How Choreographers Avoid The One-Hit Wonder Trap

While directing and choreographing the Paper Mill Playhouse production of the musical Bandstand, Andy Blankenbuehler found himself tied into knots. After the wild success of the juggernaut Broadway musical Hamilton, for which he would win the 2016 Tony Award for Best Choreography, he began comparing his unsatisfactory rehearsal rut to what he called “the best […]

Choreography's Constantly Shifting Role on Broadway

I first got hooked on Broadway musicals as a preteen at Gypsy, with its tapping moppets, gyrating burlesque queens and Tulsa, the dancing heartthrob. I’ve been going ever since, but Dance Magazine has been at it even longer. The 1926-27 Broadway season was just ending when DM began publication, and of its 200-plus shows, dozens […]

Andy Blankenbuehler Brings His Choreographic Talents to Bandstand

It doesn’t look like your great-grandfather’s jitterbug. Yes, the year is 1945, and yes, the setting is a jazz club. But these swing dancers are in the new musical Bandstand, directed and choreographed by Andy Blankenbuehler. The number, “Nobody,” is a paean to determination—”You know who tells me, ‘Stop’? Nobody.” The choreography begins as metaphor […]

Our Broadway Faves Just Got Major Nominations

It’s Broadway awards season, and tons of our favorite dancers and choreographers are getting big-time recognition. The Tony Award nominations were announced yesterday and the Best Choreography finalists include: Andy Blankenbuehler for Bandstand Peter Darling and Ellen Kane for Groundhog Day Kelly Devine for Come From Away Denis Jones for Holiday Inn Sam Pinkleton for […]

Looking for Morality? These Days, Try Broadway Musicals

What do you go to a musical for? The singing and dancing, a great story, and charismatic performers, right? But this season a clutch of new musicals are flaunting something else: a moral compass—and compassion. A colleague of mine suggests that our increased awareness of this has to do with our post-election state of mind, […]

Broadway Choreographers Bring New Shows to the Stage

It’s mad-dash time on Broadway, as shows scramble to qualify for the June 11 Tony Awards. “It is a crazy season,” says Andy Blankenbuehler, who won last year for choreographing Hamilton. And the 10 musicals arriving in the two months preceding the deadline, April 27, “are all over the map,” he says. “So many different […]