s a guy leaving the show,’ ” Sykes remembers. “ ‘You’ll fit the costume. Why don’t you audition?’ ”

Broadway musicals were not on Sykes’ radar. “I had no clue,” he says, “no interest.” Then he went onstage in Little Mermaid. “I was like, ‘Oh, wait—this feels almost like a home.’ ” The company took him under their collective wing, teaching him how to manage his voice, how to manage the tap choreography, how to manage his salary, just how to manage. 

With all that on-the-job learning came another realization: “Much as I love the Ailey choreography and the company, not being able to sing, not being able to play instruments, I always felt I was missing parts of myself.” He went on to exercise those parts in Memphis, Newsies, Motown: The Musical, Hamilton, and, of course, Ain’t Too Proud, while getting film and television work, too.

Choreographer Sergio Trujillo remembers Sykes’ Memphis audition distinctly. “I was like, ‘Who is that boy?’ He was like a colt, so athletic, with long limbs—when he took flight, it was beautiful to watch.” Working with him, Trujillo became equally impressed with Sykes as a person and as an artist. “We had the relationship and the trust where I could just lean into him and say, ‘Can you try this? Can you try that?’ That’s special.” 

​​In 2019, Ain’t Too Proud earned them both Tony nominations. Trujillo won, Sykes didn’t. But Sykes’ tour de force performance as the Temptations’ most notable lead singer, David Ruffin, copped the Chita Rivera Award for best male dancer on Broadway. Trujillo says Sykes was more than dancing, singing, and acting the difficult role. The “quadruple threat,” Trujillo says, also brings “that other thing”: unmatched charisma.

Sykes’ magnetic presence helped him win the Michael Jackson role in 2019, right before COVID-19 taught him and everyone else in theater that surprises aren’t necessarily good. By the time MJ was getting back on its post-pandemic feet, Sykes was involved in another project—a film that has yet to be made—and he opted to stick with it, instead of returning to the role he’d done in the MJ workshop. 

Which brings us to Pal Joey, giving seven performances November 1–5 as City Center’s annual benefit presentation. In 1940, despite the glorious Rodgers and Hart score and the presence of then-newcomer Gene Kelly in the title role, the musical opened to mediocre reviews—the usual explanation being that Broadway wasn’t ready for the cynicism and bad beha­vior of its sleazy hero. Since then, the show’s bumpy history has included a hit revival in 1952; a 1957 film starring Frank Sinatra; limited-run City Center revivals in the early ’60s with Bob Fosse as the heel; and a 2008 production with a new book that fared little better with the critics than the original.

Goldwyn and his friend and partner Richard LaGravenese­ got permission from the Rodgers and Hart estate to do yet another version, and to subtract or add Rodgers and Hart songs, which they did. Their idea, Goldwyn says, was to change Joey from “just a cad who sleeps with a lot of women” to “a true artist, a genuinely gifted man.” As they tinkered, Joey evolved into a Black jazz singer struggling to be heard in 1940s Chicago. But the show’s theme, Goldwyn notes, goes beyond race to “explore the human need to be seen. When your story is not being heard and you are invisible, that is a very painful way to live your life.” LaGravenese enlisted Daniel “Koa” Beaty to work with him on the book, and Goldwyn asked Glover—his “dream partner”—to choreograph and co-direct.

They chose Sykes to play this Joey because, Goldwyn explains, they needed someone “to be the star that everyone talks about him being in the story.” Then there was the dancing: “We needed a man who could hang with Savion Glover.”

Glover says Goldwyn’s name alone got him interested. But, he adds, “I was thinking the old Pal Joey. When I found out what was really going on, it turned into me having the opportunity to once again be part of a narrative that has been a part of my life. My story that is the story of Sammy Davis Jr.; my story that is the story of Chuck Green, Jimmy Slyde, Ben Vereen, Picasso, Frank Sinatra. This iteration of Pal Joey is a lot of cats that I know.”

Sykes says Joey hits “very close to home” for him, too—“a young, hungry Black man out of the South trying to make it as a performer.” When he was asked to audition, he’d never seen Pal Joey and knew nothing about it, so he did some research. He feigns nonchalance as he describes his reaction: “Oh, there was a movie. Oh, Gene Kelly did this. No pressure.”

Needless to say, the dance in this production is pivotal. Glover promises it will “look like nothing I’ve seen myself or heard myself do,” while also including “everything” he knows. Sykes is a little less elliptical, but admits the choreography is hard to describe. “It feels like a coming together of a lot of different languages,” he ventures, “the main one being Savion’s hoofing and tap language meeting the world and the movement of that time period‚ especially Black folks. How we moved, how we walked, that whole energy, those steps that were popular in the ’40s in the Black community, in the juke joints.” 

Talking about the show, Sykes is clearly awed. “Savion is teaching me this entirely different language, tying back to my ancestors, his ancestors, our African roots,” he says. “He’s able to communicate with his feet the thoughts that are in his mind. He’s one of the greatest to ever do it, and I’m having one-on-one sessions with this man!”

Sykes will probably stay a student always, but he also has something to teach. He and his sister, Martina, have started a college scholarship fund at their high school: the SykesKids Scholarships. When he goes back to give talks, he cites the unexpected turns his life has taken. “See the blessing in the closed door, and just stay open to where God is leading you,” he urges them. “Don’t get tunnel vision on your dreams.”

The post Ephraim Sykes Is the Toast of Broadway and Beyond appeared first on Dance Magazine.

The Storm of the Century

“We see all of our work as creating worlds,” say Taylor Knight and Anna Thompson, co-directors of slowdanger. The multidisciplinary entity is known for drawing audiences into atmospheric experiences through surreal landscapes enriched with evocative vocals, ambient sound scores, and moody lighting effects.­ SUPERCELL, their largest-scale production to date, unfolds amid deconstructed environs where five individuals face the fury of a burgeoning thunderstorm that forebodes massive devastation and annihilation. Each has a story, told through postmodern dance, improvisation, dialogue, and live camera feeds.

The storm serves as a “representation of society’s hypnotic connection to media sensationalism, desensitization, and climate disasters,” state the co-directors, who consulted with an advisory team of scientists and educators in developing the work that “responds to but does not solve the issue of climate change.” College Park, MD, Sept. 21–22; Pittsburgh, Dec. 8–9. slowdangerslowdanger.com. —Karen Dacko

Birmingham’s Heavy Metal Ballet

Concert dance and pop culture have been close bedfellows in the U.K. recently: Over the past 12 months, we’ve seen everything from a Rambert reimagining of “Peaky Blinders” to former Spice Girl Mel C taking to the Sadler’s Wells stage in a Merce Cunningham–style­ unitard. Now, Birmingham Royal Ballet is getting in on the action with Black Sabbath: The Ballet. With choreography by Raúl Reinoso and Cassi Abranches, led by Pontus Lidberg, the three-act work will be set to orchestrations of the titular band’s legendary tracks, as well as new compositions performed live by the Royal Ballet Sinfonia.

The second in a trilogy of Birmingham-focused works programmed by artistic director Carlos Acosta to pay homage to the city’s cultural heritage—Birmingham is Black Sabbath’s hometown, and they performed their first gig in a pub a stone’s throw from BRB’s headquarters—it claims to be the world’s first true heavy metal ballet experience. While maybe not an experience we knew we needed, there’s appetite for it: The premiere run sold out shortly after it was announced, with extra shows being added in response to the demand. Premieres at the Birmingham Hippodrome Sept. 23–30 before touring to Theatre Royal Plymouth (Oct. 12–14) and London’s Sadler’s Wells (Oct. 18–21). brb.org.uk. —Emily May

Ease on Down to Broadway

If you’ve seen Beyoncé’s “Single Ladies” video, you’ve seen choreographer JaQuel Knight’s ebullient, sexy, defiantly strutting hip-hop style. It’s not exactly what comes to mind when you picture “Ease on Down the Road,” but that will be changing when Knight makes his Broadway debut choreographing a new production of The Wiz, the groundbreaking 1975 musical that gave Dorothy and her misfit pals from The Wizard of Oz a soul transfusion and a message of Black affirmation. Joining Knight and director Schele Williams are Black artists from the music industry, film, and television, all taking a fresh look at Charlie Smalls’ Tony-winning score and William F. Brown’s book. The original, which ran for four years, took seven Tony Awards in all, including Best Musical and Best Choreography (for George Faison). The team for this version arrives toting a slew of Oscars, Emmys, and Grammys, so look out. Tour begins Sept. 23–30 at the Hippodrome Theatre in Baltimore, and continues to additional cities before opening on Broadway next spring. wizmusical.com. —Sylviane Gold 

Mthuthuzeli On the Move

South African choreographer Mthuthuzeli November was already in demand when he was included in Dance Magazine’s 2022 “25 to Watch.” Now, fresh from his latest creation for Ballet Black—the narrative, Nina Simone–inspired Nina: By Whatever Means, which continues to tour the U.K. through Nov. 2—his choreographic commissions are off the charts in both Europe and the U.S. Over the next year he’s set to make works for Charlotte Ballet (Oct. 5–28), Ballett Zürich (January), and Staatsballett Karlsruhe (premiering April 27). Even further ahead, in fall 2024 he’ll create a contemporary retelling of Romeo and Juliet for the U.K.’s Northern Ballet, and Ballet Black will be reviving his lockdown-inspired The Waiting Game next year.

But first, November will take to the stage in his own choreography in a live version of his film My Mother’s Son, a dynamic, fluid, and emotive duet with his brother and National Ballet of Canada principal Siphesihle November. The performance at Toronto’s Fall for Dance North (Oct. 6–7) will mark the first time the pair have shared the stage as professionals. mthuthuzelinovember.co.uk. —Emily May

Spies of the Civil War

For her first venture into opera, artist-activist Jawole Willa Jo Zollar directs and choreographs Intelligence, an epic Civil War story co-created with composer Jake Heggie and librettist Gene Scheer. The opera revolves around the remarkable true story of two women in Richmond, VA, involved in pro-Union espionage: Elizabeth Van Lew, a member of a prominent Confederate family, established a spy ring, while Mary Jane Bowser, born into slavery in the Van Lew household, collected vital information on the war effort while pretending to be gathering laundry. Eight dancers from the Zollar-founded Urban Bush Women will weave movement into the opera’s tapestry of music and storytelling. Commissioned by Houston Grand Opera, Intelligence premieres Oct. 20–Nov. 3 at the Wortham Theater Center. houstongrandopera.org. —Caitlin Sims

Camille A. Brown and Alicia Keys Join Forces

Apartment ads now call it Clinton, but back in the ’90s, the then-sketchy, west-of-Times-Square neighborhood where Alicia Keys grew up was still known as Hell’s Kitchen. And that’s the setting, and the title, of her new off-Broadway musical, to be choreographed by another New Yorker, Queens native Camille A. Brown. The 17-year-old heroine (played by Maleah Joi Moon, and whose mother is played by Shoshana Bean) shares Keys’ nickname, Ali, and some elements of her history, in a book written by playwright Kristoffer Diaz. Brown will be setting songs from Keys’ 15-Grammy career as well as new ones composed specifically for the show. Keys and Brown are both exceptional women who carved spaces for themselves as artists rather than commodities, and Hell’s Kitchen is bound to share their grit and their grace. Oct. 24–Dec. 10 at New York City’s Public Theater. publictheater.org. —Sylviane Gold 

Theme and Three Variations

Postmodern choreographer Annie-B Parson has long been skeptical of the way unison is often used to glorify a phrase in modern dance and give it an easy intentionality. But after reading W.H. McNeill’s Keeping Together in Time, in which the author writes of his ecstatic experience in military marching drills, she traded that skepticism of the choreographic trope of unison for full-blown obsession. For March, a forthcoming piece for her Big Dance Theater, she invited fellow choreographers Tendayi Kuumba and Donna Uchizono to join her in creating a three-part, intergenerational, intersectional evening-length dance based on forms of unison “from the monstrous to the utopian,” she describes, for a cast of 17 female-identified dancers.

March will premiere Dec. 10–16, in the round on the square stage at New York City’s newly opened Perelman Performing Arts Center, and is a co-commission with PAC NYC, American Dance Festival, Spoleto Festival USA, and The National Center for Choreography at The University of Akron. pacnyc.org. —Meredith Fages

All Aboard the “A” Train

Sugar Hill: The Ellington/Strayhorn Nutcracker rolls into theaters this season. The two-hour dance story discards The Nutcracker’s 1892 libretto as it sends Lena Stall on a journey of self-discovery in glamorous 1930s Harlem. Fueled by Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn’s The Nutcracker Suite, a spunky take on Tchaikovsky’s score, it’s augmented with other songs from their 28-year collaboration. While not the first Nutcracker spun from the 1960 album, this one boasts a dazzling team of multi-genre choreographers: Joshua Bergasse directs and co-choreographs with Jade Hale-Christofi, Caleb Teicher and Jon Boogz contribute additional choreography, and theater legends Graciela Daniele and Carmen de Lavallade serve as consultants. As of press time, dates have been confirmed at New York City Center (Nov. 14–26) and Chicago’s Auditorium Theatre (Dec. 19–30) with other cities expected to follow. sugarhillnutcracker.com. —Karen Dacko

The Metaverse of Mere Mortals

San Francisco Ballet’s 2024 season is its second under Tamara Rojo’s artistic leadership, but it’s the first to bear her creative stamp. She’s making a milestone statement on opening night with the premiere of Aszure Barton’s Mere Mortals—the first woman-choreographed full-length in the company’s 90-year history. Inspired by the myth of Pandora’s box, the ballet grapples with philosophical issues around artificial intelligence and the evils it could unleash. “What questions should humanity be asking itself about AI?” Rojo wonders. “What risks should we take in order to gain knowledge?” An original score by British electronic composer Sam Shepherd, aka Floating Points, and avant-garde production design and visuals by the Barcelona-based Hamill Industries will create an immersive experience for artists and audience alike. “The goal,” Barton says, “is to create a moving, visceral experience by recontextualizing the classic parable for our modern world.” Jan. 26–Feb. 1. sfballet.org. —Claudia Bauer

Unpacking a Controversial Icon

Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel: alluring fashion icon and notorious antisemite. What is it about Chanel that continues to capture public fascination, and what can we learn from her complex and controversial life? In Coco Chanel: The Life of a Fashion Icon, Annabelle Lopez Ochoa explores Chanel’s mythic status without glorifying the woman in total—a nuanced and analytical approach that ballet often shies away from.

A co-production between Hong Kong Ballet, Atlanta Ballet, and Queensland Ballet, the full-length premiered in Hong Kong in March. Atlanta Ballet will bring Chanel stateside this season before its Queensland premiere next fall. In conjunction with the production, Atlanta Ballet has partnered with the local William Breman Jewish Heritage Museum and SCAD FASH Museum of Fashion + Film to develop educational programming unpacking Chanel’s fashion legacy, as well as the damaging impact of her antisemitism and collaboration with the Nazi Party; Atlanta Ballet will provide additional instructional resources and host discussions on combating antisemitism. Feb. 9–11, 16–17. atlantaballet.com. —Kyra Laubacher

Birds of a Feather

In the allegorical 12th-century poem “The Conference of the Birds,” birds from all over the world come together and find unity despite their differences on a journey toward spiritual enlightenment. It’s only fitting, then, that a confluence of dance styles converge for Zorongo Flamenco Dance Theatre’s adaptation of the ancient Sufi text. Choreographer and dancer Darrius Strong, whose work is heavily influenced by hip hop, brings his penchant for narrative to this collaboration with artistic director Susana di Palma. Though he didn’t have prior training in flamenco, Strong says he found the form’s rhythmic nature and musicality relatable. International flamenco guitarist and composer Juanito Pascual leads the live music for the adaptation, premiering Feb. 10–11 at the Cowles Center in Minneapolis. thecowlescenter.org. —Sheila Regan

Making Work on Work

Laura Gutierrez grew up amidst paint cans and brushes, enormous tarps, ladders, and ratchet straps—the materials her father used as a billboard painter. “The way I know dance, my dad knows billboards,” she says. Gutierrez honors her father’s 48 years of labor with the premiere of her new solo, In Tarps I Trust. The Houston native, now based in New Jersey, plans to lean into the unruliness and extreme physicality of her father’s profession. “I really need to shed a lot of angst and take hold, and what better way to do so than wrestling with a 14×48-foot tarp,” says Gutierrez­, who has made a career creating and performing site-specific work in museum and gallery settings. Gutierrez last addressed issues surrounding labor in Center Aisle Blues, set in a Fiesta Mart, a Texas grocery-store chain serving the Latino community. She continues this thread with In Tarps I Trust, premiering in Houston this spring at the MATCH as part of DiverseWorks’ series on labor, Work of Art/Art is Work. lauraegutierrez.com. —Nancy Wozny

Return of the Roaring ’20s

The Great Gatsby has inspired manyfold adaptations since its 1925 publication, but the disillusionment—with love, marriage, the American Dream—that courses through F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel has often proved trickier to capture than the stylish decadence of its Roaring ‘20s setting. An upcoming new musical, however, shows promise. Gatsby boasts director Rachel Chavkin, whose knack for balancing spectacle with emotional impact was showcased in Natasha, Pierre, & the Great Comet of 1812 and Hadestown; a score by Florence Welch and frequent Florence + The Machine collaborator Thomas Bartlett; a book from Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright Martyna Majok; and choreography by Sonya Tayeh—who better to capture the wild opulence of Jay Gatsby’s parties than the dancemaker whose over-the-top dance sequences for Moulin Rouge! nabbed her a Tony Award? The premiere of Gatsby will close the season at American Repertory Theater, a noted incubator for Broadway-bound new works, with previews beginning May 25 and opening night slated for June 5. americanrepertorytheater.org. —Courtney Escoyne

Breaking Onto the International Stage

Breaking will make history as the first dance form to reach the Olympic stage next summer. Staying true to its hip-hop roots, the breaking program will revolve­ around the battle. In two events, one for 16 b-boys and one for 16 b-girl­s, ­competitors will face off in a single-elimination–style tournament. As they go head to head to perform improvised sets of their most impressive top rocks (standing movements), down rocks (floor work), and freezes (inverted poses), they will be judged on their athleticism and artistry.

Breaking for Gold USA has developed a competition circuit to determine the country’s best breakers. To become Olympians, these breakers will need to earn spots at Olympic qualifying events, where they will compete for the opportunity to represent breaking’s birthplace on the largest international stage at the ­2024 Summer Games in Paris. Aug. 9–10. paris2024.org. —Kristi Yeung

Mean Girls, Take Three

Get in, losers, we’re going back to high school, again. Mean Girls, the 2004 movie that inspired the Tony-nominated 2018 Broadway musical, will soon see its third incarnation as a movie musical. While musical comedy veteran Casey Nicholaw originated the musical’s moves, à la lunch-tray choreography and spontaneous tap dance breaks, this film adaptation will have a fresh take courtesy of choreographer Kyle Hanagami. With a signature style that’s intricate, musically expressive, and invitingly fun, Hanagami has emerged as a go-to collaborator in both the K-pop and commercial-dance scenes. His viral touch may be exactly what this adaptation needs to bring the musical’s whip-smart lyrics—by Nell Benjamin, who, along with original screenplay and Broadway book writer Tina Fey, has hinted at some surprises and potentially a new song or two—to life on screen. The new film will stream on Paramount+, date to be announced. paramountplus.com. —Amanda Sherwin

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He joined the cast as a puppetry novice. “Taking what I knew from dance was incredibly helpful in understanding how to work the puppet,” says Kanagawa. Now, he feels like he and Milky White are one and the same. “We are very symbiotic,” he says of the puppet, who boasts mournful eyes and is around the size of a large dog. “I often use first person when talking about the track.”

Puppets can do things that people can’t, such as move their legs preposterously quickly or fill space 15 or 20 feet above the stage. But they require skilled and agile human bodies to do so, making puppetry and dance a natural pairing. The relationship between these two art forms goes back thousands of years, from Greek mime plays to Japanese bunraku to commedia dell’arte to Bauhaus architect Oskar Schlemmer’s Triadic Ballet. Choreographers seem drawn to puppets: Coppélia,­ Petrushka, and the dolls in The Nutcracker’s party scene are all dancer imitations of puppets come to life, and newer works like Christophe­r Wheeldon’s 2012 Cinderella and Alexei Ratmansky’s 2017 Whipped Cream feature whimsical puppetry elements throughout. Life of Pi, which opened on Broadway in March, uses a mix of dancers and puppeteers to bring its cast of zoo animals to life.

“I’ve always aligned myself more with dance than theater,” says Basil Twist, a MacArthur Fellow and puppeteer who collaborated with Wheeldon on Cinderella, The Royal Ballet’s 2014 A Winter’s Tale, and The Joffrey Ballet’s 2016 The Nutcracker, as well as with a number of other dancemakers. “The essential element of puppetry is movement.”

Creating an Image

Twist doesn’t come from a dance background, though his formal puppeteer training includes movement classes, tai chi, and karate. “Dancers in general are fantastic puppeteers,” he says. “It’s about working as an ensemble to create an image, and being devoted with your body towards that image.”

Like many dance artists, Twist relies on mirrors in rehearsal to make this happen. “People are very quick to self-adjust once they can see themselves,” he says. When working on Broadway’s 2017 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory with choreographer Joshua Bergasse, Twist created the Oompa Loompas using “humanette” puppetry. “It’s their own head with a little puppet body strapped to it, and the dancers were on their knees,” explains Twist. “The image was hysterical, but the dancers did not get it until they saw the mirror.” Once able to view themselves, the dancers were hooked: They started using the humanettes to perform numbers from shows like CATS, delighting at the ways they could make the Oompa Loompa bodies move.

When rehearsing Into the Woods, Kanagawa had a human mirror in James Ortiz, the designer who built the Milky White puppet. “When our choreographer Lorin Latarro was teaching us, she’d say something like, ‘On this lyric we’ll do a chassé and then a three-step turn,’ ” says Kanagawa. “I’d just look at James in the audience, like, ‘I’ve got six legs between me and the cow.’ I’d try something and he’d either give me a thumbs-up or a teeter-totter hand, and I’d keep experimenting until it made sense.”

Communication and Trust

Like Kanagawa, Broadway veteran and dancer Celia Mei Rubin came to Broadway’s Life of Pi without any puppetry experience. In addition to understudying one of the non-puppet leads, she’s part of a group of eight cast members who rotate through animating a life-sized tiger named Richard Parker, an orangutan named Orange Juice, two hyenas, and two zebras. The tiger puppet alone requires three puppeteers to operate (plus a fourth for one scene!). Rubin’s role is known as the “tiger heart”: She hunches inside the puppet’s internal aluminum-plated wood cage and is responsible for giving breath to the creature and controlling its front paws.

