How A South STL Choreographer Thinks...

I was thinking about my blog and realized that I haven't really written much about the choreographic process of GREASE!. Actually, I have NEVER written about the choreographic process of any show of which I was involved.

Wow. Where do I start?

Well, research is probably THE most important part of the job. Jazz squares, grapevines and pivot turns repeated over and over does not make an interesting evening at the theatre. On the same note, just having a minuscule dance vocabulary does not make a dancer a choreographer. This is lost to many who subject their poor cast members to endless choruses of lame, mind-numbing, lack-luster, inappropriate suck ass crap. Meanwhile I sit in the audience reaching for the barf bag that just isn't there because it's a theatre not a plane. Sounds harsh? Bite me...;-P

When I am commissioned to choreograph, I research the show- music, script, & time period. Not only how people danced, but how they lived, dressed, social life, and influences that came before that time period. For instance: The kids in GREASE would have still done some basic swing moves. That's the style that they would have seen their parents do at weddings and social events. These kids were not privileged and would not have gone to cotillions. Any dance they know they learned from their folks, TV and each other while adding the latest moves. They would have picked up on the latest crazes because they were completely tuned in to the more eccentric and hippest influences. At this time in history the musicians were shaking and moving all they had to the new Rock & Roll sounds. Elvis was already a huge figure, but let's not forget Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Bill Haley and The Comets to name a few. Motown was huge with all of the singing groups performing choreography by Cholly Atkins.
The "cool world" was mooooooooovin' and shakin'!

Style is the key. It is extremely important that I seize the style of dance of the time. Once I have a feel for the steps and flavor of the choreography, I now have to ask myself, "If I was a teenager in 1959 working-class Chicago how would my friends and I present this stuff?" The answer in my mind - crazy and wild- pajama party style. Organized chaos.
There is a very fine line in this situation. On one hand, you want the numbers to look spontaneous and "teen-ager" fun and free, but on the other hand you could end up with disastrous, messy pile of steaming dookie. To get the achieved effect, you need a top notch cast. A cast that truly understands their character's role in the theatre cosmos. Just like every person moves differently, every character must also move within his or her own personality. "Cookie cutter" choreography may work fine for some shows, but too many choreographers cannot leave that box. Small cast shows set within a certain time period can especially suffer from "Cookie Cutter Syndrome". This is very serious syndrome where every move is executed exactly alike and every dancer looks like a copied version of the next. Like I said, it works (and is even necessary) for some large cast shows...but not every show. Remember, shows are like the characters themselves- different personalities and histories.

Please I beg of you, the shows just want to be themselves. If you let them breathe and speak, they will shine!

In the next blog -- each number is special in its own way!