31 minute read
In Service of the Story: Jerry Mitchell in Conversation with Harvey Fierstein
by SDC Journal
“Let’s start at the beginning and work our way up to where you tell people what to do.” So begins the generous conversation between longtime collaborators Jerry Mitchell + Harvey Fierstein for SDC Journal. Rich with insight into the creative process, this far-reaching dialogue encompasses Jerry’s years as performer and professional dancer, his earliest projects, and his storied career as a choreographer and director-choreographer on such joyful musicals as Kinky Boots, for which he received his second Tony Award for Best Choreography.
HARVEY FIERSTEIN | Let’s start at the beginning and work our way up to where you tell people what to do. So you’re this little kid in Paw Paw, Michigan. Your father didn’t say, “Hey, Jerry, after school, you wanna go tap dancing with me?”
JERRY MITCHELL | No, though he did make me come in and watch Lawrence Welk.
HARVEY | Oh. He was a Lawrence Welk. My father was a Judy Garland.
JERRY | Lawrence Welk because he was an accordion player. My father would say, “Oh, get in here and watch Lawrence Welk.” And I would watch Lawrence Welk when the tap dancer—Arthur Duncan, who just passed away—was on.
HARVEY | So they knew that you loved the show business?
JERRY | I was first in a show in the Paw Paw Village Players when I was 10, and I was pretty sure at that point I wanted to continue doing it. They knew this. I actually told my mom, “I’m gonna be in show business. Don’t get in my way.” At 10!
HARVEY | Did dad catch onto it right away? He was a musician.
JERRY | My dad loved music. We had a bar and restaurant, Gene Mitchell’s Friendly Tavern, and he would get up and pull out his accordion and entertain the beer drinkers. I’d watch him literally work them into a frenzy playing Polish polkas. He’s where I got any sense of theatre; he was a performer. He saw that I was into it by the time I was 15; he was at my first dance recital. He came and my mom told me that he cried through the whole thing, watching me tap dance. I did “Singin’ in the Rain” with a yellow slicker, and he was crying the whole time. You knew my dad; he came to Hairspray, he was there for all the shows. He was just so proud of what I did.
HARVEY | Looking back, did you always know it was dancing that you wanted to do?
JERRY | Just musical theatre. What happened was very Billy Elliot. The choreographer of all the community theatre productions, Cindy Meeth, also owned the dance studio in my hometown. She invited me to come, invited me to come, invited me to come—and I kept saying no because I was gay.
HARVEY | You knew that dancing was a gay thing?
JERRY | I perceived dancing was for girls only, because mostly only girls were at this dance studio. But I broke my collarbone on the way home from football practice racing my best friend on a bike. I thought, I’m gonna keep my legs in shape for basketball, and that’s what got me in the dance studio. That was my excuse. Once I was in there, Cindy put the hook in my mouth. She paid me to take lessons and teach on Saturday. I never paid for a dance class for three years. And, basically, I was in that dance studio every day.
HARVEY | Did you get the difference between dance teacher and choreographer at a young age?
JERRY | No, I didn’t get that difference until I got to college. I just thought dances were routines, and the dance teacher made up the routine, and the kids did the routine. That was the kind of dance school I went to. Cindy Meeth was the dance teacher; she was the choreographer. She made up all the routines for the kids who were taking classes, made up all the routines for the shows. I knew there was a position for a choreographer, but I didn’t realize it was something as creative as creating a show. I didn’t know there was a Hermes Pan working with Fred Astaire. I didn’t know that there were other choreographers that did the choreography for those dancers. I just didn’t know that.
I remember thanking Cindy for teaching me how to dance when I graduated from high school. She said, “Honey, I didn’t teach you how to dance. I just brought it out.” I do feel like dance was in me from the minute I was introduced to it. It just came naturally. I didn’t take a ballet class till I got to college at Webster College.
HARVEY | What did you go to college for?
JERRY | For musical theatre. I was in the conservatory program. You couldn’t perform your freshman year, and I had to perform. So, of course, I joined the dance company. I was in Ballet One, and Gary Hubler, the head of the dance department, saw me and invited me to join the dance company and be in Ballet Three.
HARVEY | Now, obviously as a teenager and all that, you were going to school dances, or were at least exposed to them. You know about square dancing and polka from the family business. Did you feel those were community dances? Did you feel those were traditional? How did you feel about that kind of dancing?
JERRY | I remember that I had a teacher in Paw Paw High School, Mrs. Nance, who always wore dark blue glasses and Chanel suits, with cotton candy hair. She was into the arts, and she walked by my desk one day and threw down a Time magazine—it was Donna McKechnie in the red outfit. And she said, “Read this article. I think you need to pay attention to this.” I didn’t know what A Chorus Line was. But I went, “Oh, there’s a place where you go, and you make a living doing this.”
I thought that dancing was purely social. My dance partner from the dance studio and I would start entering talent shows, and we won talent show after talent show after talent show. I remember making up a routine to KC and the Sunshine Band—“Do a little dance, make a little love, get down tonight.” We won a talent contest doing the bump, basically.