Rubin credits her comfort with collaboration, learned from her dance career, with both landing the role and her continued success onstage. In the audition, she says, the creative team seemed as interested in seeing how people worked with each other as they did in the skills they brought into the room.

“In dance, you get very intimate very quickly, just because of the nature of ensemble and partnering work,” she says. “I’m very used to being able to talk to my dance partners about what we need from each other, and puppetry is very similar.”

Clear communication is also crucial for Rubin’s safety. When inside the tiger, she can only see the ground directly in front of her, or the hind paws if she looks behind herself. She relies on cues from the head puppeteer’s feet and breath and on the proprioception she’s honed as a dancer. “I have to go in and just trust the two other people in the puppet with me,” says Rubin.

Serving the Whole

Puppetry, which tends to de-emphasize its human performers, can be selfless work. Rubin says toning down dance’s presentational qualities has been one of her biggest challenges. “Sometimes I get a note that when I swipe, it looks like a big dance movement instead of a tiger,” Rubin says. “It’s like undoing 20 years of being in a dance career.”

Although Kanagawa is more visible onstage—he holds Milky White in front of him from two handles, one on her head and one on her hind, and reacts to her actions and emotions—he also had to learn to put himself second. “It was challenging to adapt to having my focus always be down on the cow,” he says.

But the selflessness of puppetry can also suit dancers used to losing themselves in an ensemble. Rubin says that, sometimes, she’s not even sure that the audience realizes that there are three people inside of the tiger. “I have to try to serve the puppet, as opposed to serving the story with my own human body,” she says.

Low-Tech Magic

Like dance, puppetry uses low-tech solutions to create magic onstage, allowing the audience to witness much of the work that goes into its illusions. When Milky White cries, we can see Kanagawa manipulating her body, and when Pi hallucinates that the terrifying tiger Richard Parker transforms into a tough-talking Frenchman, we can appreciate the effort it takes for Rubin and her colleagues to alter their physicality.

“It’s stagecraft that is human-centered,” says Twist. “You can create otherworldly effects, fantastical effects, and animate the stage. It’s enchantment.”

Body Maintenance

Doing the same track eight shows a week is taxing for any performer. But adding the weight and awkward positions included with puppeteering makes it even harder.

When playing the tiger Richard Parker, Celia Mei Rubin, one of the eight puppeteers currently in Broadway’s Life of Pi, is completely bent over, holding rods connected to his front paws. The puppet, which is made of wood, aluminum, and a foam-like material, weighs about 32 pounds on its own. To combat back and leg pain, Rubin has a cross-training plan that includes going to the gym a few times a week, taking a ballet class once a week, and then doing a 15-minute stretch warm-up before going onstage.

Kennedy Kanagawa, who’s been playing Milky White in Into the Woods for the past year, feels the strain of holding the 15-pound puppet at arm’s length mostly in his wrists and elbows.­ “I’m not able to keep the weight in my core, which puts the strain on my back,” he adds. His physical therapist has built him an extensive warm-up routine which includes twisting foam rods and squeezing putties of different firmness to enhance his wrist and finger strength.

The post How Dancers Help Create the Low-Tech Magic of Onstage Puppetry appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Sparkling at 60

LONDON  The Australian Ballet embarks on its first international tour since before the pandemic, bringing George Balanchine’s Jewels to the Royal Opera House Aug. 2–5. The company’s return to the venue after a 35-year absence is part of its 60th-anniversary celebrations, and will close with a one-night anniversary gala on Aug. 6 featuring works from choreographers ranging from Rudolf Nureyev and Yuri Possokhov to Pam Tanowitz and Alice Topp. australianballet.com.au.

A School Dance, a DeLorean, and Doc Brown

NEW YORK CITY  After winning the Olivier Award for Best New Musical, Back to the Future flies from the West End to Broadway. The adaptation of the 1985 film follows the adventures of Marty McFly (Broadway’s Almost Famous breakout star Casey Likes) as he accidentally goes back to 1955 in a DeLorean that can travel through time and the hijinks that ensue as he tries to save the inventor, Doc Brown (Tony winner Roger Bart), make sure his parents fall in love, and return to the future. On the Town director John Rando is at the helm, with choreography by Chris Bailey. Opening night is slated for Aug. 3. backtothefuturemusical.com.

Fresh Air

NEW YORK CITY  Battery Dance Festival presents more than two dozen artists and companies in live and livestreamed performances at Rockefeller Park. Among the offerings during this year’s iteration of New York City’s longest-running free public dance festival are the premieres of Jerron Herman’s Lax, billed as “a punk concert in a sleep store”; Trainor Dance Inc.’s Under Pressure, set to a remix of Freddie Mercury and David Bowie’s a capella version of the titular song; and a new solo from Curaçao’s Reuel Rogers, Power. U.S. and local debuts abound, while a special Turn of the Century Dance Pioneers evening features works by Isadora Duncan, Ruth St. Denis, and Ted Shawn as well as Lori Bellilove’s Duncan-inspired Tribute to Ukraine and Jody Sperling’s climate-engaged, Loïe Fuller–styled solo, American Elm. Aug. 12–18. batterydance.org.

Beach Birds in Their Natural Habitat

NEW YORK CITY  What if Merce Cunningham’s 1991 Beach Birds were performed on an actual beach? Patricia Lent and Rashaun Mitchell stage the naturalistic work, one of Cunningham’s early experiments with LifeForms software as a choreographic tool, for this year’s iteration of Beach Sessions Dance Series, which returns to Rockaway Beach for a day of free performances on Aug. 26. In addition, choreographer Sarah Michelson, who began making dances in New York City in the early ‘90s, will premiere a choreographic response to the work, contemplating her personal connection to Beach Birds, Cunningham, and his legacy. beachsessionsdanceseries.com.

Living Water

HUDSON, NY  Dancemakers Jodi Melnick and Maya Lee-Parritz join forces in Água Viva, a duet inspired by the novel of the same name by Ukrainian-born Brazilian writer Clarice Lispector. Published in English translation under the title The Stream of Life, the novel has an unconventional structure, a fluid, directionless monologue that eschews plot and named characters. Melnick and Lee-Parritz expand upon its musings on virtuosity, sexuality, and the spectacular in their new work, premiering Aug. 26–27 at Hudson Hall. hudsonhall.org.

Late Summer Gatherings in San Francisco

ODC Theater plays host to two festivals this month.

State of Play

Guest curated by Maurya Kerr and Leyya Mona Tawil, ODC’s signature summer festival returns with, in the curators’ words, “dance that sits and stares back at you.” International collective Tableau Stations premieres the evening-length Home Waves, about affordable housing and featuring residents of the local Mercy Housing development alongside creators Isak Immanuel, Marina Fukushima, and Surjit Nongmeikapam. Ajani Brannum’s the wasp project, a solo inspired by an African American folktale, also premieres. Kensaku Shinohara, Marissa Brown/Lone King Projects, and Yanira Castro/a canary torsi present evening-lengths; Baye & Asa, DANDY (David Rue and Randy Ford), and Jerron Herman shorter works; and Audrey Johnson, gizeh muñiz vengel, and pateldanceworks offer works in progress. Aug. 3–13. odc.dance.

FACT/SF Summer Dance Festival

Eight premieres are promised over the two weekends of this festival, kicking off with FACT/SF and Shaun Keylock Company sharing a double bill, Aug. 18–20, part of the former’s Peer Organized Reciprocal Touring program. Local choreographers Emily Hansel and Mia J. Chong, Brianna Torres, and Héctor Jaime join the mix alongside visiting dancemakers Alfonso Cervera and Taylor Donofrio for the second weekend of performances, Aug. 25–27. factsf.org.

The post 7 Shows Worth Catching Before Summer Comes to a Close appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Here Lies Love, the immersive, groundbreaking musical from David Byrne and Fatboy Slim, is transforming the Broadway Theatre into a discotheque, making audience members both clubgoers—dancing encouraged—and active participants in the story of the former First Lady and President, whose rise to power and epic fall from it are told through disco-inspired songs and Byrne’s signature wit.

Choreographing both the performers and the audience members—who continuously move throughout the space and occasionally learn a few moves themselves—is a big job, but one that Annie-B Parson is ready for. “It’s not intimidating,” says the choreographer, who has worked with Byrne for over a decade, including on his American Utopia. “My experience with audiences is that they do very well with whatever you give them if you’re clear.”

Though Here Lies Love has had four runs in the past decade—two at The Public Theater, where it premiered in 2013, one in London, and one in Seattle—none were at the scale of the Broadway production, which has been designed to put even more audience members up close and personal on the dance floor. It also has additional seating options for a more traditional theatrical experience—an added challenge for Parson and director Alex Timbers. “We’ve always been very aware of what it looks like from different angles,” says Parson. “Alex is very good at understanding how the space can come alive from all these different points of observation.”

Though Parson researched disco when creating the movement for the show, and built movement from her years of working with Byrne,­ Here Lies Love’s dance vocabulary brings a distinctly postmodern aesthetic to the Broadway stage, not dissimilar from the movement Parson has created for many years with her company, Big Dance Theater. “Bringing that to Broadway?” says Parson. “Well, we’ll see how they like it.”

Dance Magazine’s Lauren Wingenroth spoke to Annie-B Parson as Here Lies Love was readying for Broadway, and Rachel Papo photographed the first day of dance rehearsals in May.

How does it feel to be reimmersing yourself in the world of Here Lies Love after all these years?

It’s been a dream of ours to bring it back at a larger scale with a larger audience. I always have felt that you need to really make this piece as dynamic as it can be; you need sort of a crisis of people on the dance floor. And because we’ve always been in smaller venues, we were limited to 100 or so people. Now, the relationship between the audience and the piece will feel perfect. I’m very interested in co-proximate, co-temporal bodies in space.

It will feel different for the bodies that are watching, too. It’s just crazy to see that many people doing what they’re told. The motif of the disco becomes more intense with more people. In the past, we’ve had very few people in the observer seats, but now I think it’s just as many as on the floor.

What else can we expect to see that will be different in the Broadway production?

It’s essentially the same show but updated, since it’s now and not then politically. Because of Bongbong [the current President of the Philippines and the son of Imelda and Ferdinand], we’re looking to highlight the complicity of the U.S. government with the dictatorship in the Philippines. It’s not one of those pieces that I did it and it’s over. It’s about Filipino history. So it’s never going to be over.

Are there any challenges you’re anticipating as you bring the show to Broadway?

Well, we have a new cast, essentially—not 100 percent, but pretty much—so of course that always feels unknown, like “How do these people execute my movement?” And, in this very small period of time, how do I transmit the tonality and the muscularity of my particular movement vocabulary? It will be unfamiliar to them because they come from a different tradition.

I think of Broadway as very wet material. I think of it as hot and I think of David’s early material as cool. So when you’re dealing with cool–dry instead of hot–wet, it’s very different for a dancer. We’re talking about tonality, muscularity, isolation. It’s not just musical theater dancers, it would be any dancer that wasn’t trained in more postmodern tradition.

Having said that, I’ve had very good luck with the casts that I’ve worked with on this show. So I wouldn’t say I’m worried about it.

We don’t see immersive shows on Broadway often. Are you grappling with any expectations of what a Broadway show is supposed to look like?

Look, I just did American Utopia. And that’s the only Broadway thing I’ve done. I don’t have any knowledge of Broadway, I don’t tend to see Broadway shows. And aesthetically I’m very, very far away from what you would think of as a Broadway choreographer. So I don’t go in with any knowledge of what that audience is like.

The audience for American Utopia was there to see David Byrne. And they saw him, and it was his vision. So I essentially feel like it’s his vision again, and this is just as amazing. What we’re bringing musically is as groundbreaking as Bernstein when he was on Broadway; as Cole Porter when he was on Broadway; as George Gershwin when he was on Broadway. [Byrne] is accepting no tropes—no Broadway tropes are in that show. I don’t know if that’s conscious or unconscious. He’s just telling a story through his music. And to me, it will change how people think about music on Broadway, as much as Gershwin changed it and Porter changed it and Bernstein changed it. I think it will feel super-exciting to hear storytelling in a different musical voice.

What is the storytelling role of dance in the show?

Well, story is not my middle name; I am pretty narratively challenged. I would say more that I’m creating a movement logic. I think in any piece that is made by a choreographer who’s not in a tradition of musical theater, you teach the audience the vocabulary over time. So when they first see the material, it’s not going to be familiar. There’s a diagonal slant on what’s happening in the song. So I can’t say that there’s much storytelling—I would say there’s more music-telling.

You’ve made so much more work with David since Here Lies Love first premiered. How has your collaboration grown since then?

I feel like we’ve almost created a folk dance of our own, in that there’s a world of movement that has amassed coming from my body, into the music, into the dancers. It’s like one long piece for me. And I had a lot of cues from him about what he likes and where he’s coming from through references that we share. We both really love ceremony—we share videos back and forth of coronations across the world, these ancient rituals. So that is the way I understand what interests him.

So now that you have this larger pool of references and material, will there be more layers as you build the movement? Or are you going to be true to the original movement?

I want to do more layers, but I think they really want me to keep it the same. I’m not the lead author of the piece, Alex and David are. I love being in that position. I consider myself in service to David’s music, and to the director Alex Timbers. It’s a really interesting position, because choreographers, we love limits. And then when I’m in my own room, I have the opportunity to make anything I want, and have the burden and joy of being the sole author.

Anything else you want to mention?

This time, the thing that seems very, very cool to me is that we have Filipino producers. And they are brilliant. I don’t use that word loosely. That I have conversations with Jose [Antonio] Vargas is just insane. He’s so incredible and generous and deep. I just finished his book, Dear America, and I really recommend it. I think about all the things I could have done in my life, and it seems insane that I ended up doing this. How would I have ever met someone like Jose? He’s in a completely different universe. Those interactions are really deepening for me and anything that deepens for me deepens for the dancers through osmosis.

The post Behind the Scenes with Choreographer Annie-B Parson as <i>Here Lies Love</i> Moves to Broadway appeared first on Dance Magazine.

I’m a nonunion musical theater performer, and I recently attended my first in-person Equity chorus call (ECC) for the Broadway show Wicked. (Ever heard of it?) I found out about the audition late the day of. So by the time I got to Open Jar Studios in midtown Manhattan, I was number 80 on the nonunion list—a paper that dancers who are not members of the Actors’ Equity Association wake up at 4 am to write their names on, in case casting chooses to see nonunion artists after they finish with Equity performers. 

At 3:15 pm, the monitor finally started calling names off of the nonunion list. This is it, I thought. I’m actually going to get to audition for Wicked! But then I saw a casting director walk into the room and whisper something to the monitor. With an uncomfortable look, the monitor shouted, “That’s all we will be seeing for today—thank you for your time.” I felt my stomach drop.

The benefits of joining the union go far beyond audition prioritization, of course. That said, I didn’t end up joining Equity immediately after that unfortunate audition day. When I asked around, I discovered that the question isn’t “if” a dancer should join the union—it’s “when.”

To get the inside scoop, I talked to my agent, an Equity councilor, and a dancer who recently chose to join the union.

Actors’ Equity Association 101

The Actors’ Equity Association represents American actors and stage managers in theater, negotiating wages and securing working protections. All Broadway shows require their performers to be employed on an Equity contract. In the past, a dancer could only join the union if they had signed a contract for an Equity show; were a member of a sister union, like AGMA or SAG-AFTRA; or accrued “Equity points” by working at specific theaters for a certain number of weeks. That changed during the course of COVID. Now, individuals who can prove they’ve performed professionally at one point, through documents like a W-2 and/or a contract, are also eligible. “If you have been paid to perform, you are able to join, period,” says Equity councilor Bear Bellinger. (For more details on exactly how to join, check out the Actors’ Equity Association website.)

New York City–based performer Mattie Tucker Joyner recently did just that. Though this past audition season was her first as a union member, she is already seeing the benefits. “I have a much healthier relationship with auditioning now,” she says. “Rather than waking up at 3 am and spending entire days at Pearl Studios, I can be seen and have work–life balance.” 

Joyner decided to join because she wanted to be able to audition more frequently and to build rapport with casting directors and choreographers. “This industry is all about who you know and how you present yourself,” she says. “That’s hard to show if you can’t get in the room.”

The Question of Timing

So why doesn’t everyone just join Equity? According to my agent, Lucille DiCampli, it’s often a matter of timing. “I’m 100 percent pro-union,” she says. “But once you join, there is no turning back. You can no longer work on nonunion projects, and when you’re starting out, you might need to build your resumé through nonunion work.”

One of the primary benefits of joining the union at the beginning of your career is the ability to attend ECC open calls. But that might not be enough to justify paying union initiation fees and dues: According to DiCampli, shows often hire from agent appointments, not open calls. “Has anyone in the history of ECCs booked? Yes. But it’s not as common,” she says. And there’s simply less union work to go around right now. With the closing of various Broadway shows, including Bob Fosse’s DANCIN’ and The Phantom of the Opera, many opportunities were lost. “People keep using the word ‘unprecedented,’ but this is ‘unprecedented-plus,’ ” she says.

My first question after hearing all of this was “Do I need to continue waking up at 4 am to attend ECC calls, then?” In my case, DiCampli advised patience. “I would sooner have you in class building connections,” she told me. “Keep your options open. If you make a decision to cut things out, make sure it is the right decision. All of my clients will join the union when the time is right.”

So what am I going to do? I suppose I’m going to trust the advice of my agent and hold off a little longer. I’ll continue to take class and attend agency appointments—and maybe ECC calls that I really think I’m right for. (My cute husband said he would do the 4 am wakeup calls for me from time to time. Bless him!) But I’ll definitely join the union one day, when the time is right. I’m looking forward to adding my voice to the chorus of people demanding equitable pay and other workplace protections.

To see what attending an ECC audition as a nonunion performer looks like, head over to Dance Magazine’s YouTube channel.

The post Begin Again: When and Why Should We Join the Union? appeared first on Dance Magazine.

That said: We need to talk about Kolton Krouse. Specifically, we need to talk about Kolton Krouse in the Trumpet Solo.

The solo arrived in the middle of “Sing, Sing, Sing,” DANCIN’s second-act opener, set to music made famous by Benny Goodman. A virtuosic three-minute wiggle originally created for Ann Reinking, it requires a finely calibrated combination of introspection and extroversion—“like you’re in a back room dancing for yourself in the mirror,” Krouse says. In the wrong hands (and, especially, legs), it can wilt. But Krouse teased and tickled and va-va-voomed it into full flower. By the solo’s climax, the audience was eating from the palms of Krouse’s impeccably manicured hands.

“Trumpet Solo needs an artist who can play outside of the boundaries of the steps,” says DANCIN’ cast member Dylis Croman, a Fosse veteran who memorably performed the number in the 2002 recording of Fosse. “You immediately feel that Kolton has that freedom and joy, that sense of fun, like a tiger getting ready to pounce. And let me just say: Their kick layouts are outlandishly good.”

The list of artists who’ve tackled the Trumpet Solo is short—and before Krouse, it featured only cisgender women. In DANCIN’, 27-year-old Krouse, who is nonbinary, performed the routine as part of a track that included roles in both heels and flats. (Their other big solo, “Spring Chicken,” used some of the “Mein Herr” choreography immortalized by Liza Minnelli­ in Cabaret.) It was a significant step toward inclusivity that also felt natural. Fosse asked dancers to be themselves onstage; DANCIN’ simply showed Krouse as Krouse.

“The thing about Kolton is that they are truly comfortable in their skin, which is what Bob always wanted,” says DANCIN’ director Wayne Cilento, who performed in the original 1978 production. “And that actually made it really easy to figure out the tracking. Like the Trumpet Solo: The question was, who was the best person in the room to do it? Kolton was the one.”

Krouse’s secure sense of self has been evident from a young age, bolstered by well-founded confidence in their own talent. A star of the dance competition and convention circuit, they became the first four-time National Outstanding Dancer at New York City Dance Alliance, winning the Mini title in 2007, Junior in 2009, Teen in 2012, and Senior in 2014. There were bullies in their conservative Arizona hometown, but Krouse largely shrugged them off. “My feeling was, this is such a small chunk of our lives,” they say. “Sure, you can yell at me. But pretty soon, I’m going to get out of here, and you’re probably going to stay in Arizona, and, you know—bye.”

As a student Krouse felt the pull of New York City, which had “an energy that made me feel like I belonged,” they say. Looking for ways to channel that energy, they enrolled at The Juilliard School. 

They admired the abstract concert dance repertory that shaped much of Juilliard’s­ curriculum. But soon they realized that what they really wanted to do was tell stories. “I started to focus on the idea of Broadway because it brought all the pieces together—the acting, the movement, everything I loved best,” Krouse says. They also had a difficult time with the school’s culture. “I got this sense that in order to become­ an artist, they had to break you down and then build you back up, which was not it for me.”

So Krouse was ready to leap when they heard that Andy Blankenbuehler, an acquaintance through NYCDA, was choreographing a Broadway revival of CATS. Though Krouse initially asked to audition just for the experience, they ended up booking the show. They spent their sophomore year doing double duty: full-time Juilliard student by day, Broadway feline by night. 

The show—and the (ill-starred) 2019 film, which Krouse booked some months later—marked both a professional and a personal turning point for Krouse. Wearing the full-face CATS makeup every day opened the door to further play with cosmetics, nail art, and fashion; playing a creature rather than a person allowed them freedom to explore the feminine qualities that had always been part of their dancing. 

“I started to think about, Who is Kolton Krouse?” they say. “After a lot of experimenting, everything morphed into this androgynous situation—the masculine and the feminine all bled into each other, in my dancing and offstage, too. And that’s when I found Kolton.”

Krouse dropped out of Juilliard in their senior year, after they were denied a deferral to accommodate the CATS film’s production schedule. They landed a few more high-profile commercial dance jobs—including, in a bit of foreshadowing, the FX series “Fosse/Verdon.” Finding another­ ­Broadway role proved more dif­­fi­cult. “It was really hard to get into the room as me,” Krouse says. “There were a couple projects where they said, ‘No, you can’t show up in makeup and heels.’ It felt like a constant battle.” Frustrated, they switched agencies in search of better support.

When COVID-19 shut the world down, Krouse moved back to Arizona and drifted—not not intentionally—away from dance. “I just figured I’d take the time to work on other things I’d always been curious about,” they say. They explored voice training and songwriting with the musician Mario Spinetti, a longtime friend, recording covers and filming music videos for fun. Watching Nathan Chen and Yuzuru Hanyu compete at the 2021 World Figure Skating Championships re-sparked Krouse’s childhood figure-skating dream, previously snuffed out by dance commitments. They started taking classes; a teacher channeled them toward ice dancing, where, unsurprisingly, they excelled. (You can see skating’s influence in their dancing today: the way they throw themselves up into a saut de basque as if it were an axel, the way they wrap their foot in coupé to increase their turning speed.)

