Musical theater fans—and Broadway’s ensemble performers—got a dance bonanza last season, with stellar new work from Twyla Tharp (Come Fly Away), Bill T. Jones (Fela!), Sergio Trujillo (Memphis), and Steven Hoggett (American Idiot) and terrific renovations from Marcia Milgrom Dodge (Ragtime), Warren Carlyle (Finian’s Rainbow), and Robert Longbottom (Bye Bye Birdie). There’s no way to […]
Samantha Sturm is a creature of contradictions. Warming up before James Kinney’s theater dance class at New York’s Peridance Capezio studios, she seems the epitome of a shy, girlish ballerina. As she practices tendus, she stares critically at herself in the mirror. Her toes are stretched and articulated, her port de bras graceful and weightless. […]
The standard approach to creating the dance vocabulary for a leading role in a Broadway musical is to use the story, the book, and the songs to fill out the character, and then use that character to shape the steps. But getting Morticia Addams, the matriarch of the ghoulish clan at the center of The […]
City Center’s Encores! series began 16 years ago, but it was put on the map in 1996, with its production of Chicago. Starring Bebe Neuwirth and Ann Reinking, Chicago created so much buzz that it was moved intact to Broadway and—well, you know what happened. But the impulse behind Encores! […]
A few decades back, when Chita Rivera and Dick Van Dyke danced and sang in Bye Bye Birdie, I loved it and learned all the songs. Dick Van Dyke was funny, vulnerable, and lovably dorky; Chita Rivera was brassy with an ironic edge. They were both dancers you don’t forget—and they had chemistry. In this […]
“They are the unsung heroes,” says choreographer Sergio Trujillo. Yet most theatergoers and plenty of Broadway professionals read the credit for “dance arrangements” on their Playbills with no idea what dance arrangers do. The job exists because Broadway composers don’t always know where dance numbers will be, or how much time they’ll take, or […]
“Art is never finished,” says Sergio Trujillo. Case in point? This past summer he was busy with a roomful of ensemble dancers preparing to open the rock musical Memphis on Broadway. Its dance numbers got great reviews when the show tried out in San Diego and Seattle, but Trujillo was intently adding […]
This time last year in “On Broadway,” we were eagerly looking ahead to Billy Elliot and West Side Story and absolutely clueless about the economic crisis beginning to engulf New York, the country, the world. But if history has taught us anything, it’s that bad times and good musicals often go together. Yes, shows were […]
Join our mailing list to receive the latest news and updates from our team.