For the new Broadway season, Ellenore Scott has scored two associate choreographer gigs: For Head Over Heels, which starts previews June 23, Scott is working with choreographer Spencer Liff on an original musical mashing up The Go-Go’s punk-rock hits with a narrative based on Sir Philip Sidney’s 1590 book, Arcadia. Four days after that show […]

Broadway musicals have been on my mind for more than half a century. I discovered them in grade school, not in a theater but electronically. On the radio, every weeknight an otherwise boring local station would play a cast album in its entirety; on television, periodically Ed Sullivan’s Sunday night variety show would feature an […]

It’s Broadway awards season (hello Tony, Chita Rivera and Drama Desk Awards!), and this year, there’s a lot for fans to sing and dance about. If you’re a millennial, your heart is certainly happy with this morning’s Tony announcement: SpongeBob SquarePants and Mean Girls scored the most nominations for a musical at 12 each. (The […]

DanceBreak came roaring back to life on Monday after seven years on hiatus, and six choreographers now have the opportunity to be the next Andy Blankenbuehler. Or Joshua Bergasse, Kelly Devine, Casey Nicholaw, Josh Prince or Josh Rhodes. These stellar Broadway choreographers all got their first big shows after Melinda Atwood’s musical-theater launching pad let […]

They speak a language of their own. You could call it Arendelle-ish, except that they were using it long before they started working on Frozen. So maybe the dialect filling a Times Square rehearsal hall last month should be dubbed Robsarahcharlie-ish, after choreographer and Tony winner Rob Ashford and his associate choreographers, Sarah O’Gleby and […]

Freddie Kimmel’s musical theater career was just taking off when he woke up one morning with a pain in his groin. A trip to the doctor assured him it was nothing of concern, even though the sensation returned a few months later. As a dancer, Kimmel was used to pushing through discomfort, so he kept […]

The closing months of the 2016–17 season brought a glut of extraordinary music and dance to Broadway’s stages, and the superabundance has left 2017–18 looking a bit anemic. Partly it’s real estate—there are only so many Broadway theaters; in June, nearly three dozen were occupied. The only musical scheduled to open this summer was Prince […]

I have always been extremely dramatic. I think “extremely” might even be an understatement. As a child, I was constantly in costume. Never clothes. Always a costume. When I was 8 we moved into a new house, and took a home video to send to my dad’s family. My siblings were performing a song for […]