In the fall of 2021, as theaters began to reopen, Krouse got the call for the DANCIN’ audition. “I was like, Bob Fosse? Yes. Immediately, yes,” they say. They’d grown up watching Cabaret, and had loved learning the nuances of Fosse style on “Fosse/Verdon.” “With Fosse, the intention is always so clear,” they say. “Even in more abstract pieces, it’s almost like a silent movie—the audience understands what the people they’re watching are feeling or thinking, and sees them as humans instead of characters.”

That emphasis on the humanity of the performers feels consistent with a more flexible approach to gender. “Bob was very forward-thinking in that way,” says Corinne McFadden Herrera, DANCIN’s associate director and musical stager, who also helped with choreographic reconstruction. “Already in Cabaret, in the ’60s and ’70s, he was creating characters with an androgynous fluidity.” The DANCIN’ team didn’t seek out gender-nonconforming performers or plan to cast roles against gender “type,” but they embraced the fullness of Krouse’s identity—and skill set. 

“If Bob had had a Kolton in his life, he would’ve loved it,” Cilento says. “He would never have hidden that talent.”

Though the show made little fanfare about its casting choices, it sat at the middle of a conversation unfolding across Broadway about how the industry can better include nonbinary performers. Onstage celebrations of artists like Some Like It Hot’s J. Harrison Ghee and & Juliet’s Justin David Sullivan belie ongoing concerns about gendered awards-show categories and casting processes. 

“I think change could be coming, and I think it’s definitely getting better with certain directors and choreographers, but it’s still really tricky,” Krouse says. They’ve been unsure, for example, about how to navigate recent calls for “female-presenting” and “male-presenting” performers. Usually they end up essentially auditioning twice. 

“If it feels right, you can show them the combo in a heel and then the second time do it in a flat,” they say. “It’s hard. But if they’re not allowing space for you, you have to make space for yourself.”

Eventually, Krouse hopes to carve out space in other fields, too. They’re still studying voice, and plan to return to skating at some point. You might see them onscreen someday, acting in a horror film (“Wouldn’t that be incredibly fun?”) or a superhero movie (“I could do all the stunts”). And they hope to walk in fashion week—a dream that, for a person seemingly born to wear heels, feels eminently attainable. 

The DANCIN’ cast included some of the best movers on Broadway, yet Krouse was repeatedly singled out by critics. (The New York Times review called them “the one with the face-slapping kicks,” an epithet since featured in Krouse’s Instagram bio.) That attention, Krouse says, was a nice surprise. But they were more excited about the visibility than the praise. 

“Honestly, I wouldn’t even have cared if everyone hated it, as long as I could connect with that one person who hadn’t seen themselves onstage before,” they say. “What I really want for my art is for people to come away from it saying, ‘That makes me want to be more me.’ ”

The post Kolton Krouse Blazes Their Own Trail On Broadway and Beyond appeared first on Dance Magazine.

But without anyone to create a script, thanks to the ongoing strike by the union of screen and television writers, dance became even more prominent than it would have been. Host Ariana DeBose, with an ensemble that by the end totaled 16 dancers, opened the proceedings with Karla Puno Garcia’s vivid choreography—spilling from an upstairs dressing room of the United Palace Theatre down to the ornate lobby, through the auditorium, and onto the stage, followed every step of the way by swooping camerawork. And when the time came to honor the winners of the lifetime achievement awards, John Kander and Joel Grey, DeBose was joined by Julianne Hough to perform Garcia’s version of “Hot Honey Rag,” from Chicago.

As a fellow scribe and a one-time member of the Writers Guild of America, I fully support the strike. I must admit, however, that I didn’t miss the missing words; and, apart from a brief moment where DeBose lost the thread, neither did anyone on the stage. There were multiple shout-outs in support of the writers, and gratitude for the last-minute agreement that allowed the show to proceed. But the eloquence and emotion of these affairs come from the acceptance speeches, not scripted introductions and banter—whose absence allowed time for more snippets from nominated performances, and for efficiencies that facilitated an on-time close. The large onstage projections identifying who was who and what was what kept it all legible.

What made it fun was the joy—verging on delirium—that greeted all the performers filing offstage after their numbers, past those waiting to go on next. The Tonys are a competition, but you wouldn’t have known it from the backstage vibe captured in the show. The history-making Tonys won by two nonbinary actors—J. Harrison Ghee, the blossoming Jerry/Daphne of Some Like It Hot, and Alex Newell, the showstopping Lulu of Shucked—left the other nominees cheering.

The warmth and familial admiration pervading so much of the evening came through when Nicholaw accepted the choreography prize for Some Like It Hot. He started out thanking his 90-year-old mother and segued into heartfelt appreciation for the contribution of Glen Kelly, who did the show’s dance arrangements—a crucial element of musical theater that lacks a Tony category of its own. Unfortunately, Nicholaw’s prize, and Jeanine Tesori and David Lindsay-Abaire’s for scoring Kimberly Akimbo, were awarded before the CBS broadcast, in the streamed segment called “The Tony Awards: Act One”—so the television audience entirely missed the awards for the very things that make musicals musical.

Which prompts another observation. Dance is indisputably one half of what makes musicals musical. With five Tonys, the most of the evening, Kimberly Akimbo was the clear favorite of the Tony voters, who seem irresistibly drawn to what the New York Times theater critic Jesse Green calls “nerdicals”—serious shows with small casts and minimal opportunities for what we normally think of when we picture Broadway dance. This leaves gorgeous extravaganzas like New York, New York and Some Like It Hot at something of a disadvantage in the all-important Best Musical category. Shouldn’t there be an additional Tony honoring simple showmanship? A play might win it now and again, but I’ll bet that most of the time, the winner would have a kick line.

The post Tony Awards Recap: Writer-Less, Dance-Filled appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Though that might sound a little risky, it also offered an opportunity, in the words of choreographer Karla Puno Garcia, “to lift dance in a really big way.” Garcia isn’t new to the Tonys; she was associate choreographer and a dancer for Sergio Trujillo’s opening number in 2021, and has performed in the show with the casts of Gigi and Hamilton. Now, as choreographer, she gets to help create the vision for a broadcast in which dance will definitely be taking on some main-character energy.

Although she couldn’t share details on exactly what that will look like (“You’ll just have to tune in!” she says), Garcia was able to offer the scoop on how the opportunity came together, and what it was like to collaborate with triple-threat host Ariana DeBose.

How did you find out that you’d be choreographing this year’s Tonys?
Ariana DeBose called me and asked if I was interested and available. I said yes and yes! [Laughs]

That was a few weeks ago. I was in tech rehearsal for Days of Wine and Roses at the Atlantic Theater when she called. (I’m co-choreographer with Sergio Trujillo.) That just opened Monday night. I also just started a new immersive show called Tipsy Whispers on Monday. So I am not sleeping, but I’m so grateful, and my mind has just been creating content like wild.

What’s your history with Ariana? Did your time in Hamilton overlap?
Very briefly. She was on her way out while I was still learning the show. But that was one of many crossovers we’ve had. We’ve been in the trenches with each other as dancers, as performers, trying to book our slots in Broadway shows. We’ve performed in gigs together. And she has always been a supporter of my choreography. So we have a mutual respect for each other, and it was really cool to see a peer—now turned Oscar winner!—recognized in such a big way. She is a force!

Why do you think she chose you?
I think our tastes align. We both love musicality. We love dynamics and spicing things up in a similar way. Ari is an incredible dancer, an amazing showman, and, on top of that, she’s really funky. We both like kind of bringing the old and the new together, a classic vibe with a modern twist.

Is dance taking on a more prominent role this year because the show is unscripted?
I think in our industry, it’s easy to overlook a dance ensemble or just the element of dance. And this year, it’s really cool to bring light upon dance in a big way because of the circumstances. The opening number is just a huge celebration of dance. And, without giving too much away, I did get to choreograph another moment later in the show. And that’s all I’ll say. [Laughs]

Why do you think dancers typically get overlooked?
We tell stories through our bodies, and there are no words. Our bodies are the words. But I think we are at a point when we’re gonna start to see a huge wave of telling stories through dance, especially onstage. There’s a new generation of choreographers and creatives and directors that have different perspectives, and I think this diverse group is going to mix it up.

What does it mean to you to be able to work on something that reaches so many people?
I remember watching the Tony Awards with my family when I was 9 years old—seeing Broadway shows on my TV—and getting excited to not only watch them live but, eventually, hopefully get to be in them. To be a part of creating the vision that does that is super-super-special.

The post Karla Puno Garcia on Choreographing an Unusual Tony Awards appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Returning to Form

SAN FRANCISCO  Carrying the theme “IN DIASPORA: I.D. for the New Majority,” San Francisco International Arts Festival boasts a dance card that is practically overflowing. On tap are premieres from Liz Duran Boubion’s Piñata Dance Collective, Ranko Ogura, Jessica Fudim, Abhinaya Dance Company, and Annie Kahane’s Alive & Well Productions, as well as performances from Ensambles Ballet Folklórico de San Francisco, Natasha Adorlee’s Concept o4, inkBoat, Nash Baroque & Dance Through Time, STEAMROLLER Dance Company, Diamano Coura West African Dance Company, and Samudra Dance Creations. June 8–18. sfiaf.org.

Rituals, Remembrance, and Radical Joy

NEW YORK CITY  An evening-length choreo-poem inspired in part by the work of Ntozake Shange, PURPLE: A Ritual in Nine Spells premieres at Lincoln Center’s Clark Studio Theater this month. Devised and performed by Sydnie L. Mosley’s SLMDances collective, the dance-theater work features a multigenerational, femme ensemble of 12, illuminating sisterhood as a force for social change. Created in community with senior residents of the nearby Amsterdam Houses, this iteration of PURPLE appears as part of Lincoln Center’s ongoing Legacies of San Juan Hill project, which examines the diverse neighborhoods that were forcefully displaced in the name of the performing arts center’s construction in the 1950s, and is presented in association with Gibney Presents. June 9–11, 16–18, 23–25. lincolncenter.org.

A Triumphant Tribute

CHICAGO  South Chicago Dance Theatre makes its Auditorium Theatre debut with the premiere of Memoirs of Jazz in the Alley, an evening-length tribute to jazz saxophonist Jimmy Ellis, the father of choreographer and SCDT executive artistic director Kia Smith. June 10. southchicagodancetheatre.com.

What Is Remembered

SANTA MONICA  Originally planned to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the end of the Holocaust in 2020, Memoryhouse makes its long-awaited debut with Los Angeles Ballet at BroadStage this month. Set to Max Richter’s album of the same name, the work marks artistic director Melissa Barak’s first evening-length ballet, debuting at the end of her first season leading the company. June 15–17. losangelesballet.org.

Fairy Tales Go Feminist

NEW YORK CITY  Following its pandemic-delayed premiere in Washington, DC, in 2021, Once Upon a One More Time finally heads to Broadway. Keone and Mari Madrid direct and choreograph the Britney Spears jukebox musical, in which a rogue fairy godmother introduces a book club of fairy-tale princesses to the work of feminist writer Betty Friedan—and the idea that there might be more than one path to happily ever after. Opening night is set for June 22 at the Marquis Theatre. onemoretimemusical.com.

Feel the Illinoise

ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON, NY  Justin Peck and Sufjan Stevens join forces once again for Illinois. Peck directs and choreographs a theatrical journey through the American Midwest, set to a genre-spanning new arrangement of Stevens’ critically acclaimed 2005 concept album and led by a story from Peck and Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright Jackie Sibblies Drury. The production headlines Bard SummerScape, premiering at the Fisher Center June 23–July 2. fishercenter.bard.edu.

Foxes and Fortune

BOSTON  Kairos Dance Theater teams up with vocal ensemble Renaissance Men and sinfonietta Sound Icon Orchestra for its Folktales, Fables & Feasts program. On tap are FOXY, a contemporary cabaret interpretation of Stravinsky’s Renard—a satire based on folktales concerning a cockerel and a hungry, deceitful fox—and Tavernous, a contemporary take on the “In the Tavern” movement of Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana featuring gambling, gluttony, and the fickleness of fortune. June 24–25. kairosdancetheater.org.

The post 7 Shows You’ll Want to Catch This June appeared first on Dance Magazine.

“My partner and I love, love, love sweet potato pie,” says TyNia René Brandon, who uses she/they pronouns. Although the soul food classic is closely associated with holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas, for Brandon, who plays Dolores and is a member of the ensemble in Broadway’s Some Like It Hot, it’s timeless. “It can definitely be a year-round type of light, happy dessert,” they say. “I will admit that oftentimes we have it for breakfast.” Although Brandon and their partner, Leo, have developed their sweet potato pie recipe together over the years, its roots lie with Brandon’s­ aunt. “I’ve always felt like she has the best sweet potato pie in the world,” says Brandon. “But we added our own flair. We threw in our little generational twist.”

Being on a Broadway schedule—before Some Like It Hot, they were in The Lion King and Beautiful: The Carole King Musical—Brandon has learned to be flexible when it comes to cooking. “My approach is always what is convenient and quick but also fresh and flavorful,” they say. But on their day off, Brandon prioritizes making more complex meals together with Leo. “Before I was partnered, I absolutely hated cooking,” they say. “It’s become so much more enjoyable for me because now it’s a communal experience, and that’s how it was growing up.”

Kitchen Soundtrack

Brandon and their partner love to host dinner parties, giving their friends jobs to involve them in the cooking process. And no party is complete without music. “We really love listening to Samara Joy, a jazz artist,” says Brandon. “And she actually just came to see our show!”

Ingredients

Makes 2 pies

• 2 frozen pie crusts (Brandon likes Pillsbury, but any brand will do.)
• optional: 1 tbsp olive oil or coconut oil
• 4 whole sweet potatoes
• 2 large eggs
• 1 cup milk (Brandon prefers oat milk, though notes that 2% milk will also work.)
• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 cup orange juice
• 4 tbsps (half a stick) melted butter
• 1 tsp orange zest
• 1 tsp salt
• 2 tsps cinnamon
• 2 tsps nutmeg
• 2 capfuls vanilla extract (“ ‘Capfuls’ is something I learned from my family growing up,” says Brandon, who roughly equates the measurement with one teaspoon. “In Black culture there’s not a lot of measuring. We have a saying that we pour until our ancestors tell us to stop.”)
• 2 capfuls almond extract
• whipped cream for topping (optional)

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 375°F and remove pie crusts from the freezer to begin thawing. Optional: Rub oil onto the edges of the crust to keep cracks from forming and to achieve a shinier crust once baked.
2. Rinse the sweet potatoes, and bring a large pot of water to a boil. Add the whole sweet potatoes, and boil roughly 30–35 minutes, until they’re soft and can easily be pierced with a knife.
3. Remove the potatoes from the pot and submerge them in a large bowl of ice water. Once they’re cool enough to touch, peel off the skin with your hands.
4. In another large bowl, mash the sweet potatoes with a fork or a potato masher until smooth.
5. Add the remainder of the ingredients (eggs, milk, sugars, juice, butter, zest, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, extracts) to the sweet potato mash and whisk vigorously until no lumps remain. (“I don’t like a lumpy sweet potato pie,” says Brandon.)
6. Pour mixture into thawed pie crusts, dividing equally. Bake for 30 minutes or until pie filling is solid and a toothpick comes out clean. You can also shake the pie to test for doneness. If it’s still jiggling in the center, it’s not done.
7. Let set and cool for up to an hour, then enjoy. Add a dollop of whipped cream for an extra treat.

The post <i>Some Like It Hot</i>‘s TyNia René Brandon Shares Their All-Season Sweet Potato Pie Recipe appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Ida Saki

Currently in Bob Fosse’s DANCIN’, Ida Saki was a member of Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet and has choreographed and performed for film, television and off-Broadway shows.

How competing impacted her career path: “I feel grateful to have met so many incredible choreographers. I have continued working with a lot of them, and the majority of my jobs have come from connections I made through the competition world!” 

The skills she learned: “Taking classes at conventions helped me learn quickly, perform diverse styles and gave me audition experience. It taught me to be a good teammate, proper class etiquette and learning from the other dancers in the room.”

On staying open: “As a student, I was encouraged to embrace my love for contemporary dance and to dance in Europe. I’m grateful that I was open to all avenues. My career has taken me in places I never imagined as a student, and each job has given me another tool to add to my tool box.”

Maya Kazzaz

Currently a swing on the North American tour of Disney’s Aladdin, Maya Kazzaz competed as a student with Broadway Dance Center.

How competing impacted her career path: “When I started taking classes with musical theater choreographers, I fell in love with the mixture of storytelling and technique and the joy of it. I think those experiences ultimately gave me the assurance I needed to pursue it professionally.”

The skills she learned: “The importance of being able to pick up any style of dance and make it your own was emphasized in the convention and competition world. The idea of always ‘performing’ was definitely instilled at a young age. To this day I think that helped me excel at auditions by delivering a semifinished product quickly in the audition room.”   

Advice to students: “Put yourself out there before you feel ‘ready.’ When we wait to feel good and secure, we are often too late. Don’t be afraid to be messy or bad—we are often our worst critics. Also, explore and learn other things—it’s okay (and healthy!) to have other interests.” 

Kolton Krouse

Currently in Bob Fosse’s DANCIN’, Kolton Krouse has worked in the theater, television and film industry, and was a four-time National Outstanding Dancer for New York City Dance Alliance.

How competing impacted their career path: “Competitions helped me explore performing. Being able to step on a stage whether in a group piece, solo or duo/trio helped me
find my stage presence.”

What drew them to musical theater: “Truthfully, what pulled me to musical theater was CATS. I remember being 6 or 7 running around the house pretending to be Victoria, the white cat. And the revival was my first Broadway show! What I love so much about musical theater is that it incorporates all of my major loves: dance, singing, acting and music!”

What they wish they’d known: “Always warm up! I took my youthful body for granted and would not warm up when I was younger. But that is also how I tore my meniscus at 16 years old.”

The post How Their Years as “Comp Kids” Helped 3 Pros Land Broadway Shows appeared first on Dance Magazine.

I lied about my height on my résumé the entire time I was a dancer, though in truth I don’t think the extra inch ever actually made a difference. In the United States, 5’6″ still reads as short for a man no matter how you slice it. The reason for my deception was that height was frequently the reason I was disqualified: choreographers often wanted taller male dancers for the ensemble and listed a minimum height requirement (usually 5’11” and up) in the casting breakdown. More than once, I was disqualified before I could even set foot in the audition because I possessed an unchangeable physical characteristic that frequently made me unemployable in the industry.

I was learning an object lesson in Broadway’s body politics—and, of course, had I not been a white cisgender non-disabled man, the barriers to employment would have been compounded even further. I wasn’t alone in feeling stuck in a catch-22. Not being cast because of your appearance, or “type” in industry lingo, is casting’s status quo. The casting process openly discriminates on the basis of appearance. This truism even made its way into a song cut from A Chorus Line (1975) called “Broadway Boogie Woogie,” which comically lists all the reasons one might not be cast: “I’m much too tall, much too short, much too thin/Much too fat, much too young for the role/I sing too high, sing too low, sing too loud.” Funny Girl (1964) put it even more bluntly: “If a Girl isn’t pretty/Like a Miss Atlantic City/She should dump the stage/And try another route.” Broadway profoundly ties an actor’s employability to their appearance; when an actor enters the audition room they put their body on the line: do they have a Broadway Body or not? A Chorus Line’s “Dance: Ten, Looks: Three” memorably musicalizes this moment when the character Val relates how her appearance prevented her from booking jobs until she had plastic surgery.

The dominance of what I call the Broadway Body—the hyper-fit, muscular, tall, conventionally attractive, exceptionally able triple-threat performer (one highly skilled in acting, dancing, and singing)—became Broadway’s ideal body as the result of a confluence of aesthetic, economic, and sociocultural factors. The Broadway Body is akin to the ballet body since it too contains the paradox of remaining an unattainable ideal since even those who come close to the ideal must still strive for it, too. Dancers internalize this quest for perfection and know it well.

In theatre, the Broadway Body ideal sets unrealistic standards enforced by industry gatekeepers—from agents and casting directors to producers and college professors. That appearance matters for performers is old news (the Ziegfeld girls were not all chosen for their dance talent back in the 1910s), but Broadway’s pervasive body-shaming is only beginning to be openly discussed in the industry itself. A 2019 study found that two-thirds of performers had been asked to change their appearance, and that 33% of those had been told to lose weight. As a result of the pressure to look a certain way, a small industry of Broadway-focused fitness companies like Built for the Stage and Mark Fisher Fitness sprang up in response.

Backstage noted that Mark Fisher Fitness “is particularly popular among those in the performing arts community looking to get a ‘Broadway Body.’” Other theatrical press picked up on the idea; an article in Playbill asked, “Who doesn’t want a Broadway body?” The Broadway Body is not merely a marketing ploy but a concept grounded in an appearance-based hierarchy. Even some notable Broadway stars capitalized on the connection of Broadway and fitness: in the 1980s, original West Side Story star Carol Lawrence released a workout video titled Carol Lawrence’s Broadway Body Workout, Broadway dancer Ann Reinking wrote a book called The Dancer’s Workout, and even six-time Tony Award winner Angela Lansbury got in on the game by releasing a workout video called Angela Lansbury’s Positive Moves.

The ever-increasing demands of performing a Broadway musical eight times a week necessitate some of the changes seen in Broadway Bodies, from notably higher technical demands placed on dancers to challenging vocal tracks. Artistic choices carry economic implications in commercial entertainment. The wear and tear on the body caused by the repetitive nature of performing a musical eight times a week increases the financial pressure and the physical toll for performers; life offstage becomes about staying fit to prevent injury and staying ready for the next job. Performers must pay more attention than ever to their bodies to remain competitive and employable.

Because the number of spots in the chorus typically outnumber speaking roles, Broadway’s bodily norms most often adhere to the body fascism of the dance and fitness worlds, which strictly regulates and disciplines the appearance and behaviors of the performer’s body into thinness. But these norms do not only impact those in the ensemble: the New York Times reported how Dreamgirls (1981) star Jennifer “Holliday’s weight fluctuations were often the subject of tabloid fodder, but much of the cast felt the pressure to be unrealistically thin,” including Holliday’s co-star Sheryl Lee Ralph, who “realized she was wasting away” due to this pressure. The emphasis on thinness comes at a cost to performers. On Broadway, casting is the site where these concerns come to a head. Even though there is a newfound awareness around the dangers of promoting thinness at all costs, it remains all-too-common for performers, especially dancers, to be told they are somehow inferior because of their appearance.

The post The Body Politics of Broadway: An Excerpt From the Recently Released Book <i>Broadway Bodies: A Critical History of Conformity</i> Sheds Light on Musical Theater’s Longtime Fixation on Physique appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Much like the concept of Martin and David West Read’s madcap show, which pairs pop hits with an imagined future for Shakespeare’s Juliet, Nicholas’ role is a mash-up: She’s a swing, the show’s dance captain and an understudy. As dance captain, she’s responsible for knowing the 12 ensemble tracks and all of the dancing for eight principals. She also acts as an extension of the choreographic team, maintaining the choreography and integrity of the show, taking notes, leading rehearsals and a daily warm-up, and teaching new cast members their parts.

Like many of musical theater’s unsung heroes, Nicholas, 33, has built a career around her ability to hold the intricacies of an entire show in her head. Nicholas credits this skill set with growing up on a competition team at the Academy of Dance and Gymnastics in Newport News, Virginia. “From age 10, I would be in seven routines total, and I’d learn them all in one week,” she says. At the urging of a competition judge, Nicholas started auditioning for musical theater in New York City during her senior year of high school. “I went in for a little show called Billy Elliot,” jokes Nicholas. “I didn’t know what a swing was at all, but they clearly saw something in me.” Nicholas was also the dance captain of Billy Elliot’s Toronto production. “That credit has now opened the door for all these other swing and dance captain contracts,” she says, highlights of which include the Broadway run of Mean Girls and the national tour of Matilda.

Nicholas’ experience was recognized during & Juliet’s opening night last November. As the ensemble member with the most Broadway credits, she was awarded the Legacy Robe, a decades-long Actors’ Equity tradition. “I’ve been able to check off so many bucket-list things here,” Nicholas says of her time in & Juliet.

Earlier this year Dance Magazine went backstage with Nicholas, following her from rehearsal to warm-up to backstage preparation as she juggled the roles of swing, dance captain and understudy.

A Childhood Dream

“When I was 10 years old, Britney Spears’ first album came out, and I wanted to be a backup dancer for her. Max Martin wrote so much of her music, so this musical is full circle for me. Obviously I’m not a pop star—that never happened for me—but I can pretend to be one here, and sing all my favorite songs. Meeting and working with Max is an amazing thing.”

Managing the Details

“Being a dance captain is unique because you are an extension of the creative team, and you’re also on the ground with the company. I work closely with the choreographer, Jen, and her associate, Esosa. Day-to-day I am responsible for our voluntary warm-up and also spacing onstage if an understudy is going on last minute. I help run rehearsals, and I help teach new tracks. I work with the stage managers, as well, staying up to date with the spike marks and what’s happening with the crew. On some really crazy days when we don’t have enough people, we do split-tracking, where one person might be doing more than one track at a time. I come up with the puzzle pieces of how the show will run smoothly—without the audience knowing we don’t have enough people.”

Getting to Work

“If we have rehearsal at 12:30 or a 1:00 call time, I try to be up by 9:30. I put my coffee on and then get in the shower and start vocally warming up. I have a gym in my building, but if I can’t make it down there, I always try to do some Pilates or yoga, just something to get my body going. I live in Harrison, New Jersey, so I take the PATH train and transfer to the subway at World Trade Center. I like the commute, because the show is very full-throttle. I’ll listen to my favorite jams, and get myself ready for the day.”

Before Showtime

“We get an hour and a half between rehearsal and the show, and I try to eat dinner right away so I can digest. When I show up to the theater, I like to have a bit of downtime, then I normally run warm-up and then will pop around and give notes. Then if I’m on, at half-hour I get into hair and makeup. If I’m not on, I’ll still sit on standby and figure out if I need to take notes or hang out in the wings.”

Tidying Up

“Dance clean-up days are always exciting. We’ve been busy putting in our understudies, so we haven’t had a chance to go through each number and remind ourselves of the pictures in the choreography and our intention. It’s nice to get time to really clean things up.”

Celebrating Differences

“& Juliet is different because we have people who specialize in breaking and people who have sung pop and R&B all of their lives, and now we’re in this melting pot of a musical theater show. Everybody gets to express themselves how they want onstage; we’re all dressed based on our personalities. It’s the first show where I feel like we are all different for a reason, and it’s celebrated.”

Staying Focused

“I’ve been doing the show so long now that I can be completely involved in the track I’m doing, but also keep an eye out, just because as a swing, we have so many moving parts. A sign’s flying out, or someone’s coming past you with a chair, that you always have to be aware of your surroundings. But depending on the role I’m doing, when I do have scene work, I will focus more on my intentions and lines and connecting with my scene partner.”

Life as a Swing

“Swinging is such a rewarding job because you’re really important. You have a pretty big job knowing the tracks and helping the show run and staying calm under pressure. The downfall is that you’re not in a track every night, so it’s hard for people to come and see you. You want to go on and blend in, which is the whole point. But when you’re not recognized for it, sometimes it’ll make you forget how special you are. Swings are now getting more recognition. I do love it, but I also know that I would love to be an onstage track, or move up and be an associate, meaning I would work even more closely with the choreographer.”

On the Right Track

“I take a lot of notes. The tech process was so fast, you would catch me in the wings writing down stuff frantically, because the more information I have, the better. Once I learn the show, I go track by track and have a notebook with a sheet for each track. Now that I know the show with my eyes closed, I can use process of elimination to figure out who’s around me. But it’s a lot of studying and quizzing myself. And knowing when I’m at capacity, and being like, ‘Okay, maybe don’t do anything extra tonight.’”

Going Onstage

“I actually go on a lot, just because doing eight shows a week is really hard. When one of the leads calls out, like Juliet or Anne [Hathaway, Shakespeare’s wife], one of the understudies in the ensemble is bumped up, so then as a swing I’ll go into that track. There are six swings total, and different variables depending on if people are sick or injured. It’s fun, because I feel like it’s always something new. It’s never the same show.”

The post Behind the Scenes with Brittany Nicholas, Dance Captain and Swing in Broadway’s <i>& Juliet</i> appeared first on Dance Magazine.

“When you have an idea for a new musical,” she says, “it usually comes from someone handing you a novel or a screenplay. Or you can even have a vision—of a girl in a yellow dress or something.” New York, New York arrived in a less predictable way, as Stroman, 68, and her longtime friends and collaborators, composer John Kander and writer David Thompson, were trying to come up with another project to do together. Although her five Tony Awards—Crazy for You, Show Boat, Contact and The Producers (2!)—were for work with other creative teams, her history with Kander and Fred Ebb began in 1977, when she played Hunyak in the touring company of Chicago. Her first Broadway credit with Thompson was 1997’s Steel Pier, with music and lyrics by Kander and Ebb. All three (and Ebb, who died in 2004) earned Tony nominations for The Scottsboro Boys, the daring and brilliant 2010 musical about the notorious railroading of nine young African Americans falsely accused of rape in Alabama in 1931, after which the trio went back off-Broadway, breathing audacious theatrical life into Henry James’ novella The Beast in the Jungle (2018). Which brings us to New York, New York.

Moving Beyond the Movie

“We thought if we could get the rights to the movie,” Stroman says, “and permission to do a new story, we would be able to use the songs to tell a story that would be more palatable for a contemporary audience.” MGM said yes, and so did producer Sonia Friedman when they presented the idea. So they decided to make a new New York, New York, emphasis on the word “new.” They augmented the creative team, enlisting Kander’s buddy Lin-Manuel Miranda to add lyrics for many of the 13 new songs and Stroman’s friend Sharon Washington, who was in Scottsboro Boys and is also a writer, to work on the book with Thompson. They started in March 2021, and the result, Stroman says, is “suggested” by the film and “inspired” by Ebb’s lyrics to the title song: “If I can make it there, I’ll make it anywhere.”

Like the movie, the show centers on the relationship between an aspiring singer and an ambitious musician who come to the city in the heady, exuberant moment after World War II. But the new couple is interracial (Colton Ryan as Jimmy and Anna Uzele as Francine), and their story intersects with those of freshly invented characters—two Cuban immigrants, a Polish refugee, an English theater producer, an African American just back from the war, a violin teacher and the know-it-all native New Yorker who’s Jimmy’s best friend. And nobody leaves the city. “The movie took place in L.A. and down South,” Stroman points out. “It wasn’t really in New York much.” 

For the Broadway rendition, New York is the whole point. “It’s the story of people coming from everywhere to do something they couldn’t do anywhere else,” Stroman says. “People come to New York to change their lives”—as she had when she left Delaware, and as Kander (Missouri) and Thompson (Illinois) had as well. In 2023 New York, she sees echoes of the story’s post–World War II time frame: “People were hopeful, and they were also pulling plywood off of storefronts and giving smallpox vaccinations,” she explains. “After what we’ve all been through with the pandemic, it’s as if New York needs this show—to show how resilient the city is, to show that we will come back. We have the worst snowstorms, we have the worst plagues, we have the worst terrorist attacks. But we always come back.”

The Creative Process

A three-week workshop at the start of 2022 went so well that only a year later, Stroman was starting rehearsals, posing her signature opening question to the assembled cast: “What’s better than putting on a Broadway show?” A week later, when I ask how things are going, she exclaims, “Glorious! I am lucky to have many beautiful dancers to work with.” But luck has nothing to do with it. From Akina Kitazawa, a swing taking her first Broadway bow, to Clyde Alves, a Broadway veteran who debuted in Stroman’s Music Man in 2000 and worked for her again in Oklahoma! and Bullets Over Broadway, the dancers (see “Meet the Dancers” below) are there because she is. The show resonates, too, of course—much of the cast, like much of the Broadway community, came to New York from elsewhere. Kitazawa says she fell in love with Stroman as a girl in Japan, watching a video of Crazy for You; Alves says that he’s never experienced a more disciplined, professional rehearsal room, or Stroman’s way of balancing thorough preparation with spontaneity. “It creates a really beautiful platform for you to jump off of,” he says.

Chita Rivera Award–winner Ashley Blair Fitzgerald (The Cher Show) hasn’t worked with Stroman before and was shocked to find her already considering the timing of costume changes during pre-production. “I’ve never seen a director-choreographer go that far into detail and have that much respect for their actors and dancers onstage. They get to it eventually, in tech, but they don’t think about it seven weeks before setting foot in the theater!” And she echoes Alves’ admiration for Stroman’s­ mix of efficiency and openness. “She does not waste a second of your time—every second is carefully thought out,” she notes. “Even if a curveball comes in, she’s allowed time for curveballs. She gives performers the ability to bring themselves to the room, as opposed to feeling like they have to fit into a cookie-cutter world.” 

Making New York Dance

Cookie cutters aren’t Stroman’s style—this is the artist who choreographed the lighthearted Big and conceived, directed and choreographed the dark and difficult Thou Shalt Not, who went from Young Frankenstein to The Scottsboro Boys. If you ask what she looks for in auditions, she replies, quite logically, “Every show is different.” But she does admit to favoring “the dancers who are able to act.” For New York, New York, she gave a combination and then told the dancers, “These are pedestrians in New York—I need to see how you walk down a street in New York City.” Some chose to be funny, others tried to look busy or annoyed—it didn’t matter, she says, as long as they took a chance and danced in character.

And a cookie-cutter approach wouldn’t work for this show anyway, given the diversity of its characters. “There are vast amounts of varied styles of choreography,” Stroman says, “because our city is varied, with many different types of people.” Expect salsa, ballet, jazz, “and good old musical-comedy character dancing,” she says—as well as tap-dancing construction workers, who reflect the urban soundscape—“the sound of metal, everything that goes on with building construction.” The ballet moves are for Fitzgerald and former New York City Ballet principal Stephen Hanna, who play newlyweds having “lyrical romantic moments in the midst of the chaos of New York.”

Amid the chaos and the lyricism, there will also be the indelible, eye-popping dance sequences Stroman is known for. “I try to create some kind of image that people will remember even if they don’t remember the show,” she says. “They’ll remember girls as basses”—from Crazy for You, which she revives this July in London—“they’ll remember little old ladies with walkers”—The Producers—“they’ll remember the girl in the yellow dress”—Contact. She won’t elaborate, but she promises “a couple of moments that have never been seen before” in New York, New York. And then there’s that song, which closed the movie and then closed dozens of Liza Minnelli concerts, dozens of Frank Sinatra appearances, and still closes every Yankees home game. No need to ask where it lands in the show.

Meet the Dancers

Clyde Alves, Cast as Tommy Caggiano

Almost 25 years in the business, and he’d never gotten a show without auditioning. But Clyde Alves (rhymes with “calves”) picked up the phone, and Susan Stroman was telling him that she’d gotten the rights for a musical based on the film New York, New York, and that there was a colorful, street-smart character in it named Tommy Caggiano, and what did he think? After three Broadway outings with Stroman, they have “quite a working dialogue with each other,” he says. He told her, “Whaddya mean whaddoI think? I’ll do it.”  

With no audition stress, he found himself workshopping the show last year, and officially cast as Caggiano. The first read-through with the Broadway cast, some of whom hadn’t done the workshop, was “mind-blowing,” he says, the new actors opening new windows on the piece. 

It wasn’t Alves’ first light-bulb moment. His destiny hit him like a lightning bolt, he says, when, at age 7, he wandered into his basement in Brampton, Ontario­, and saw Mikhail Baryshnikov and Gregory Hines on TV dancing in White Nights. “I’d never seen that before, men doing something equal parts athletic and artistic,” he says. He went upstairs to announce that he wanted to take dance lessons, like his younger sister. When his mother told him she’d signed him up for tap and jazz, he said “What about ballet?” and started crying. By 10 he was commuting to Toronto for class at Canada’s National Ballet School. But he wasn’t there long before the school asked him to quit taking tap and jazz to commit to ballet, and he was ultimately released from the program due to his other after-school activities. At 16 he was commuting again, this time to perform in the ensemble of the 1996 Toronto production of Beauty and the Beast. 

Alves’ days of learning ensemble tracks are long past, and he feels a bit sheepish about how quickly the career dominos fell into place for him. By 19, he says, “I could see that I wanted to make it on Broadway, maybe in five or 10 years.” Instead,­ he lucked into an audition in New York City when Stroman was casting her 2000 Music Man, and Alves made his Broadway debut at 20, as the teenaged Tommy Djilas. Gravity-defying young men became his specialty, culminating in his 2014 starring role in On the Town. Tommy Caggiano has a lot more mileage on him than those guys, he says, and “he’s got his head on straight.” 

The character’s maturity and steadiness resonate with Alves, who is married to Broadway standout Robyn Hurder, currently performing in A Beautiful Noise. It’s the first time in years that they’ve been on Broadway simultaneously—they’d been alternating so that one could be home with their son, Hudson, now 9. New York, New York takes its characters through 12 months of a year, as their lives and the  seasons change. “There are so many themes in this show that are speaking to me,” he says.

Ashley Blair Fitzgerald, Ensemble

When she first heard about Susan Stroman’s New York, New York, Ashley Blair Fitzgerald declined to audition. “I can’t tap like Stro wants someone to tap,” she supposed. But unbeknownst to her, the director-choreographer had caught Fitzgerald’s Chita Rivera Award–winning turn as The Dark Lady in The Cher Show and wanted to work with her. Short story shorter, Fitzgerald didn’t just join the cast; she got to work with Stroman for two weeks of pre-production.

The crash course in Stroman’s style gave her “some intimate time with her, to see how she works, what she likes, what she doesn’t like,” says Fitzgerald. “Once you get in the big room, it’s a different scope.” When a step gave her a bit of  trouble, the vibe was “We’ll get there, we’ll figure it out.” 

Fitzgerald started figuring it out in Columbia, Maryland, studying with Shannon Torres at Ballet Royale Academy, which had funneled dancers into American Ballet Theatre, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and Dance Theatre of Harlem. But her heart was set on Broadway—her idols were Ann Reinking and Ann-Margret, and she spent six summers at Reinking’s Broadway Theatre Project, working with Reinking and Gwen Verdon and “everybody under the sun.” She did one semester as a dance major at the Boston Conservatory, but after workshopping what ultimately became the 2003 Burt Bacharach–Hal David revue The Look of Love (with Reinking) and getting an invitation to join the tour of Fosse, her school days were over. By age 19, she’d gone pro, doing Broadway tours, off-Broadway shows, regional theater and Radio City’s Christmas Spectacular. 

She finally performed in a Broadway opening night at 30, when Joshua Bergasse, who’d used her in the TV series “Smash,” hired her for Gigi. But the years she spent touring the choreography of Twyla Tharp, Andy Blankenbuehler, Jerry Mitchell and others, and working in New York with the Verdon Fosse Legacy, deepened her artistry, she says. Fosse’s work, in particular, feeds her soul: “Every time I dance it,” she says, “I discover a new story I haven’t told yet, that I didn’t know I had to tell. I discover who I am and who I can be.” In New York, New York, she and her dancing partner (and longtime friend), former New York City Ballet principal Stephen Hanna, play Utah newlyweds discovering New York City, and she says Stroman’s rapturous ballet, swing and soft-shoe moves make them “the pure heartbeat of the show.” 

Despite her bustling career and busy home life—she’s the mother of 5-year-old Eden and 2-year-old Rowen—she’s still a class hound. “I’m at Steps on Broadway five days a week,” she says, “taking ballet or jazz or whatever. Anything.” And she doesn’t mention tap.

Akina Kitazawa, Dance captain and swing

In 2014, after Akina Kitazawa’s flight from Tokyo landed at JFK airport and she’d dropped off her luggage where she’d be living during the Ailey Summer Intensive, she went directly to Times Square. She looked around with excitement and awe at the throngs and lights and traffic, thinking, This is it!

That flood of emotion overwhelmed her again as she read the opening number in New York, New York’s script, with its newcomers to the city picturing everyone in the crowd cheering for them in some imagined future. “I almost cried,” she says. “It’s about me!” And the future she imagined nine years ago is now upon her: She’s a swing and dance captain on a Broadway show directed and choreographed by her idol, Susan Stroman. With so much to learn, she feels her head “is about to explode.” 

“I’m the luckiest girl in the world,” she says. “It’s really hard to survive in this business, and, somehow, here I am.” It wasn’t all luck, of course—Stroman says her dancing is  “extraordinary.” Still, talent is only part of the equation for non-U.S. citizens who want to work stateside. Back in 2018, Kitazawa booked an ensemble role in The Phantom of the Opera, but the job didn’t meet the strict standards set by Actors’ Equity for immigrants (it helps to be a star), and she wasn’t allowed to join the union. But rule changes made during the pandemic allowed her to join for New York, New York with no problem. 

When Kitazawa came to New York City for the Ailey intensive, she was 21 and hadn’t been able to find a niche for her dancing in Japan, where she’d started out as a competitive ballet dancer. She found her niche that summer, not at Ailey but on weekends, which she spent taking classes at Steps on Broadway. She wasn’t totally surprised—YouTube videos of Broadway musicals had been “the start of me getting interested in New York,” she says. She returned home knowing three months hadn’t been enough, and she moved to New York at the beginning of 2016 as a student in the Steps International Independent Study Program. Juggling visas and union rules, she slowly built a resumé of regional musicals and non-Equity gigs in New York. One of those was another dream come true: After trying and failing to book Radio City’s 2018 Christmas Spectacular show, she passed the grueling audition and danced on the legendary stage up to 17 times a week during the 2022 season.    

With the ongoing pandemic, her parents weren’t able to see her perform, and she hasn’t been back to Japan to see them. Will they come to the opening night of New York, New York? “They have to,” she says. “It’s my Broadway debut!”

The post Susan Stroman and Her Team Put the “New” in <i>New York, New York</i>, Reimagining the Movie for Broadway Today appeared first on Dance Magazine.

I was a dancer in the 2015 Broadway revival of Fiddler on the Roof; it was a dream to dance Hofesh Shechter’s electrifying choreography. Within the show’s two biggest dance numbers, the ensemble ran those circles at least three times. Over the course of 465 performances, that added up. Despite top-notch physical therapy, the joint in my left ankle slowly started to develop tendinitis, and the intense effects of this long-lasting repetition became difficult to offset.

Dancing in a show with a long-term contract can be a blessing of stability in a business of quick gigs and frequent periods of unemployment, but it doesn’t come without its challenges. Performing the same steps day after day requires an intense combination of physical and mental endurance, and multiple years of repetition can take a toll. So how can artists make a long run sustainable? Three dancers and a physical therapist share their experiences navigating the energy output necessary for a high level of performance, the preservation of artistic integrity and the maintenance of a healthy, balanced instrument.

Maintenance Required

Chase Madigan has been performing the role of Chistery in Wicked since 2016, starting out on tour and eventually transferring into the Broadway company. As the “head monkey,” Chistery moves in a low, animalistic squat, often climbing and jumping around the set in the background when he’s not going full-out in the energetic dance numbers. To maintain the strength needed for such a role, Madigan has a rigorous wellness routine. Daily gym workouts and weekly physical therapy sessions are a necessity, and his personal before- and after-show tool kit includes foam rollers, heating pads, ice baths, using a Theragun and more. “There’s so much work involved in just maintaining my neutral state,” says Madigan. “The hardest thing is trying to train enough outside the theater to level out my body while at the same time saving enough energy to do the show at night.”

Madigan has also grown to realize how important it is to investigate the ways he can make reiterative movement feel fresh while simultaneously saving his body. “I always feel like there’s something I could do better or differently, or a new way I could push myself in the show,” he says. “But on the flip side, I’ve also learned the lesson of figuring out where I can pull back and still be giving a full performance. I have to find the right dynamics so that I’m always fully present, but I’m not killing myself in the shadows every night.”

Changing Your Mind

Justice Moore, who has played The Bullet track in the ensemble in multiple companies of Hamilton since 2016, finds the mental challenges of a long-running show as significant as the physical strain. “I like to constantly explore, grow and do new things,” she says. “When you’re in the same show for a long time, there can be a tendency to get stuck artistically. For a while, the hardest thing for me was finding a way to explore­ within material I’ve known for years, to not always let it sit so comfortably in my body and rely on muscle memory.” Moore appreciates that Hamilton as a show gives her brain a lot to play with. “There are so many floating, abstract ideas in Hamilton. There’s revolution, there’s pressure, there’s love,” she says. “I can focus on the intention and play with textures and dyna­mics inside the boundaries of what the choreographer has set.”

Lindsey Matheis, who danced in the immersive show Sleep No More for several years and recently transitioned into teaching its newest cohort, has also found ways to deal with the mental obstacles of repetition. “The most challenging part was the daily reinvigoration of passion and presence,” she says. “[At Sleep No More] there’s a huge culture of talking about scene work, hearing about what others have found, sharing different ideas or motivations to work with during the show. That always helped.” Matheis also tried to look at the work through a different lens each day: “One day I might do the show solely to meet eyes with a specific person, and one day I might focus on doing it because I know art is good for the community. The ability to zoom in and zoom out is helpful.”

When the repetition did feel particularly burdensome, the community she had formed within the workplace was her ultimate key to pushing through. “I think when human beings perceive their experience to be isolated and alone, that’s when more injury and more heartache can come up,” she says. “So especially on the hard days, it was another reason to connect with my company and circle up before the show to remember that we were all there together.”

A Flexible Approach

Although the steps in a long-running show stay the same, over time, individuals don’t. “We have to be respectful of the changes that are naturally happening in the life arc of our bodies, the different stages we can go through,” says Joseph Conger,­ PT, DPT, a physical therapist who works with Broadway­ casts and professional dance companies. Depending on the day or month or season, dancers may need different types of warm-ups and cross-training, and to approach the work onstage in different ways. “Sometimes there’s a need for more flexibility and mobility, other times more strength, or maybe there are hormonal or age-related changes happening,” says Conger.

Especially for dancers who are constantly repeating choreography, Conger sees pre- and postshow routines as a chance to create variety, rather than more repetition. He suggests starting with a heat-building warm-up of cardio, core and balance, and then working on a few particularly challenging tasks from the show. “What that is can change day to day,” he says. “But if you do a tricky double tour to the knee in the show, your warm-up shouldn’t be 10 double tours to the right and 10 to the left.”

Matheis has performed nine different tracks in Sleep No More, all of which required impeccable physical conditioning and stamina. As part of a regimen she’s crafted to maintain a balanced body, she’s a regular yoga practitioner, finding yoga’s linear, symmetrical movement patterns a nice contrast to the more abstract, circular choreography of the show.

Even with physical therapy and maintenance plans, dancing in long-running shows can lead to developing unintentional habits that, over time, erode the body’s alignment. Conger doesn’t often see big, traumatic injuries; instead, he mostly treats slow-building issues that evolve from repetition and overuse—tendinitis­, especially in the feet and Achilles, knee and hip overuse injuries, and the development of hyper- or hypo-mobility in certain segments of the spine.

Time off can help, but usually only temporarily. Madigan’s tenure at Wicked was interrupted by two surgeries and a pandemic shutdown. When he came back to his role, the familiar aches quickly returned.­ Moore has experienced the same thing. She went on hiatus for a few months to do a different show last year. While she was on that other job, her usual injuries seemed to disappear, but when she resumed Hamilton, the old issues flared up.

Embracing Stability

There’s yet another factor that can come into play in a long-running show: Artists who stick with the same job for many years can be perceived as complacent. “Sometimes I feel an outside pressure from the industry to put more on my resumé,” says Madigan. And yet. After the pandemic, more dancers, myself included, are becoming better at tuning out the noise. It’s important to take time off when needed and to be unapologetic about leaning on the financial stability of a long-term contract. “I landed this gig where I have consistency,­ a paycheck every week, I love my cast, and I’m still really challenged,” continues Madigan. “So why would I leave if I’m happy? I just focus on what’s important to me that day and remember that everyone’s journey is different.”

6 Survival Tips

PT Joseph Conger on strategies for making it through a long run:

• Dancers who start with a non-dance-based warm-up tend to have fewer repetitive injuries than dancers who use a dance-based warm-up. So don’t be afraid to get creative, and remember that the first priority is to build actual heat in the body. Try starting with jumping jacks, mountain climbers, jogging around the stage and burpees.
• Don’t be afraid to add new things to your cross-training. Yoga and Pilates are great, but you can also try strength training or swimming.
• Don’t skip the cooldown! Even if you’re exhausted after the show, work some easy mobilizations and stretches into your postshow routine.
• Just five minutes of foam rolling can make all the difference.
• If you have PT exercises to do for an injury or misalignment, build them into your backstage track. If you’re offstage during a particular scene, keep a Theraband handy and sneak in two sets. Steal little moments when you can so it’s easier to accomplish the goal.
• Find a team of bodywork professionals whom you trust and feel comfortable with. Regular PT, massages and acupuncture are all good investments.

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Dancin’ Back to Broadway

NEW YORK CITY  More than four decades after its original Broadway bow, Bob Fosse’s DANCIN’ returns to the Great White Way. Original 1978 cast members Wayne Cilento and Christine Colby Jacques direct and reproduce Fosse’s choreography, respectively, with additional reconstruction by Corinne McFadden Herrera, while a formidable cast tackles Fosse’s notoriously specific moves in the packed musical revue. Previews begin at the Music Box Theatre March 2, with opening night set for March 19. dancinbway.com. —Courtney Escoyne

Presence/Absence

NEW YORK CITY  Inspired in part by her work as a hospital chaplain, Keely Garfield’s The Invisible Project looks for hope as it considers disappearing acts and the interplay of presence and absence. Garfield is joined in the ritualized performance, premiering at NYU Skirball, by frequent collaborators Molly Lieber, Paul Hamilton and Angie Pittman. March 10–12. nyuskirball.org. —CE

Facing Love

CANTON, MI  Ballet 5:8 premieres a new evening-length work this month. BareFace, choreographed by artistic director Julianna Rubio Slager, is inspired by C.S. Lewis’ final novel, Till We Have Faces, which was itself a retelling of the Greek myth of Cupid and Psyche from the perspective of the latter’s sister. March 11. ballet58.org. —CE

Time for a Reckoning

NEW YORK CITY  The Reckoning, Francesca Harper’s response to the 2010 killing of 7-year-old Aiyana Mo’Nay Stanley-Jones­ by police, receives its live performance premiere at Works & Process, performed by members of Ailey II and FHP Collective and set to original music by Nona Hendryx. Commissioned by ARRAY’s Law Enforcement Accountability Project, the film and performance project is being presented in conjunction with the Guggenheim exhibition “Nick Cave: Forothermore.” March 11. guggenheim.org. —CE

Spanish Soul

ON TOUR  When flamenco luminary Sara Baras lets loose with footwork, the floor breaks out in banter, protest, jubilation, firing up her onstage collaborators. Alma, her latest production, bares the soul of that art in numbers both intimate and expansive. Striking design and a tight team of dancers, singers and instrumentalists bring theatrical flash to illuminate flamenco’s embrace of Cuban bolero. The show kicks off its American tour by headlining Flamenco Festival Miami XIV (March 16–19), which also features acclaimed guitarist Rafael Riqueni and a premiere from rising bailaora Irene Lozano, before heading to New York City Center (March 23–26) and the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts (March 29–30). arshtcenter.org, nycitycenter.org and kennedy-center.org. —Guillermo Perez

Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Latest

NEW YORK CITY  Broadway mainstay Phantom of the Opera may be set to close next month, but a new Andrew Lloyd Webber musical arrives in its wake: Bad Cinderella, with choreography by JoAnn M. Hunter, contemporizes the fairy tale, questioning traditional beauty standards and adding a few new twists. The production’s opening night at the Imperial Theatre is set for March 23. badcinderellabroadway.com. —CE

Squaring the Past

NEW YORK CITY  A journey through time, space and identity, Christopher “Unpezverde” Núñez’s The Square: Displacement with no end recounts his nomadic Indigenous ancestors’ encounters with colonial geographies over the last two centuries. March 23–25. abronsartscenter.org. —CE

60 Years of Jazz

CHICAGO  Giordano Dance Chicago is doing it up big for Celebrate Giordano, its 60th-anniversary extravaganza. The jazz institution will showcase notable works from across its history: founder Gus Giordano’s rarely seen Sing, Sing, Sing (1983), Randy Duncan’s Can’t Take This Away (1997), Ron De Jesus’ pivotal Prey (2003) and Liz Imperio’s La Belleza de Cuba (2013). Former GDC dancer and associate director Michael Taylor offers Celebrate 60, an opener crafted specifically for the occasion, while Kia Smith contributes a premiere honoring Homer Hans Bryant, featuring dancers from GDC, Giordano II and her own South Chicago Dance Theatre—the collaboration a notable first for GDC. March 31–April 1. giordanodance.org. —CE

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LaQuet Sharnell Pringle, Broadway performer

Summer Intensive: The School at Jacob’s Pillow’s Cultural Traditions Program in Becket, MA

Takeaway: Stillness and ease

Then: LaQuet Sharnell Pringle, who uses they/she pronouns, attended Jacob’s Pillow’s Cultural Traditions Program in 2002.

Now: Pringle’s just come off a run of Mrs. Doubtfire, their fifth Broadway show, following Sweet Charity, The Lion King, Memphis and Lysistrata Jones. They’ve also been in national tours and regional and off-Broadway productions. Pringle teaches musical theater dance and is the founder of Fearless Young Artists Productions.

“When I got to Jacob’s Pillow, I didn’t know what to expect. But I learned to connect to the ground, and that release and exhale were at the forefront of movement. My athletic background told me to be stronger, to put my head down and sweat harder, but the nature of the program was to be still and listen. In class, Katherine Dunham asked us a question and the whole room went silent. And she said, ‘Don’t be afraid of the silence. That’s where the answers are.’ You can’t put a dollar amount on that! After almost 20 years of professionally performing, I’m still reminding myself to be still and listen. What does your body want to—and need to—be doing? Those two things were instilled in me at the Pillow.

“I had a beautiful conversation there with Camille A. Brown. We were sitting outside on these big boulders, and I said I was torn, because I loved being happy and jumping around, kicking my face, singing and finding characters, but I was also finding that I liked to be at ease. And she goes, ‘Well maybe it’s not for you to figure out in this moment. Maybe that’s actually your process.’ I ended up going to her alma mater, University of North Carolina School of the Arts, mostly because of that conversation.”

Jamaal Bowman, A.I.M by Kyle Abraham member

Summer Intensive: American Dance Festival in Durham, North Carolina

Takeaway: A clear path

Then: Jamaal Bowman spent the summer after his freshman year at Philadelphia’s University of the Arts at the American Dance Festival.

Now: After graduating, Bowman danced with Kun-Yang Lin/Dancers and Von Howard Project. He joined A.I.M by Kyle Abraham in 2022.

“Coming from college, ADF was definitely a lot more open. There’s no pressure. It’s more about experimenting and finding out new things for yourself. It didn’t feel like I had to put on a show for anyone. Going back to school I had a lot more confidence in my own movements, in my approach to improvisation and interactions with other people.

“There are definitely bonds and connections and a lot of networking that happened. Christian von Howard was a choreographer at ADF while I was there, and I did one of his repertoire pieces. We’re still connected, and I’ve worked with his company. And that was the first time I saw A.I.M perform. From then on, I was completely obsessed with the company and the realness of the movement. It just felt very raw. I like to say that I manifested this: For years I was just waiting for them to have an audition. And as soon as they did, I got in there and did what I needed to do.”

Christopher D’Ariano, Pacific Northwest Ballet soloist

Summer Intensive: Summer Course at Pacific Northwest Ballet School in Seattle; Nederlands Dans Theater in The Hague, Netherlands

Takeaway: Artistry

Then: Christopher D’Ariano, who trained during the school year at School of American Ballet, spent two summers at PNB’s Summer Course. In 2016 he graduated from SAB and joined PNB’s Professional Division. D’Ariano spent the summer of 2017 at the NDT Summer Intensive before joining PNB as an apprentice.

Now: Still at PNB, D’Ariano was promoted to soloist in 2022.

“My first summer at PNB was special because it gave me time and space to develop my artistry. I was allowed to start to discover who I was and not just be the mold that the ballet world wants. Peter Boal taught us a variation from Le Baiser de la fée; it was the first male variation I’d learned that was very expressive. I felt like I could actually move and not just worry about sixes and double tours.

“I love working with Crystal Pite and dancing in PNB’s contemporary rep, so the summer I was 19 I wanted to do something more contemporary and improv-based because I knew I’d need those skills once I joined PNB. That summer course truly changed the way I approach dance. It didn’t have that competitive feeling of American ballet schools. I felt like an open canvas. We worked a lot on Gaga, and that allowed me to start to breathe into my muscles and let them make their own choices. I learned quality over quantity, and that you can let things marinate over time. Even in classical stuff now I’m discovering a lot more detail, like how my fingertips feel the air when I’m dancing; I got that from Gaga.”

Mia Wilson, Radio City Rockette

Summer Intensive: Rockettes Conservatory in New York City

Takeaway: Teamwork

Then: In 2022 Mia Wilson was invited to attend both sessions of Rockettes Conservatory before her junior year in the commercial dance BFA at Pace University.

Now: At the end of the summer, Wilson was selected to join the line. She’s now completing her junior year while dancing seasonally for the Rockettes—a schedule she hopes to keep up through graduation.

“The Rockettes and the style of precision dance were completely new to me. Being able to attend Conservatory and be immersed in that world completely transformed me and my career. It’s so specific; there are 36 women onstage all doing the exact same thing, and it’s mesmerizing to watch. Being able to be in the room and experience how they create that precision was so interesting to me

“I’m used to dance class feeling so free. But being treated like a Rockette in Conservatory is so detail-oriented: Like, your head is to the side but your eyes are forward, and they can tell if your eyes are not forward. It was culture shock in a way for me. But once you settle into the style and the choreography it feels so great, knowing that you’re dancing alongside these people also matching you. It’s teamwork. It’s not individual, and my whole life I’ve been an individual dancer. Being part of a team is so different but so rewarding.”

Rebecca Steinberg, Freelance Dancer, Choreographer and Educator

Summer Intensive: Bates Dance Festival in Lewiston, Maine

Takeaway: Community

Then: Rebecca Steinberg first attended the Bates Dance Festival as an intern in 2013, just after graduating from University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She returned to BDF in 2016, 2017 and 2019 as a mentor for the Young Dancers Workshop (BDF’s teen session), and again in 2022 as its residential director and an education fellow. Employees of the Young Dancers Workshop can choose to attend BDF’s Professional Training Program as participants.

Now: Steinberg is in the second year of an MFA in dance at the University of Maryland. She’s also a choreographic associate and education liaison for the Nashville-based company New Dialect, and collaborates with artists around the country as a freelance choreographer and performer.

“In the past year I’ve danced for Kendra Portier, Heidi Henderson and Tristan Koepke, and I’ve choreographed for Little House Dance, a company in Portland, Maine, co-directed by Heather Stewart and Riley Watts. All of those relationships were built at Bates. What I feel is really unique about Bates is that the schedule is structured around community. We take classes together, have meals together and hang out at night. There’s no hierarchical separation between the faculty, staff and students. It’s allowed me to sustain meaningful relationships with people that last much longer than the time we spent at the festival together.

“Creating impactful communities inside the dance world is something that is incredibly important to me. And Bates continues to be a great fit for me because we share that ethos in practice, not just in language. It feels like a no-brainer every year to come back, because those people are now my family.”

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Nothing Ever Lasts Forever

NEW YORK CITY  For the final production of this year’s Next Wave Festival, Brooklyn Academy of Music presents the U.S. premiere of Emanuel Gat’s LOVETRAIN2020. Created during the pandemic, the work sets a cast of 14 dancing to—and sometimes singing along with—songs by Tears for Fears in an eccentric, intensely physical celebration of togetherness. Dec. 1–3. bam.org. —Courtney Escoyne

Mixing Up Medea

LONDON  Lost Dog artistic director Ben Duke is no stranger to classic literature. He’s adapted Milton’s Paradise Lost, Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet and Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities into shows blending theater, dance and comedy. His recent Cerberus, for Rambert, a meta and comical yet sentimental meditation on death, marked a shift for Duke from his usual stomping ground of the English literary canon to more ancient matters. For his latest work, Ruination, he reimagines the myth of Greek sorceress Medea, challenging the narrative that she killed her children to wreak revenge on her husband. Premiering at The Royal Opera House’s Linbury Theatre this month, it’s being billed as a humorous, festive alternative for those who have seen The Nutcracker one too many times—a transformative take on the notoriously bloody and murderous myth. Dec. 1–31. roh.org.uk. —Emily May

Hands, Touching Hands

NEW YORK CITY  When Neil Diamond started singing, no one knew that the Brooklyn songwriter would ride hits like “Cherry, Cherry” to 50 years of gold and platinum recordings, sold-out arenas and the phenomenon that is “Sweet Caroline.” But 130 million album sales later, a Broadway show was inevitable. A Beautiful Noise: The Neil Diamond Musical stars Will Swenson, who performs the music while an older Diamond recounts his life to a therapist. Reports from the Boston tryout suggest that Steven Hoggett has provided his usual deft choreography, and those who saw American Idiot also saw that he and director Michael Mayer know how to elevate jukebox musicals. The Broadway opening is set for Dec. 4 at the Broadhurst Theatre. abeautifulnoisethemusical.com. —Sylviane Gold

Stream of Consciousness

NEW YORK CITY  Tere O’Connor Dance gives its first New York City performances since 2018 this month. On tap is the premiere of Rivulets, in which the philosophically minded, cerebral choreographer, in collaboration with a cast of eight dancers, examines the unruly nature of consciousness, set to a musical score created by O’Connor. Co-commissioned by Baryshnikov Arts Center and Danspace Project, the work appears­ at BAC Dec. 7–10 and 14–17. bacnyc.org. —CE

Back to the Future

NEW YORK CITY  Stephen Petronio Company brings its Bloodlines/Bloodlines(future) initiative to Danspace Project. Petronio’s RE New New Prayer For Now and a reconstruction of Steve Paxton’s 1982 Jag vill gärna telefonera (I Would Like to Make a Phone Call) join a trio of new works: The Adventures of Mr. Left Brain and Ms. Right, from Tendayi Kuumba and Greg Purnell (aka UFly Mothership), Davalois Fearon’s Finding Herstory and Johnnie Cruise Mercer’s Process memoir 7 (Vol 8): ‘back to love.’ Dec. 8–10. danspaceproject.org. —CE

Bharatanatyam and Belonging

SAN FRANCISCO  What does it mean to belong in America? Bharatanatyam company Nava Dance Theatre digs into this question through the lens of the labor of South Asian women immigrants in artistic director Nadhi Thekkek’s Rogue Gestures/Foreign Bodies, which premieres at ODC Theater Dec. 9–11. odc.dance. —CE

An Afternoon Nutcracker

NEWARK, NJ  State Ballet Theatre of Ukraine interrupts touring of its Sleeping Beauty to bring The Nutcracker—a production that debuted in Dnipro, Ukraine, in 2020—to New Jersey Performing Arts Center. Dec. 18. njpac.org. —CE

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I also recall the frenzied anticipation that attended its arrival­ in 1988—it was A Chorus Line all over again, Hamilton before Hamilton. When someone asked, “Have you seen it yet?” there was only one show they could be talking about—it seemed you just hadn’t lived if you hadn’t experienced that swooping chandelier, that magical boat ride on a candlelit underground lake and Michael Crawford’s diabolically seductive singing of “The Music of the Night.” When the season ended, Phantom snagged 10 Tony nominations and won seven awards, including Best Musical.

I don’t know if the show feels quite as sensational to the people lining up outside the theater these days—some for the umpteenth time. They are part of a worldwide audience that now comes to more than 145 million who’ve bought tickets to productions in 17 languages to watch Christine swoon for the Phantom while Raoul swoons for her. Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical is a proven commodity, a theatrical sure thing, and it’s not just the most-seen show in Broadway’s history. It has also made more money and employed more New Yorkers—about 6,500 in all, some 400 on the stage, many of them ex-bunheads dancing the late Gillian Lynne’s choreography.

One of them was Carly Blake Sebouhian, who was finishing up at School of American Ballet but couldn’t see herself fitting into a ballet company. So she took singing lessons and auditioned for theater, joining the Phantom cast in 2003. She had just turned 19 and was by far its youngest dancer. Now, nearly 20 years later, she reckons she’s the oldest. She’s left the show to do other projects—“It’s a unique thing to be able to expand your creative muscles and do something brand-new,” she says—but only briefly. “They always let people return, which is really cool. So even though there are people in and out all the time, it’s sort of always the same people—like this big, giant family.” In an industry where most jobs are short-lived, the myriad ballet dancers who’ve cycled in and out of its casts—whether in London, New York or the 181 other cities it’s played—have come, like the audience, to rely on The Phantom of the Opera.

It may be difficult to wrap our brains around its absence, but it’s no trouble to envision the art of the musical if it had never come along—which is not what you would say about other landmark shows. There’s a through line running from Oklahoma! to West Side Story to A Chorus Line that traces the growing importance of a musical’s choreography to its storytelling. With Contact and Movin’ Out, Susan Stroman and Twyla Tharp took that model even further, entrusting those shows’ narratives entirely to the dance. For me, that line has always represented progress, and despite the quantity and quality of Lynne’s work, Phantom stands firmly—proudly, even—outside it.

The story could hardly be told without a ballet chorus. Gaston Leroux’s lurid 1910 novel begins backstage with terrified young dancers fleeing the ghost they’ve heard rumors about, and when the Phantom finally shows up, his first words are “The ballet-girls are right.” At the start of the renowned 1925 silent film starring Lon Chaney, the curtain of the Paris Opéra rises on nearly four dozen dancers in Romantic­ tutus waltzing on pointe. Despite this ballet-centric­ setting, the musical’s choreography turns out to be quite extraneous—it provides lavish entertainment, along with the late Maria Björnson’s opulent sets and costumes and the sure-handed direction of the late Harold Prince. But Phantom’s dance numbers recall those in old-style musicals and, indeed, in the 19th-century operas that are part of the plot.

It’s peculiar, but not really surprising. For all their talent and decades of experience, Prince and Lloyd Webber were never among the theater artists who saw dance as the primary driver of musicals—although, ironically enough, as a fledgling producer, Prince was instrumental in bringing West Side Story to the stage. Working together and separately, on shows large and small, Prince and Lloyd Webber made work that focused on what a veteran of Broadway ensembles once described to me as “park and bark”—musicals where the dances are decorative interludes between songs and book scenes. And with Prince’s history-making “concept” musicals, like Company and Sweeney Todd, and Lloyd Webber’s history-making spectacles, like Cats and Phantom, that work has been vastly influential.

So you have to wonder, looking at a Phantom-less Broadway, what the next record-shattering behemoth will look like. The last 10 years of Tony winners run the gamut—they are romantic extravaganzas (Moulin Rouge!) and serious chamber pieces (The Band’s Visit); they use choreography in ways traditional (Kinky Boots) and bold (A Strange Loop); they are dance-heavy (Hamilton) and dance-light (Fun Home). For some of the nearly 20 million theatergoers who have seen Phantom at the Majestic, it’s been the thrill of a lifetime, their one exposure to a ravishing art form that New Yorkers often take for granted. For others, it’s been an obsession, a regular injection of an essential drug. And, of course, there are the haters, who see its success as proof that tourists are just too ignorant to appreciate Sondheim. For me, it’s been a constant reminder that when it comes to Broadway musicals, the work is never finished—Phantom was neither the apogee of the form nor a trashy entertainment for the masses. And I hope all of the above are eager to see what comes next. For Lloyd Webber, what comes next is Bad Cinderella, an updated, sardonic version of the fairy tale with choreography by JoAnn M. Hunter (School of Rock—The Musical). Its first preview is the day before Phantom closes. Fingers crossed. .

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How has your approach to & Juliet’s choreography evolved since the show’s 2019 premiere in Manchester, England?

I’m constantly trying to find the heart of it. I’m using a pop vocabulary, like music video aesthetics, but that’s not normally a language used to tell a story. This is a vocabulary based in coolness, so that’s been the most fun part, figuring out how this vocabulary can become narrative. And how can it become funny? So it’s about twisting it and giving it context, but it’s also about finding the really explosive moments, when dance is taking over the stage. We like to say that & Juliet is 100 percent theater and 100 percent pop concert. It’s about bringing those worlds together, giving you magic and bigness and something to connect to because it hits on all senses.

Is it challenging, choreographing to well-known pop songs, or do you find that freeing?

I don’t think too much about the pre­existing choreographies of these songs that people might have in their heads. The thing that’s amazing is that these are the songs that make you want to dance in such an epic way. Sometimes you get a song to choreograph and you’re like, “I don’t know, this doesn’t seem like a banger to me.” But choreographing to Katy Perry’s “Roar”—of course I want to do that! It makes you want to move.

What’s it been like, working on two shows? Have you been able to keep them separate in your mind, or do they end up influencing each other?

The vocabularies are so different. KPOP started with an insane amount of research, because it’s so specific. It’s very important that we stay true to what makes K-pop K-pop. For example, in a K-pop number, there’s something like 50 to 100 formations. It’s very mathematical—it’s about moving around so the singers pop out as they sing. So the function of choreography in KPOP is very different. 

I’ve also been working on them both for a very long time. I’ve been with KPOP since 2014, before it was off-Broadway. Now that & Juliet is built, KPOP feels newer because it’s coming to Broadway without an out-of-town tryout.

Do you ever feel like you’ll run out of ideas?

So much of creativity is about the inspiration of the people around you, and it happens in the moment, no matter what you prepped with your associates and skeleton crew. As long as you’re around inspiring people, it’ll be strong.

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Lerman’s prediction proved correct: Rivera, now 89, has been nominated for 10 Tony Awards (winning two, for The Rink in 1984 and Kiss of the Spider Woman in 1993), originated the role of Velma Kelly in Chicago, and received a Kennedy Center Honor in 2002 (the first Latino American to do so), the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009 and the Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in Theatre in 2018.

“I definitely came along in a golden age,” she told us in February 2004. “[Jerome] Robbins, [Bob] Fosse, Gower Champion, Peter Gennaro, Michael Kidd, Jack Cole—all of the greats. And they were all so different! It makes you a much more interesting person to have all these styles put on your body…. I wouldn’t trade being a dancer for anything. It’s the reason I’m still here.”

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While the exact language of those NDAs has not been disclosed, David Levy, communications director at Equity, says, “Generally, those NDAs just overreached any kind of appropriate boundaries around what someone should or should not be able to discuss. An NDA should never be used to protect someone from their own bad actions.” 

The decision on those four Rudin contracts has sparked a broader conversation on the overall use of NDAs with regards to Equity’s 50,000-plus members nationwide. “A lot of NDAs are written in a way that makes the signer feel like they’re not even allowed to tell people that the NDA exists, which is nonsense,” Levy says. Following the settlement, Equity reached out to its membership to notify all members that if they are suspicious of or have questions about an NDA they signed—whether for a Broadway production agreement or elsewhere—they should contact the union for assistance.

Equity and The Broadway League have signed an agreement to discuss the use of NDAs in future union contracts. Previous industry reporting misstated that the League agreed to stop using nondisclosure language in contracts or riders outside of protecting intellectual property, financial information or in other limited, approved circumstances going forward, but the two organizations have only agreed to talks to date. “What we have agreed so far is the stuff about the specific Scott Rudin NDAs that got released and a commitment to create what the new rule is going to be going forward,” Levy says. “We haven’t finalized what the new rule is going to be.”

As part of these discussions, Equity and the League have re-committed to the existing policy that: “Essentially, producers from the Broadway League may not request or require any actors or stage managers to sign a confidentiality, nondisclosure, non-disparagement agreement as a prerequisite for employment unless it’s contained in a rider that’s been approved by Equity,” says Levy. NDAs delivered to union members as separate contracts—rather than riders—may skirt this rule; the theory is that this is how the Rudin NDAs escaped Equity’s approval in the first place. 

Moving forward, Equity is pushing for all NDA language to be included as a rider—which would, in turn, mean that Equity would always see and have to approve NDA language. Secondly, Equity wants to limit NDAs to cover intellectual property (“The producers of Back to the Future don’t want people talking about how the car works”), financial specifications, scheduling (“If a show is in development and hasn’t been announced to press yet”) and the like, rather than workplace conduct. Talks are ongoing; there is no set deadline to reach an agreement.

“We’re all working towards a common goal, which is to make sure that there’s a proper use for a legal mechanism to protect the important creative work that goes on,” says Levy, “and we need to make sure that people feel like they can go to work in a workplace that treats them safely and with dignity—which is what everyone deserves. Anything that we can do to make it easier for them to speak out without fear of reprisal, I think, is a positive thing.”

What Equity Members Should Know

According to David Levy, communications director for Actors’ Equity Association, any Equity member who has signed an NDA or who has questions about an NDA they have been asked to sign should:

 1. Reach out to the Equity business representative listed on that contract.

 2. Be prepared to provide the paperwork in question.

 3. Await Equity’s legal review of the contract and advice on next steps.

 4. Confirm that any NDA you are asked to sign is a rider to your contract. If you are unsure if an NDA is a rider, contact Equity through your business rep.

The post Broadway Reexamines the Use of Nondisclosure Language in Contracts After the Scott Rudin Fallout appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Where Prayer and Play Meet

What can be made in a particular museum that can’t be made anywhere else? It’s a question Bijayini Satpathy has considered during her tenure as 2021–22 MetLiveArts artist in residence. Widely lauded as an international treasure, she creates what she calls “futuristic choreographies of traditional dance,” accompanied by nontraditional soundscapes by composer Bindhumalini Narayanaswamy.­ In the spring, she performed abstractions of ancient­ Odissi dance forms in interventions responding to the art, architecture, artistry and aesthetics of four galleries at New York City’s Metropolitan Museum­ of Art. On Sept. 13 at the Grace Rainey Rogers Audi­torium, in the fifth and final performance of her residency, Satpathy­ will synthesize 18 months of on-site research­ to explore the inter­section of praying and playing. “I’ve fed my body enough for it to speak,” the veteran artist says. We’re all ears. metmuseum.­org. —Meredith Fages

Ukraine Artists Debut Stateside

When the Kyiv City Ballet flew to Paris on Feb. 23 to embark on a long-planned tour, little did they know that their home country would be under siege the following day. The artists have since been sheltering in France, raising funds and forging ahead with performances—which will soon include the company’s first-ever appearances in the U.S. The 15-city tour, showcasing a full-length Swan Lake and a mixed-rep bill of contemporary choreography and Ukrainian folk dance, kicks off in Wilmington, NC, and includes stops in Charlotte, Chicago, Detroit and Oklahoma City, as well as at New York City Center’s Fall for Dance. Sept. 16–Oct. 24. kcbtheater.com. —Claudia Bauer

Bringing Jamaica to South Florida

Rousing live music, vivid design and vigorous performances will bring the spirit of the Caribbean to our shores when National Dance Theatre Company of Jamaica visits South Florida. Whether soulful or light­hearted, the troupe’s repertory, curated by artistic director Marlon D. Simms, draws as aptly from the tra­ditions of the African diaspora as from modern dance to project a cultural rainbow. Signature pieces such as company co-founder Rex Nettleford’s Kumina, which reveals Congolese roots, and Drumscore, depicting the grace of everyday life in a Creole society, follow the beat of Jamaican sounds and movement toward an all-embracing humanity. The double 60th-anniversary celebration of both the island’s independence and the company’s founding hits South Miami-Dade Cultural Arts Center on Oct. 1, followed by Miramar Cultural Center Oct. 2–3. smdcac.org and miramarculturalcenter.org. —Guillermo Perez

An Iconic Ballerina Gets Her Flowers

Lauren Anderson’s pointe shoes are in the Smithsonian, so it’s only fitting that there be a dance-theater piece based on the living legend’s storied life. Plumshuga: The Rise of Lauren Anderson tells the unfiltered story of the ballerina’s historic journey to become Houston Ballet’s first Black principal, as well as her battle with addiction and her courageous road to recovery. Produced by Houston’s Stages, the production features writing by acclaimed former Houston Poet Laureate Deborah D.E.E.P. Mouton (who led an exhaustive research and interview process), choreography by Houston Ballet artistic director Stanton Welch and local modern dance legend Harrison Guy, music by Jasmine Barnes and dancers from Houston Ballet. Previews Oct. 7–12, ahead of an Oct. 13–Nov. 13 run. stageshouston.com. —Nancy Wozny

An Extended Flight

In 2017, Crystal Pite created Flight Pattern, her first work for The Royal Ballet. Set to the opening movement of Górecki’s Symphony of Sorrowful Songs, the short ballet responded to the ongoing refugee crisis, shifting between presenting its 36-strong cast as a community moving together as one body and as individuals with their own unique stories, emotions and relationships. This year, Pite will develop the Olivier Award–winning work into a new, full-length ballet set to premiere at London’s Royal Opera House on Oct. 18. As so many tragic events have unfolded since Flight Pattern’s first iteration—from the devastating effects of the U.S. and U.K.’s withdrawal from Afghanistan to the displacement of millions of Ukrainians—it feels timely to revisit the work, and to consider how dance can be used to speak to one of the biggest humanitarian crises of our time. Oct. 18–Nov. 3. roh.org.uk. —Emily May

Brazil’s Messy Humanity

The pulsating human mass in Lia Rodrigues’ choreography can slip from feeling like a neighborhood party to a frightening mob. This fall, the Brazilian Rodrigues, whose work is celebrated in Europe but rarely seen in the U.S., brings the darkly outrageous Fúria, flesh grappling with flesh, to the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, OH, Oct. 21–22; Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Oct. 28–29; and Peak Performances in Montclair, NJ, Nov. 3–6. Then, switching moods but not modes, she offers her raucously joyful Encantado to Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Next Wave Festival, Nov. 8–9. wexarts.org, walkerart.org, peakperfs.org and bam.org. —Wendy Perron

New Director, New Works

America’s oldest ballet company has big new things in store for 2023: San Francisco Ballet’s 90th repertory season will be its first under Tamara Rojo’s artistic direction, and it opens with next@90. Planned by outgoing artistic director Helgi Tomasson, the new-works festival will bring world premieres from a tantalizing roster of dancemakers creating their first SFB commissions—Nicolas Blanc, Bridget Breiner, Robert Garland, Yuka Oishi, Jamar Roberts and Claudia Schreier—as well as resident choreographer Yuri Possokhov and frequent contributors Val Caniparoli and Danielle Rowe. Tomasson’s taste for innovation made SFB’s last new-works festival, 2018’s mammoth Unbound, a treasure trove of choreographic surprises and star-making roles for the company’s young dancers. With any luck, next@90 will be just as rewarding. Jan. 20–Feb. 11. sfballet.org. 

—Claudia Bauer

A Surprise at City Ballet

Among the crowd of mainstays whose work is appearing during New York City Ballet’s winter season, Keerati Jinakunwiphat is a welcome surprise. A dancer for A.I.M by Kyle Abraham and a freelance choreographer, she’s premiering her first dance for NYCB this February on a program alongside Alexei Ratmansky’s Voices and Justin Peck’s Everywhere We Go. The ballet’s debut will make Jinakunwiphat, who is Thai American, the second Asian American choreographer to set work on NYCB and the first Asian American woman to do so.

Jinakunwiphat received her first professional commission in 2019—a piece for A.I.M—and has since choreographed mostly for contemporary dance companies, including PARA.MAR Dance Theatre, Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company and Houston Contemporary Dance Company. But she’s no stranger to the NYCB ecosystem: She assisted Abraham during the creation of The Runaway and premiered a ballet for the New York Choreographic Institute last fall. Titled Impeccable Quake, it showcased both Jinakunwiphat’s characteristic attention to the individuality of each of her dancers and the sweeping motions and curving shapes that are emerging as central elements of her style. We can’t wait to see how these qualities unfold on the NYCB mainstage. Feb. 1, 8, 9, 11. nycballet.com. —Caroline Shadle

Part of That World

The live-action remake of the Disney animated classic The Little Mermaid is slated to hit cinemas in May. The literal fish-out-of-water story, directed by Rob Marshall, features choreography by Tara Nicole Hughes—best known for her dancing in Mary Poppins Returns and La La Land—and Joey Pizzi—co-choreographer of Mary Poppins Returns and associate choreographer for movie musicals like Hairspray and Dreamgirls. Airborne choreography combined with special effects will create the underwater illusion on screen, but audiences can also anticipate beautiful dancing on land as the romance between Prince Eric and Ariel unfolds. It’s going to be a—what’s that word again?—treat. disney.com. —Ruthie Fierberg

Changing Tides in Musical Theater

Several new musicals feature styles, source material and casting choices not commonly seen on the Great White Way.

DDLJ to Broadway

The longest-running film in Indian cinema arrives on the theatrical stage with Come Fall in Love—The DDLJ Musical, an adaptation of beloved Bollywood film Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge. Simran, an Indian American woman, is set for an arranged marriage to a family friend. But when she meets the American Rog on a European adventure, will she be able to marry her heritage with her heart? Tony Award–winning choreographer Rob Ashford teams up with associate Shruti Merchant to create a collision of cultures in this new musical rom-com, which features book and lyrics by Nell Benjamin (Legally Blonde: The Musical) and music by Broadway newcomers Vishal Dadlani and Shekhar Ravjiani. Merchant says the choreography integrates Indian folk styles, like the jhumar, luddi and giddha, while blending traditional and contemporary movement “served with a dash of robustness and energy galore.” Performances begin Sept. 1 at San Diego’s Old Globe ahead of an anticipated Broadway transfer. Sept. 1–Oct. 16. theoldglobe.org. —Ruthie Fierberg

Recasting the Founding Fathers

One look at the cast photo, and you know these Founding Fathers are different: not a cisgender white man in the bunch. Instead, Roundabout Theatre Company uses female-identifying, nonbinary and transgender actors to play John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and the other (white, male) delegates to the Continental Congress in its revival of Peter Stone’s and Sherman Edwards’ 1969 Tony-winning hit, 1776. This production, directed last summer at American Repertory Theater by Diane Paulus and Fela! alum Jeffrey L. Page, is different in another way, too: It pays attention to dance, replacing the original’s lone minuet with extensive choreography by Page. Sept. 16–Jan. 8 at American Airlines Theatre. roundabouttheatre.org. —Sylviane Gold

KPOP Don’t Stop

Hair brought rock to Broadway, Big River brought country, and In the Heights brought hip hop. Now it’s K-pop’s turn, with a splashy tale set in a music factory that trains and styles young hopefuls to climb the charts in South Korea and beyond. A 2017 hit off-Broadway, KPOP stars genuine K-pop diva Luna and features choreography by Hip Hop Nutcracker co-creator Jennifer Weber. Director Teddy Bergman leads the immersive theater group Woodshed Collective, which conceived the show with its author, playwright Jason Kim. Songs, in English and Korean, are by Helen Park and Max Vernon, and the bulk of the cast and creatives are making their Broadway debuts—along with the title genre. Previews Oct. 13, opens Nov. 20 at Circle in the Square. kpopbroadway.com. —Sylviane Gold

Wax On, Wax Off

Fresh off its out-of-town tryout at Stages St. Louis in Missouri, this season the musical adaptation of The Karate Kid will mark choreographic powerhouse duo Keone and Mari Madrid’s Broadway debut. With a book by the famed film’s original screenwriter, Robert Mark Kamen, The Karate Kid—The Musical follows Daniel LaRusso as he trains with solitary handyman and martial arts expert Mr. Miyagi to fight back against school bullies. The Madrids’ choreography is, they say, 80 percent their signature hard-hitting hip-hop with jazz and contemporary lyricism and 20 percent martial arts. While Keone studied karate briefly as a kid and has been training in muay thai the past few years, associate choreographer Vinh Nguyen (experienced in tae kwon do and muay thai) and karate consultant Sakura Kokumai (Olympic kata competitor) bring authenticity to the onstage martial arts. “Miyagi-do is all about defense first while also finding inspiration from his Okinawan roots to find balance in nature,” the Madrids say, while rival teacher John Kreese, “à la Cobra Kai, is straight lines, fists, eruption, offense first.” thekaratekidthemusical.com. —Ruthie Fierberg 

The post 2022–23 Season Preview: 13 Shows We Can’t Wait to See appeared first on Dance Magazine.

My parents put me in a dance class right before I was 3, but it didn’t really hit me how much I loved to dance until I was an early teen. For me, dance was another way to step out and a way to articulate myself without judgment.

I’m lucky because I was exposed to a lot of different styles of dance. I’m classically trained with ballet, different forms of jazz, different forms of modern and hip hop. I found myself definitely drawn to ballet because of the discipline; modern and jazz for the freedom. With hip hop, I would freestyle—just perform in my living room as a way to kind of release, get it all out and be free.

It makes dance spaces more open when you bring on American Sign Language interpreters for communication access. For a lot of dance studios, creating a space that includes more than one language can be expensive, if you think about it later. It shouldn’t be a last-minute thing—it should already be there at the forefront, to make the process as smooth as possible. Get it on the budget early.

When I was a teenager, I went to the Young Scholars Program on Gallaudet University’s campus during the summer. It was a one-month performing-arts intensive program. I was able to finally meet other Deaf dancers and performing-arts people. That just blew my mind.

My character in for colored girls was Lady in Purple. Purple is an energy shifter, and she is an observer. She is really listening and taking in what’s happening and allowing the space to be ours. She’s a part of the world but she’s not, at the same time.

Because my origins are in  dance, I think that I have this higher awareness of how the body moves in space. I really think about how my character holds space. I tend to think for myself what it means to breathe from different aspects of the body, in motion. It’s very layered. I’m analyzing where and how our habits live in our body.

I have to remind myself that I work with hearing people all the time. For them, I may be their first experience with a Deaf person. It’s important to acknowledge that.

How do I show up as an artist? I am advocating for myself and those who are hoping to get an opportunity in the future. I’m hoping the experience is good for people who have never worked with Deaf artists before, that it will change their preconceived notions about Deaf artists.

The post Listening to the Body: Alexandria Wailes on Movement as Its Own Message appeared first on Dance Magazine.

The Devil Wears Prada: The Musical was delayed by the pandemic. Getting extra time to prepare is sometimes a blessing. Was that true in this case?

This is my first musical, my first Broadway anything, and it’s so different for me, com­ing from the world of film and television and music videos. We got the time you beg for when you’re on a TV show or a video shoot. I heard “Take 14, 16 days to workshop some choreography” and was like “Huh? How long did you say?” [Laughs] 

When I think about where fashion and movement intersect, I think about a great walk. Beyond choreog­raphy, are you working with the cast on things like body language and posture?

Yes! In our very first workshop, we put the dancers through James Alsop Boot Camp. [Laughs] Which, to start, was like four to six hours of walking because you see a lot of it in the show. When [Prada protagonist] Andy’s with her friends, she walks a certain way, different from when she’s at the office. I had to get that feeling into the performers’ bodies, so when you see that transformation? Baby, it’s like seeing a caterpillar become a butterfly.

It’s been said, “Sometimes people don’t want to buy the clothes—they want to buy the walk.”

And we have the most incredible, visionary costume designer on the show, Arianne Phillips, who’s worked with Madonna for more than 20 years. We came together like a starburst because I was so excited about the clothing, and she was so excited about the choreo. That ebb and flow is just so beautiful because a lot of the show is based on how you look and, more so, on how how you look makes you feel.

Both “Girls5eva” and The Devil Wears Prada feature fictional characters based on real people. Did working on one help you approach the other?

Both are stories about outsiders coming into a group of insiders, who then influence a world of outsiders. The majority of us are outsiders. So I incorporate things relatable from everyday life because most of us are like Andy Sachs and the girls from “Girls5eva.” Most of us are not like Miranda Priestly or, in the case of “Girls5eva,” part of the misogynistic machine of patriarchy that makes certain people feel inferior.

It sounds like you identify more with the outsiders in that scenario.

I never even paid attention to all that until I got older. People who came from different backgrounds influenced me just as heavily as people who didn’t, so I never really understood “They are this, and you are that.” My mom calls me her “most naïve child” because I really do walk around like “We’re all human and I love everybody.” [Laughs] So if I’m an outsider, what am I outside of, you know? 

We all know what the stars you’ve worked with have learned from you—we’ve seen the steps! I’d love to hear what you’ve learned from them.

What I’ve learned from who I’ve worked with—who have mostly been women—is to not hold your voice back. On the sur­face, that’s “Say what you mean. Mean what you say. Stick to your guns.” Working with Beyoncé was a lot of firsts for me, and being in a room with her really taught me about work ethic. I’ve never seen anyone work harder than her, and, on top of that, she’s just so genuine and so kind. Working with Kelly Rowland and Maya Rudolph and—I’m not name-dropping, I swear, I just want everyone to know how kind all of these women are. Kerry Washington is kind. Tina Fey and everyone on “Kimmy Schmidt” was so kind. So what’s really resonated with me is that when you’re kind, that’s what you send off into the world. You never know what somebody’s going through, but a smile while you’re teaching an eight-count, as opposed to shouting at them, makes all the difference. 

The post James Alsop Walks the Walk as Choreographer of The Devil Wears Prada: The Musical appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Embodying New Characters

“In many bharatanatyam pieces, you’ll embody as many as 10 different people to tell an epic story. A lot of my process for physically becoming a character comes from that training.”

Understanding Jasmine

“There’s a stillness and power about Jasmine’s physical presence—and softness, a compassion for those who didn’t grow up with the privilege she has. Then there’s this exuberant, excited­ energy to see the world beyond the palace walls. As Jasmine, I have a strong stance. My shoulders are pulled back, my feet are firmly grounded to the floor, and my chest is presented as a ballet dancer’s would be.”

Performing Bharatanatyam

“My favorite thing to perform in bharatanatyam is the varnam: a 30-minute journey between intricate, pure-dance sequences and storytelling. It tests physical energy and stamina, and your ability to hold a story for a very long time—which I now do as an actor. Doing the varnam taught me to sustain the emotional and physical stamina for two-and-a-half-hour performances.”

Revisiting Aladdin

“When Aladdin came back last fall after 18 months of shutdown, there was an openness to revisiting parts of the script and choreography that were no longer sitting as well as they did in 2014. With Disney’s blessing, I was able to tweak some Bollywood-based movements and hand gestures, or mudras, in a workshop with the entire company. What was a closed, squeezed gesture is now the alapadma mudra: a beautifully curved gesture of the hand that mimics the petals of a lotus.”

Staying Grounded

“I still take a ballet barre daily because it’s great conditioning that aligns me really well. Afterwards, I feel warm and my joints are lubricated, but I’m not so depleted that I can’t do the show.”

“I stay plugged in to bharatanatyam by teaching middle- and high-school students over Zoom. And I’m constantly choreographing and performing Bollywood dances for various weddings, which is so much fun.”

Playing the Violin on Broadway

“I never could have anticipated that in my Broadway debut—Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812—I’d have to play a violin solo. There’s something to be said for maintaining skills that you’re passionate about. It doesn’t hurt to keep in touch with all the facets of your artistic background.”

The post Shoba Narayan is Bringing Bharatanatyam to Broadway and Beyond appeared first on Dance Magazine.

What does it actually involve to be a swing in a musical? These performers cover up to a dozen ensemble parts (and sometimes principal characters) in a musical, and take the stage whenever one of those cast members cannot perform because of illness, injury or vacation. Standard swings are required to be at the theater each night, prepared to fill in at any point, while vacation swings are contracted to fill in for predetermined amounts of time for things like vacations, personal days and family leave. How often swings take the stage varies widely depending on the production’s cast size, the number of swings the show has hired, the number of vacation days written into the performers’ contracts, etc.—though some swings who had been performing two or three shows a week pre-pandemic report going on more like five or six times a week once the Omicron variant hit.

For this challenging job, swings earn weekly compensation above the ensemble minimum salary, per Actors’ Equity union guidelines. It’s a niche skill that some performers choose to hone over their entire careers, while others bounce between swing and non-swing opportunities.

The Good, the Bad and the Crazy

For many swings, the most appealing part of their job is the constant change. “Getting to play so many different characters and parts, the work can’t get stale,” says Colby Lindeman, who was recently a vacation swing and dance captain for Wicked and had previously performed as an ensemble member.

“The shows that I do are never the same,” adds Hamilton swing Gabriella Sorrentino. “I am always standing somewhere new, looking at different peoples’ faces. Each performance is unique and special.”

But those exciting benefits also come with the stress of living in a constant state of surprise. “You don’t always know if or when you will be performing,” says Lindeman, who has also been a swing in tours of the Radio City Christmas Spectacular and An American in Paris. “You have to get comfortable with the uncertainty, and be prepared for whatever happens.”

Though there are times where swings have advance notice,­ they often learn they will be taking the stage just hours before—or mid-show without any warning at all. In 2016, when Sorrentino was a new swing for Broadway’s On Your Feet!, she once heard her name echo over the loudspeaker of her dressing room during intermission: A dancer had been injured and she needed to cover them, despite never having done a full run of the part in rehearsal. The other cast members quickly rallied around, helping her with hair and makeup so she could review, while the dance captains gave her guidance and support. “The stakes felt so high and I was terrified,” Sorrentino says.

“It’s tricky to know how to take care of your body in those moments,” says Tilly Evans-Krueger, who is a swing for Moulin Rouge!. “It’s like, ‘I guess I’ll do a couple push-ups before I get onstage and start kicking my face?’ ”

Sometimes, it gets even more complicated. Once, Sorrentino­ was onstage for Hamilton and midway through the performance a different performer onstage started feeling sick, and she had to change tracks. After a few minutes that dancer was ready to return, and Sorrentino had to once again switch back to the original track she was swinging for that night. “I have to know the show so completely that I can compartmentalize the various tracks, and not get confused when I flip in and out of them,” she says.

With the pandemic raging on, these extreme experiences have been happening more often. “We have been down so many people that we don’t have enough swings to cover all of the roles,” Evans-Krueger says. “We have had to split tracks up and rush to change choreography so the lifts and things work with less people. It’s been a lot.”

Getting Comfortable With Mistakes

The whirlwind of swinging is bound to come with mishaps. “There have been many times where I’ve gone on for a track that I haven’t done in a while, forgot how large the hat was that I wore, and smacked it so hard with my hand that it went flying across the stage,” Lindeman says. So when it comes to job qualifications, flexibility and a sense of humor are key.

“As dancers, we want to be perfect and do everything right, but there is so much that you can’t control as a swing that you have to be able to move on from mistakes quickly,” Lindeman says. “Most directors, choreographers, dance captains and stage managers understand that it takes a certain kind of person to be able to memorize all of this information and perform under pressure. It’s reasonable to expect mistakes from time to time. Just do your best, and take the time to look back and fix your corrections so you can make improvements going forward.”

For Sorrentino, the secret to being comfortable with occasional imperfection is positive self-talk. “The minute you start to doubt and spiral, those feelings can consume you,” she says. “So I try to stay calm and remember that this is part of the fun of live theater. If I accidentally exit the wrong way, I simply note it so that the next time I do this track, I remember,” she says.

A Different Kind of Essential

To swings who feel isolated by the inconsistent nature of the job, Lindeman encourages a shift in perspective. “Each time I am called onstage is an opportunity to create new bonds,” he says. When Sorrentino isn’t performing, she likes to sit in a space under the stage where the other cast members cross between scenes and say hello, as she watches the show from a monitor there. “I just try to interact with people as much as I can,” she says.

Still, Evans-Krueger says she doesn’t mind being on the periphery from time to time. “Whenever I’m not performing I get to watch and learn from the most incredible artists,” she says. “What happens on Broadway is magnificent—and I know that I’m an important part of that.”

Choreography Retention How-Tos:

It can be difficult to retain choreography that you haven’t done in weeks. Veteran swings suggest running the show offstage to develop your muscle memory. “When I’m not onstage, I will go through the whole track top to bottom either in the dressing room, rehearsal space or even in the lobby of the theater,” swing Colby Lindeman says. “All the swings will band together for this and it becomes an unofficial swing rehearsal.” Wicked is held in a theater with monitors in each of those locations, making it easy to follow the flow of the show.

Must-Have Memorization Tips

There are often subtle differences in choreography and staging between tracks in a show, and one of the best ways to learn them is through tracking sheets (think flash cards) with shorthand descriptions of each performer you cover. Here are some pointers for using them effectively:

• Use a tracking-sheet medium that works for you and your learning style, whether it’s writing your notes down as bullet points, typing them up on your iPad or using photos of the stage to orient yourself.
• Review your tracking sheets before each show you’re performing in, as well as in the wings between scenes.
• Study your tracking sheets one at a time. “I got super mixed-up trying to learn everything as fast as possible,” swing Tilly Evans-Krueger says. “So I switched to just focusing on one track, and once I went on for it, all the others that I had been passively tracking in my mind came together like a puzzle.”

The post A Salute to Swings: Inside Broadway’s Most Underrated Role appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Brown Is Back on Broadway

NEW YORK CITY The inimitable Camille A. Brown makes her Broadway directorial debut with for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf, for which she will also choreograph. The first Broadway revival of the acclaimed choreo-poem by Ntozake­ Shange, which illuminates the inner lives of seven Black women, begins previews April 1 at the Booth Theatre (where it premiered in 1976) and is expected to officially open on April 20. forcoloredgirlsbway.com. 

International Delights

HOUSTON  After two years with few visitors from abroad, the Dance Salad Festival promises a feast of international artists for its 25th edition. Planned performers include Hofesh Shechter Company, Dresden Semperoper Ballet, Royal Danish Ballet’s Kammerballetten, Royal Ballet of Flanders, Dunia Dance Theatre and Laboration Art Company. April 14–16. dancesalad.org.

Closing the Distance

NEW YORK CITY  Eiko Otake’s ever-evolving Distance is Malleable (Duet Project) has seen the lauded dancer-choreographer partner with 23 artists, living and dead, who span ages, disciplines and cultures. For the New York premiere at NYU Skirball, she’ll perform with revered choreographer Ishmael Houston-Jones, painter and rapper DonChristian Jones, avant-garde pianist Margaret Leng Tan and poet Iris McCloughan. April 15–17. nyuskirball.org.

Out and Away

NEW YORK CITY  The idea of out-of-body experiences serves as a starting point to consider today’s body politic, the search for personal truths and more in David Dorfman Dance’s (A)Way Out of My Body. The cast of six includes Dorfman himself and his wife, Lisa Race. What the choreographer says might be his most personal work yet is set to premiere at NYU Skirball April 22–23. nyuskirball.org.

Digging In

SAN FRANCISCO  Amit Patel and Ishika Seth excavate the Ramayana, one of India’s most significant epic poems, for untold perspectives in Unearthed. The Indian contemporary work looks to give voice to the women and the villain of the tale, drawing parallels to contemporary issues through Seth’s viewpoint as an immigrant and mother and Patel’s as a queer, first-generation Indian American. The work is planned to premiere at ODC Theater April 22–23. odc.dance.

Spring at City Ballet

NEW YORK CITY  For the company premiere of Pam Tanowitz’s Gustave le Gray No. 1, New York City Ballet will be joined by guest artists from Dance Theatre of Harlem, which originated the work with Miami City Ballet in 2019. It will mark the first time NYCB and DTH have shared a Lincoln Center stage in 20 years. Appearing alongside it on the Visionary Voices program, beginning April 22, will be Tanowitz’s­ second commission for the company and repeat runs of Justin Peck’s Partita and Jamar Roberts’ Emanon—In Two Movements. One more premiere, this time from Silas Farley, is on tap; featuring a score by David K. Israel that’s based on compositional exchanges between George Balanchine and Igor Stravinsky, it will debut during the company’s spring gala on May 5, part of the 50th-anniversary celebration of NYCB’s 1972 Stravinsky Festival. nycballet.com.

Dreaming at Danspace

NEW YORK CITY  Danspace Project returns to in-person performances at St. Mark’s Church with Platform 2022: The Dream of the Audience (Part II). Named for and inspired by a 1977 poem by Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, which addresses the audience as “a distant relative,” this year’s iteration furthers last year’s theme with a fresh cohort of artists: mayfield brooks, Rashaun Mitchell + Silas Riener, iele paloumpis and Ogemdi Ude. April 23–June 11. danspaceproject.org.

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“Look at me now,” she says, with a jolly, infectious laugh that lights up the Zoom screen. Even someone without her sunny disposition would be smiling. Because this month, as she turns 32, she will be making her Broadway debut as lead choreographer with not one but two major musicals opening—the Billy Crystal vehicle Mr. Saturday Night, based on his 1992 movie about an aging comedian, and the long-awaited revival of the 1964 smash that made Barbra Streisand a star, Funny Girl. And this ebullient dynamo, whose first Broadway credit came a scant six years ago, is as surprised as anyone at the twists and turns that brought her here.

The journey included small contemporary companies—one of them her own, currently on hiatus—and television shows, pop concerts and dance conventions. “Who’d a ­thunk?” she asks.

It all began in her early teens when she did the Ailey summer program and faculty member Christian von Howard recommended that she come to New York City for further training. She was accepted­ for the Ailey fellowship program, and her mother, her stepfather, their cat and their dog relocated from California. After a special audition for recent arrivals, she got into New York’s performing arts high school, LaGuardia, and was heading straight for concert dance. She started auditioning—just for practice—in her senior year, and after graduating in 2008, she got some work in von Howard’s company and several others. “Okay,” she remembers thinking, “now I’m gonna book everything.” But she didn’t. “It began to feel like for the entire year I was just being told no. ‘No, you’re too young,’ ‘No, we went with someone else,’ ‘No, you need to lose 15 pounds.’ I went into a dark space where I was just going to quit.”

In the midst of that darkness, she and her mother were watching “So You Think You Can Dance”—“because it was just the fun TV show that you watched when you were a dancer so you could talk about it with your friends.” When she heard on air that there would be another season and that tryouts were imminent, Scott told her mom: “Nothing else is really working out. I might as well audition. Maybe I’ll get a free ticket to Vegas and I can go see my dad.”

Scott’s father, Michael, “an old-school pop-and-locker,” she says, had been performing with his brother, Robert, as The Scott Brothers since their teens. He met and married her mother, Michelle Ramos, a ballet dancer, when both were performing in SeaWorld San Diego’s City Streets show. Scott paints a hilarious picture of her mother playing a pregnant woman with what everyone thought was pillows under her costume. It was Ellenore. “And my mom says that every time I would hear the music start for the number, I’d go…”—she hikes her shoulders and drops her head in a protective curl—“because I knew I’d be bouncing around.” Not long after, The Scott Brothers (who retired their act just last year) got an offer in Las Vegas, where Scott’s mother found work as a showgirl. Between that, and the comic elements in her father’s dance routines, Scott feels a karmic connection to the Ziegfeld world depicted in Funny Girl, which centers on the vaudeville star Fanny Brice, played by Beanie Feldstein, and her lover, the gambler Nick Arnstein. When her parents divorced, Scott and her mother moved back to California, where Ramos taught at Dancenter in Capitola, a beach town near Santa Cruz, so that Ellenore could attend for free.

Looking back, Scott believes she got on “SYTYCD,” and made it to the finale and third runner-up, because she didn’t really care. “There was this element that I wasn’t bringing to my other auditions: ‘It won’t matter if I get another no.’ It had always been ‘I have to book this.’ Now there was no stress, I was able to relax. ‘If I get it, great; if I don’t, whatever.’ ”

Doing the show did more than relieve her funk. It opened her eyes to the dance opportunities that lay beyond the New York–centered worlds of Broadway and contemporary dance. “I had never for a moment considered that I would want to dance on TV,” she says. But now she was ready “to try as many different things as possible—to see what would stick, what I would like best.” She taught at dance conventions, which she’d never attended while a student. She did the Oscar telecast, she danced behind Janet Jackson, she even performed on “One Life to Live.” “I would jump from gig to gig and be like, ‘This wasn’t it. That didn’t fulfill me. This isn’t what I wanted.’ ”

When she landed “Smash” in 2011, she was told that Joshua Bergasse wanted her for pre-production. “I didn’t even know what that was,” she recalls. “I was nervous.” But the validation she felt coming up with moves that he liked thrilled her. “I recognized that maybe I want to be a choreographer more than I want to be a performer.”

Of course, choreographing is easier said than done. “No one was taking me seriously, because I was 22,” she says. “People were like, ‘Wait to do that when you’re in your 30s and 40s.’ ” Her mother, who by then had gone into the administrative­ end of dance (she was the director of Dance/NYC for several years and is now executive director of Alternate ROOTS, which supports community arts initiatives in the South), told her that she needed to hone her choreographic­ skills on other bodies, not just her own. She guided Scott as she used the convention money she was making to start ELSCO Dance, a “contemporary-fusion” company. Whenever she got the chance, she let people know that she was available to assist on musicals. A boyfriend who’d been cast in one of Andy Blankenbuehler’s shows mentioned her name when he was looking for women to help on a new one—which is how Scott ended up “working on Hamilton before it was Hamilton” and assisting Blankenbuehler on the 2016 revival of CATS.

Blankenbuehler remembers running into her socially here and there long before, and being struck by that captivating personality. In pre-production, he says, he found that her “generosity of spirit came out in her dancing” also, singling out her “rhythm and syncopation,” her “exceptional line” and “how she masters so many styles of dance.” On CATS, he watched her “put out fires, solve problems and bolster the cast”—abilities he says will serve her well as a Broadway choreographer.

Funny Girl director Michael Mayer met her two years later, when she was Spencer Liff’s associate on the Go-Go’s musical Head Over Heels. When Mayer looked at her Instagram videos, he says, “I was really taken with her own work. It seemed very fresh—I love when I see a choreographer making shapes and responding to music and rhythms in ways that are surprising.” And surprise was what he was seeking for the current off-Broadway revival of Little Shop of Horrors, “because everybody’s seen it so many times and I just didn’t want to do the same thing. I knew Ellenore hadn’t done a ton of shows on her own, but I thought she would be a really great fit. She brought the physical life of the show to a great, exciting, funny place.”

When Funny Girl came along, it was natural for Mayer to turn to her again. But the show has some tap numbers, and she wasn’t a tap dancer, like his friend Ayodele Casel. So he asked the producers if they were open to having two choreographers, one for tap and another for everything else. They agreed, and so did Scott. The ensuing “balancing act,” he says, has been “fun to watch. Neither of them is a pushover, but they’re both such lovely human beings. If you’re going to do something with two choreographers, it should only be that pleasant.”

Scott’s collegial spirit also gets high marks from her co-artistic director at ELSCO, Jeffrey Gugliotti, who took her class at a college workshop and then went straight from school into her company as a dancer. He’s followed her into musicals, as well, as the associate choreographer on Little Shop and Funny Girl. And the ELSCO dancers are now her pre-production team. “It’s still a very vulnerable place,” she admits, “to be the choreographer of a Broadway show and say, ‘I don’t know what I wanna do here—let’s figure this out.’ So I like having dancers with me that I’ve known for a long time. If they say, ‘This doesn’t really feel good,’ I’ll trust their judgment.” That’s a large part of why dancers love working with her, Gugliotti says. “She’ll come into the room with an idea and some movement, but she really allows the dancers to influence where the choreography will go. She thinks about what will look best on them, what will make them enjoy what they’re doing and feel the most comfortable—especially on Broadway. Doing a show eight times a week can be tough, so that’s something she really tries to take into account when we’re creating work.”

Some of that solicitude may stem from her experience on “SYTYCD.” “It jumpstarted my career,” she concedes, “so I have no regrets. And I did spend the last 10 years trying to be a choreographer on the show.” The show also became a pivotal part of her personal life: A few years ago she was starting to chat with a guy on Tinder, who initially didn’t recognize her as the dancer he’d adored back in college, watching the show with his buddies. “I’m going to marry that girl,” he’d told them, to which they replied, “Even if you ever met her, she’d never date you.” Another big Ellenore Scott grin lights up the Zoom window: “They were all at our wedding, eating their words.”

But looking back at “SYTYCD” now, she feels that had she not been so young, she would have made some noise about “the way things were run”—the grueling schedule, the manufactured tension, what she saw as disregard for the physical and emotional well-being of the contestants. So she was careful, starting ELSCO, not to replicate that kind of atmosphere, and Gugliotti, Mayer and John Rando, who hired her to choreograph Mr. Saturday Night after seeing Little Shop, all rave about how much fun she brings into the studio. “The humor and joy infects the room in such a lovely way,” Rando says. “And she has such a wonderful laugh. That’s really important on a show like ours.”

That winning personality is on vibrant display in the jaunty videos about theater, clothes and her passion for anime that she posts on TikTok, which provided her a much-needed creative outlet during the pandemic. Scott also contributed the choreography for the app’s crowdsourced musical version of Ratatouille, and has, to her amusement and amazement, amassed more than a million followers and lots of influencer swag—“I got this mattress for free!” she crows. She continued posting even as she plunged into the juggling act that is birthing two Broadway musicals simultaneously, because she doesn’t know what’s next after this month’s openings. She’s hoping that doing three comic musicals in a row won’t pigeonhole her, but she won’t mind if she becomes the go-to choreographer for comedies. “My favorite thing in the whole world is to laugh,” she says. “Making people smile is one of the greatest gifts, and if I can do that, then my work here is done.”

The post Ellenore Scott: The Dynamo Choreographer With Two New Broadway Shows appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Despite being 27, I’m really just starting out, which means I am both unrepresented (meaning I don’t have an agent yet, though I hope to have one eventually) and non-Equity. (Whew, boy!) It’s a challenging stage of the process that I think most dancers can relate to. At one point or another, the majority of us will spend some time grinding on our own, honing our audition skills and seeking to fill out our resumés so that when our dream jobs come calling, we are ready.

This month I’m sharing a bit about my process for finding auditions, submitting self-tapes, and taking advantage of networking opportunities without support. Full transparency: It’s exhausting, and it’s taken a little extra effort to be enthusiastic about it. Thankfully, I’m still finding joy in this crazy journey.

The Room Where It Happens

Kicking off a dance career is always difficult, even when the industry is booming. Kicking off a dance career without representation in an industry hobbled by a multiyear pandemic? Insane. For starters, without an agent, there are a number of auditions I won’t even know about and rooms that I simply won’t be let into. According to a March 2020 Dance Magazine article, “agents communicate with casting directors and are in the know about opportunities, auditions and upcoming projects. They submit your headshot, resumé and other materials to casting and can often schedule invited calls or general meetings beyond the required open calls,” explains writer Candice Thompson.

Thankfully, there are ways to learn about many auditions on your own. Over the past couple of months, I have spent a lot of time digging through websites like dance.NYC, playbill.com, backstage.com and actorsaccess.com. For company auditions that may not be listed on these platforms, I’ve been paying close attention to social media accounts and individual websites, hoping to find a break. This month I submitted for a dance call for Phantom of the Opera on Broadway that I found on the Playbill site, an Equity chorus audition for the Jagged Little Pill tour that I found on backstage.com, a production called The Night Falls, by BalletCollective, that I found through Dance/NYC, and a Zoom audition for Hubbard Street Dance Chicago that I found on social media. 

Ask the Experts

Once I find audition listings, I’m faced with my next hurdle. Without a team of experts giving me feedback, it’s hard to know which listings are reputable or worth my time. I don’t always know who is actually hiring (sometimes unions require shows to hold auditions, even if they’ve already hired all the talent they need), which opportunities I would be a good fit for, and which artistic staff might have a good reputation.

I’ve tried to solve this problem by tapping into my own network of dance friends and asking for their opinions. If those resources come up short, I can do some sleuthing online to glean information on the choreographer’s background, see what other dancers have said about working for them, and check out clips of their previous work on social media. If all else fails, I submit for whatever sounds interesting and hope for the best. 

One perk of not being represented means I have very little pressure to submit for opportunities I don’t actually want. For example, I know that most out-of-state gigs are likely not a good fit for me and my stage of life right now. I’m setting my audition radius close to home, and unless it’s a show that I am really excited about, I simply don’t submit.

Too Much Talent

I recently attended a mock audition held by Clear Talent Agency at Steps on Broadway. During the Q&A portion of the workshop, one of the agents, Loretta Morrison, said that some casting directors are receiving something like 3,000 submissions per audition these days. That’s a lot of information for them to consume and artists to differentiate between. Which means that I need to accept that a portion of my self-tapes will never actually be seen by anyone (or if they are seen, it’s likely by someone whose brain has been turned to mush!), and there really isn’t anything I can do about it.

Now, if you’re thinking “That’s depressing,” you’re not wrong. But I’m not losing hope. It reminds me of a lesson my mom taught me when I was in college. After returning from yet another bad first date, I was feeling disappointed and called her to vent. Her reply was simple: “The more you date, the more you date.” It’s a numbers game. The more people you meet, the more likely you are to find someone you have a genuine connection with. Similarly, the more auditions you submit for, the more chances you have to be seen by casting directors, and the more likely you are to book something eventually. If you don’t try at all, you most certainly won’t succeed.

Burn, Baby, Burnout

I’d be remiss if I didn’t tell you that the virtue of the numbers-game mentality has its limit. Filming a reasonable number of self-tapes can be fun—it’s a unique class experience and a chance to do what I love. Filming an inordinate number of self-tapes can lead to burnout (and to bankruptcy if you’re renting studio space to film).

Therefore, I have been kind to myself. If there is an audition I’m excited about, and I have the energy for it, I will throw my hat in the ring. If I’m tired and overwhelmed, I will skip it and hold out for the next one that comes at a better time for me. At this age, I understand that life is all about balance. I don’t just want to accomplish this goal—I want to enjoy the journey on the way.

The post Begin Again: The Audition Grind appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Age: 23

Hometown: Charlotte, North Carolina

Training: Broadway Dreams intensives, Broadway Theatre Project, The Performing Arts Project, University of Michigan BFA in musical theater

Accolades: 2016 Mr. Dance of America with Dance Masters of America

What his mentor is saying: “Sam isn’t someone who waits for somebody to spoon-feed him,” says choreographer and Broadway dancer Tyler Hanes, who’s coached them one-on-one since Faulkner was 14. “When I would give Sam directors or choreographers or dancers to look at, not only would they do the research, they’d actually teach themself the choreography. Working with Sam set such a high bar that I had to remind myself not to hold other young students to those same expectations.”

Carrying the show: At age 15, Faulkner earned his Equity card playing the title role in two regional productions of Billy Elliot. “There are only a few roles like that, where you get to flex all of your muscles equally as a dancer, singer and actor,” he says. “I hope that someday I can find the grown-up version of Billy Elliot, a role that challenges me in every single discipline.”

Behind the camera: With U of M classmate Madison McBride, Faulkner co-directed their BFA cohort’s “senior entrance,” a socially distanced 16-minute song-and-dance extravaganza for 24 performers across campus.

A season of firsts: The 2021 Fall for Dance Festival’s mounting of Sweet Gwen Suite was not only Faulkner’s first audition out of school, but it was their first time back in a rehearsal room with other people. “Gwen Verdon is a hero of mine, so to do a project that is a tribute to her, I was just over the moon,” they say. “And, of course, being in the room with the likes of Georgina Pazcoguin was a pinch-me moment.”

In development: Faulkner closed out 2021 as a principal standby in American Repertory Theater’s new musical WILD, directed by Diane Paulus and starring Idina Menzel.

He can cook, too: “I recently developed a pretty fabulous cast-iron-skillet citrus-chicken situation,” he says. “Quietly, my dream is to one day publish a cookbook.”

The post Meet Sam Faulkner, Broadway’s Next Big Thing appeared first on Dance Magazine.

But not only does Skeleton Crew have dance, it opens with dance, and dance is the thread that weaves the fabric of the show together. The man doing the weaving: Bessie winner and Broadway veteran Adesola Osakalumi, who joins the elite ranks of artists (like Savion Glover and Tommy Tune) double-billed on Broadway as both performers and choreographers. 

Osakalumi, who previously appeared on Broadway in Fela! and Equus, has been with Skeleton Crew since its 2016 Atlantic Theater production and has a host of other credits, from Across the Universe to the Drama Desk–winning Jam on the Groove. He blends popping, locking and other hip-hop styles to dance us through each of Skeleton Crew’s six transitions, embodying the spirit of the factory and of the city of Detroit itself, almost like a silent narrator. Dance Magazine spoke to him about his unique role and what it means to be using hip hop to tell stories on Broadway.

How did you get involved in Skeleton Crew?

I was introduced to Ruben through a friend, another choreographer, Darrell Grand Moultrie. He explained what he wanted to do and how he envisioned it. And I was like, “I can do it. I’m the guy.” So, it was not your normal audition process. And then he called me back five years later and was like, “Hey, so, the show is going to go to Broadway, and I want you to come back.”

How do you conceive of your role?

It’s only alluded to in stage directions. It’s like, “the factory hums contentedly.” Or “the workers continue to move as the machinery starts to slowly break down.” That’s all. And Ruben envisioned bringing that spirit of the factory to life, but also showing the actual physical work that is done, because the play is set in the break room. And work is alluded to, but you never see anybody work. So Ruben was like, “Let’s show the dancing body, the Black body, at work.” He wanted something sharp and clean that expressed the power and specificity of the workers. He always talks about Detroit at one point being the center of America and by extension almost the center of the universe, because of the output of work and cars and factories, but also the music and culture that came out of Detroit. So he wanted a nod to both the auto industry and the musical legacy of Detroit.

What was your process for developing the movement like?

We had a creative team that was Jimmy Keys, who is Dominique’s husband, who did all the original music, Rob Kaplowitz, who did sound, and Chesney Snow, who did beatboxing. We would go in our own room and they would create music. It was really collaborative—I was able to request certain sounds. My own process was to use each transition as a storytelling element, either illuminating what just happened in the scene or leading us into a scene. My intention in the prologue is to tell the story of the whole two hours in two minutes. I give little physicalizations of what each character does. I think when people hear “hip hop,” they are like, “How can this be used as storytelling?” And I totally disagree. This shows that there are a variety of styles of dance that are worthy of the Broadway stage.

Why do you think those stories needed to be told through movement specifically?   

Two reasons: The energy of the piece—it’s set in Detroit, it’s a natural extension of the music, culture, spirit. And, the rote, repetitive nature of a stamping plant. There are parallels between the rote, repetitive nature of people studying dance and training. It’s been one of the most-produced plays in the last three or four years, and not all of the productions have used dance, but a lot of them have, and I think that speaks to the validity of what Ruben and I set forth.

The post This Double-Billed Performer/Choreographer Is Bringing a Surprising Amount of Dance to Broadway’s Newest Play appeared first on Dance Magazine.

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Andy Blankenbuehler got into dance as a 3-year-old tapper in Cincinnati, but theatergoers don’t associate him with showstopping tap routines. Nor do they identify him with cheerleader formations, swing-dance extravaganzas or hip-hop blowouts, even though his shows have had them all. It’s because Blankenbuehler numbers don’t actually stop shows—they push them forward, vibrantly, relentlessly, ingeniously. They exist in a specific moment of a specific musical.

He came to New York City in 1990 to make a career as a Broadway dancer, absorbing choreography from contemporary masters Susan Stroman and Christopher Chadman,­ and studying the work of two of his idols, Jerome Robbins and Bob Fosse. Their influence pervades his work in visible and invisible ways—Fosse’s tensed line, Robbins’­ perpetual-motion machine—and he readily admits to leaning on the work of Gene Kelly and Michael Jackson.­ But, to borrow a word from one of his assistants, he Blankenbuehlerizes­ familiar dance vocabulary and makes it feel contemporary.

An obsessive researcher, Blankenbuehler immerses himself in the period and music and lyrics of each show he does. He collects all the information he can from the relevant idiom—it could be salsa, it could be ballet, it could be stepping—until he’s absorbed and understood it. Despite­ all the prep, the exacting, meticulous results are never derivative, because he thinks so rigorously about every word in every song. He likes to say that he’s not interested in dance steps on their own, that he cares only about how they reveal the character or the story. And he’s never afraid to stop the dancing cold if that will heighten the drama or bring home a moment. When the orphans of Annie or the soldiers of Hamilton freeze in the middle of a phrase, it’s not because he’s run out of ideas. It’s because he’s had one that he wants us to notice.

And notice we do. The Tony, Drama Desk, Olivier, Chita Rivera and Lortel nominations and awards he’s collected for In the Heights, Bring It On, Bandstand and, of course, Hamilton, attest to the way his work speaks to today’s audiences. The restless energy that drives his choreography also drives him to explore: choreographing for film (Cats), directing (Bring It On: The Musical and Bandstand) and dreaming up new shows (Only Gold). With his enormous store of both brains and heart, he’s showing Broadway how to make musicals that move with a 21st-century beat—pulling this 20th-century form into the current moment and beyond.

Join Dance Magazine in celebrating Andy Blankebuehler at the December 6 Dance Magazine Awards ceremony. Tickets are now available here.

The post Celebrating Dance Magazine Award Honoree Andy Blankenbuehler appeared first on Dance Magazine.

It’s a small gesture, but like all the movement in the show, it says a lot. “It’s a moment of such confidence and prowess,” says director Danya Taymor. “It lets the audience know, ‘You’re good. I got you. I’m the leader and I’m telling this story. So you can keep your eyes on me if you want to know what’s going on.'”

Equally in conversation with the Book of Exodus and Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, Pass Over, the first play on Broadway post-pandemic, reimagines Beckett’s “tramps,” Vladimir and Estragon, as young Black men (Moses and Kitch) living in a police state. And it does so with an economical, poetic script by Antoinette Chinonye Nwandu, and with movement that’s tempting to call dance but is certainly not choreography, according to Taymor.

“There’s not even blocking,” she says. “I mean, there’s a little blocking.” The movement, which is partially improvised and changes from night to night, was created by Taymor and the actors, Hill, Namir Smallwood and Gabriel Ebert, and a special guest—clown and Beckett expert Bill Irwin, who served as movement consultant.

“It was like kismet—Bill had to work on this,” says Taymor. “And so we tracked him down and didn’t let him say no.”

Dance Magazine spoke to Taymor and Irwin about how they developed Pass Over‘s striking non-choreography.

Danya, you’ve been with Pass Over since 2017. Bill, how long have you been with the project?

Bill Irwin: Hardly at all. It gives me an opportunity to just go on record as saying that this quite astounding piece of work on that Broadway stage has zero to do with this physical artist.

Danya Taymor: That’s not true. What’s cool about what Bill did was he gave us a few really direct links to different ways of moving, different embodiments, different traditions. He let us all be tramps, and we’d been investigating that. But to get to work with Bill just opened up different doors that we have been knocking at and Bill was like, Let me just open this for you.

How did the movement in the show evolve into what it looks like today?

DT: A lot of the movement in my work comes from mirroring, which is like the most basic of all theater exercises. But it allows connection between performers—they really have to gaze into each other’s eyes, and there’s nothing more intimate than that. I also like to do these weird partner stretches. So it creates a trust and dependence on your fellow ensemble members. Antoinette and I have also talked about different comedic duos through time, like Abbott and Costello, Nichols and May, Laurel and Hardy, Key and Peele. Obviously, Vladimir and Estragon. So many of these duos are working with great physicality. We wanted to find ways to bring joy into all the bodies onstage and freedom and looseness and goofiness. These young men should be allowed to be just silly. Especially considering what their day-to-day is.

Can you talk about how the idea of “trampness” translates into movement in Pass Over?

BI: Here’s a stage direction from Mr. Beckett’s play: “They stand motionless, arms dangling, head sunk, sagging at the knees.” I mean, he is that particular.

DT: Bill came in one rehearsal and literally just brought them big shoes and big pants with suspenders. So they could just feel their bodies in those clothes. Something else we experimented with on a day when Bill was in was the exploration of the feminine body. So often in Pass Over the way the characters can be intimate with one another is when they embody women. I had a friend come and she was like, I just think women are going to flock to this play to see men given permission to be so vulnerable and so free, because society doesn’t like to let them do that.

BI: And it’s happening on a truly movement dimension. Actors are told all the time, “Be vulnerable here. So as you’re reading text, you’re looking for ways to find that. But finding it in the standing body is a different craft.

What is the role of movement in the show?

BI: I think it is inextricable. And that is part of the joy of watching this work. It is a weave that is very hard to disentangle.

DT: When they think of movement, people think about choreography or something set, or something that somebody decided upon and then taught. And as a director, that’s never how I go about it. I will let the actors do the play on its feet for, like, 10 days before I come in and even give a suggestion, because I’m hoping that if you have performers that are strong enough, as these three men are, they’re gonna figure it out. It’s always better if it comes from inside them. That’s why it feels so alive and so precise. I’ve given them full permission: If they can’t get there, do what’s real. Part of why it’s so striking is because of the trust they have with themselves and with each other.

How much are they actually experimenting with the movement each night?

DT: I’d say 25 percent of it is different every night. The three actors before every show huddle up, and they say, “What shall we play tonight, gentlemen?,” and they suggest a different musician. It could be a musician, it could be a genre, it could be a song, it could be an album. And then after half an hour, they go and they all listen to that music. And then that’s the show they do. And so there are certain sections of movement where the line of it is known, but how you get from A to B, as long as you can honestly go from A to B, get there however you want. That keeps it alive, especially in a long run. It keeps it really playful for them. It’s the same story being told every night, but it’s a different show.

Moses and Kitch move through space in such a specific way. How did you develop that shared movement language?

DT: A lot of the Moses and Kitch stuff really is just mirroring. And they’re letting their different bodies inform that mirror. So it’s not like Moses and Kitch are the same and they’re doing the same movement. Moses will mock Kitch and filter it through his body. It gives this permission for repetition, which I feel like is a really Beckettian thing, and really part of Moses and Kitch’s everyday. They play these games; they recycle them. Kitch especially gets real comfort in the routine of it.

Do you each have a favorite movement moment from the show?

BI: At the very end, when Moses takes his clothes off, it is a glorious moment of theater.

DT: Yeah, the disrobing is exciting. I like when they take off their microphones. I like that final acknowledgment that, yes, we’ve all been in this room together. And we still are in this room together. And that acknowledgment through movement is singular to theater to be able to say, “Yeah, we’ve been breathing the same air this whole time and we’re not asking you to pretend otherwise. That happened. That all happened.”

The post Don’t Call It Choreography: Inside the Propulsive, Powerful Movement of Broadway’s First Post-Pandemic Play appeared first on Dance Magazine.

These were only some of the questions looming over the theater community after New York’s governor announced in May that Broadway shows would be able to return at full capacity. The answers took shape as musicals started selling seats and rebooting for this month’s long-awaited reopening. Laura Penn, executive director of the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society, notes that it had taken more than 120 years to create Broadway, “and we’re trying to resuscitate it in 90 days.”

The post How Broadway Found a Path to Reopening After Its Longest Shutdown in History appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Chagas left his hometown of Rio de Janeiro when he was 15 years old to train full-time on scholarship at Miami City Ballet School. He spent two years as a student apprentice and then six seasons in MCB’s corps de ballet. During that last year, he began thinking about making a change, and started taking singing lessons. It was Justin Peck who encouraged him to audition for Carousel, which Peck was choreographing.

Courtesy Chagas

The post From Ballet to Broadway and Back Again: Andrei Chagas’ Act II at Miami City Ballet appeared first on Dance Magazine.

About seven weeks prior, on April 9, VanElslander was walking through Times Square for the first time since the shutdown. It was her birthday, and the musical theater performer was on her way to Open Jar Studios for her first shift with the Broadway Relief Project, making PPE gowns for frontline workers. Although grateful to have somewhere to go, she was struck by the lifelessness of a neighborhood usually bursting with energy.

“It was horrifying,” she says. “I had to do something.”

Jon Taylor, Courtesy TSQ Project

Robin Michals, Courtesy TSQ Project

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The post What Does It Take to Become a Broadway Choreographer? appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Here, Broadway newcomer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui talks about being nominated for his expansive, hyperkinetic choreography for Jagged Little Pill.

What has it meant to you to be nominated during this historic Broadway shutdown?

Given the circumstances we’re in, any celebration possible is taken with two hands. I also feel very honored because I’m not American, so it’s a big deal to be nominated for anything outside of the usual places where I work.

At the same time, I’m aware there’s resistance towards the Tonys because of their lack of diversity. People are asking for categories to be changed from “Best Performance by an Actor/Actress” to “Best Lead.” Or let’s think about a nomination for Best Ensemble. On a selfish level, I’m happy and flattered, while in a global way, I want to help change things so everybody feels heard.

Were you a fan of Alanis Morissette’s music before this show?

I know all the words to all the songs. Alanis’ music has been there for me since I was 18 years old. When I got to meet her, I told her, “You’ve been in my life for so long!” She, of course, had no idea who I was.

When choreographing the show, I was influenced by how Alanis herself moves. She’s a natural dancer who learns choreography quickly. You just have to watch the “So Pure” video to see that. On the other hand, she can improvise manically. She consciously doesn’t control her instincts, and it becomes an almost therapeutic release. I call Alanis “the goddess of our show.” She’s the template for the movement style that I encouraged the dancers to follow.

You were both the choreographer and the movement director for Jagged Little Pill. Can you explain the distinction in terms of this show?

Jagged Little Pill
‘s movement direction is linked to the set. It’s often not the dancers but everything around them that moves. I’ve worked with big objects in other projects. Plus, I come from a dance-theater background, which helped in figuring out what characters might be feeling, where they’d be in the space and what movement they’d be doing. Of course, it was always director Diane Paulus’ final say. We’d keep looking for a solution until she was happy.

What’s on your mind as the Tony voting period begins?

I cried a lot during the making of this show. It addresses so many issues that resonated with me: struggling in long-term relationships, feeling disconnected from your upbringing, issues around identity. Not every professional environment gives you that kind of space to let your emotions be part of the work.

I’ve been a choreographer for 20 years. At the end of the day, it’s about how you channel your ideas through emotions. With Jagged Little Pill, it was so nice to let the tricks go and trust my feelings again.

The post Catching Up With 2020 Tony-Nominated Choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Here, Anthony Van Laast, who was nominated for a Tony in 2004 for Bombay Dreams, talks about being nominated for his stylish, crowd-pleasing choreography for Tina: The Tina Turner Musical.

The post Catching Up With 2020 Tony-Nominated Choreographer Anthony Van Laast appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Here, Sonya Tayeh (who, with Sing Street, had been set to have two shows on the Great White Way simultaneously before COVID-19 shut everything down) talks about the nomination for her sensual, ferocious choreography for Moulin Rouge! The Musical.

The post Catching Up With 2020 Tony-Nominated Choreographer Sonya Tayeh appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Since retiring as a principal dancer with Miami City Ballet and moving to New York City in 2017, Delgado, now 38, has taken on a variety of new artistic challenges. She’s set Peck’s ballets on companies in the U.S. and abroad; she’s taught at Juilliard; she’s danced for Pam Tanowitz, Christopher Wheeldon and Peck. In June of 2018, she began a two-year dive into West Side Story, beginning with work on the film and, later, as associate producer on the recent Broadway revival choreographed by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker.

Delgado’s empathy and willingness to learn on the fly allowed her to thrive in these unfamiliar roles. She emerged from both West Side Story projects “a changed person without a clear plan, but I knew I wanted to devote time to my own dancing,” she says.

Saying yes first and asking questions later can be scary. But Delgado has been able to quickly adapt to new challenges. While she is blessed with connections, it is her ability to utilize her lived experience to facilitate further growth that makes her a person people want to work with on and off the stage.

While focusing on her own return to performing, Delgado received an invitation from Alicia Graf Mack, director of Juilliard’s dance division, and joined the faculty part-time in the fall of 2019, teaching ballet. She is also a member of the school’s mentor program. “My heart was trying to get back to my own performance, but the minute she called, I said yes.” For Delgado, the school had long carried an allure. She had worked closely with two Juilliard graduates, Jason Collins and Victor Lozano, on Tanowitz’s Blueprint, and crossed paths with many other alums through various projects. “Juilliard-trained dancers have a sense of self, purpose and a grounding versatility to their dancing.”

The school’s supportive atmosphere allows Delgado to continue to stretch herself beyond the studio. The faculty includes many other active artists. “Teaching reminds me of a performance,” says Delgado. “You have to make game-time decisions. Even if I prepare a class, the students dance and I immediately engage in dialogue with them. It’s like responding to a partner onstage.”

Delgado’s enthusiasm for these give-and-take dialogues has also proven useful when “jumping into the deep end” of production work. Late in the development of the 2020 Broadway revival of West Side Story, she was brought on to offer a Latinx perspective to De Keersmaeker’s choreography for the Sharks. Her respect for De Keersmaeker initially made her apprehensive about the task at hand. Delgado was excited by both the choreography and the dancers, but could sense miscommunication was acting as a disservice to the process large. Spending a few hours going through the Shark choreography with De Keersmaeker, Delgado found her suggestions were met with enthusiasm.

“It was about connecting artists,” she says. “I wanted to empower her to allow the Sharks some freedom for their own authenticity to come out. It’s like translating a language. I was able to figure out a way to explain to her what the Latinx actors in the cast were craving.”

A genuine curiosity about what will serve others best has been a guiding light for Delgado as she takes on more leadership roles. Working on the West Side Story film, she helped add authenticity to Peck’s movement vocabulary for the Sharks, but found her “real role was to translate Justin’s style and choreography for dancers with a wide array of training and experience. I had to figure out, on an individual basis, what 60 different people needed in order to make the choreography look not just in unison but in the same world.”

Her concerns were not only with what happened on camera, but also with much of what happened behind the scenes. She was fortunate to work with a production team that was open to giving the dancers exactly what they needed, but it was Delgado’s responsibility to identify every potential crisis before it happened.

“It was translating the needs of the dance world to the film world,” she says. “They were so eager to get it right. The most inspiring producer, Kristie Macosko Krieger, said, ‘What do you need? I want to know everything you need so that we can get it for you because we want this to be the best.’ I remember going to bed at night and thinking to myself, Have I thought of everything that these cast members might come into contact with?”

Finding a common language between creator and interpreter is not always easy. Delgado is deeply attuned to the simultaneous processes of the individual artists involved in a creative process. “I’ve never been a choreographer, a writer, a music director. I have so much to learn from how they do what they do and how, by asking them about what they are going through, I can figure out a way to help them.”

As a dancer, Delgado had struggled with feeling pressured to re-create rather than fully take ownership of her work, and has come to recognize the necessity to lift up the voices of performers. “I think the more I empower the artists to find themselves within the choreography, text or song, it’s the best thing I can do. I can share all the information I have studied—all the analogies, stories and research I dive into—but in the end, how do they find themselves in the work and can I assist them in that journey?”

These new experiences have changed her approach to her own performing. In early September of 2020, after nearly seven months of lockdown, Delgado performed Peck’s Dark Side of the Gym with her husband at the Kaatsbaan Summer Festival. “I sometimes wondered if activating all these other sides of my brain and analyzing performance, dance and training so intensely would negatively impact how I interact with my own dancing,” she says. “It’s the opposite. I’m less judgmental of myself and more creative. I can surrender completely.”

Her return to the stage was also a touching signifier for a new journey in the Delgado-Peck household—Delgado is pregnant with the couple’s first child. “It was our first pas de trois, and I’m so grateful I got to experience what it feels like to dance with a little being growing inside of me.” Delgado and Peck share a palpable chemistry when performing together, but the knowledge that they were dancing for three heightened the moment. “Justin always takes care of me onstage, but that show was extra. He was so present and getting such a kick out of getting to dance with me and our little baby.”

The post Patricia Delgado’s Second Act: Film, Broadway, Juilliard & More appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Photo by Rosalie O’Connor, Courtesy Boston Ballet

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