HARVEY | So you knew there were teenage dances? When I was a kid—of course, this was the 1900s—we would learn the Mexican Hat Dance, we were taught the Chop Chop line dance. I watched Soul Train and saw kids dancing and I went, whoa.
JERRY | Soul Train was a big influence.
HARVEY | That was a big influence on you; you knew that kids were making up their own dances. Did you feel that freedom, at that young age? I know you worked for great choreographers down the line, but did you see at that point that you could actually make up dances?
JERRY | Yes, because I just jumped up and did it. The Paw Paw Village Players would do an annual kids’ musical, and the woman who ran it said, you’re going to direct and choreograph the musical. I was 14 or 15 and I said, okay, no problem. I called my best friend, and I made her the musical director. I called my other best friend. I said, you’re gonna be in it. I called three other friends— you’re gonna be in it, you’re gonna play this part, you’re gonna play this part. I created the set; it was a box. Everybody came out of the box. I choreographed all the routines. We did the whole show. It was a big hit. It ran for four weekends. They were happy. That was the first time I directed a show. It was called Aesop’s Fallibles. It was a take-off on Aesop’s Fables for the Paw Paw Village Players. In high school, I choreographed for the school play or the school musical, or I would choreograph for the pom-pom girls. I would make up dances for the pep rallies.
HARVEY | When did you decide you had to get to New York?
JERRY | I knew I was going to come to New York after college. I went to college at Webster, and I thought, after I graduate from college, I’ll come to New York. But I came two years after school because I got a Broadway show.
HARVEY | You got the Broadway show while you were still in college?
JERRY | I was in Webster College in St. Louis, and I auditioned for the Muny after my freshman year and got into the Muny opera; I got my Equity card. I went back to college for sophomore year. [Choreographer] Tony Stevens came through St. Louis, because he was filming a national Dr Pepper commercial with David Naughton, and they had auditions at the college. I auditioned and I got a principal part.
HARVEY | Hopefully, they will find the footage.
JERRY | It exists. It’s on YouTube. I’m dancing under the St. Louis Arch. I started to get checks from Young and Rubicam. I was in college and I’m getting checks—I had never gotten checks like that in my life, so I’m saving this money. I went to New York on spring break to stay with friends who I had met at the Muny, and they’re going to an audition for a Broadway show. They said, “Come with us. You’ve got an Equity card, it’ll be fun.” I followed them to the audition. I didn’t even know that it was for [the 1980 revival of] Brigadoon, for Agnes de Mille. She was there and she hired me on the spot. “Hire him, he’s tall. He can be a clan leader.” Done.
HARVEY | You know how many people you’re breaking their fucking hearts?
JERRY | Well, Agnes de Mille had already had her stroke, so she was in a wheelchair. James Jamieson, her assistant, did all the work and was brilliant. I was one of the understudies for John Curry, the gold medalist ice skater, who was playing Harry Beaton. I had private rehearsals with Agnes de Mille on the stage, sitting there in her wheelchair. She had a knuckle ring. And when she wanted to stop and give you a note, she would knock at the chair with her one good hand. And she would be very clear: “Point your foot a little more that way when you cross the sword.” The detail was so specific for someone who obviously had been around for a long time and was sitting there without physical mobility, but very clearly knew what she needed you to deliver. It was amazing just to be in the room with her for that first show.
HARVEY | Did she give you any advice that you remember?
JERRY | Not really. I was just watching her; she was very present. But it was 1979, 1980. Dancers didn’t speak; you come in your tights, you’re warmed up, you’re ready to go. You do what’s required. You don’t ask questions, you listen. You do it until she’s happy, and you go on to the next piece of choreography.
HARVEY | But is that not the same now? All great choreographers need you to do what they saw in their minds. I’m not a dancer—as you know better than anyone— but I get upset when people question a choreographer. This is a vision that’s being given to you. This is a gift that’s being given to you. Shut the fuck up about what you wanna do and do what the choreographer’s telling you to do; there’s time later to discuss and to negotiate.
JERRY | I once heard Fosse say something like this in an interview: “There’s a vision in my head. I’ve been listening to the music for months and weeks and years. You’re coming into the room to rehearse with me. You’re hearing it for the first time. I’ve got a plan, and I have to get the plan out of my head onto the bodies. Before we start editing the picture, let’s get the picture out and then we can color it in, shade it in, edit it, cut it—but first we have to get it out on its feet.”
I found it so helpful when I heard that, because it gave me the ability to trust myself and not edit myself until I get a version out there. It’s like writing. You’re a writer—you write a paragraph, you go back and you edit it; you write a scene, you go back and you edit it. Choreographers do the same thing. We’re writing with physicality; you write with the steps, then you go back, and you edit them to make them better.
HARVEY | I’m not a dancer, so I can say this, but you as a dancer were hired for a reason. You were hired because you move in a certain way, or you look a certain way. I chose you to put this dance on. Let me put the dress on you before you tell me you don’t like that color.
JERRY | I’ve seen a couple of musicals recently where there’s no dress to put on, there’s no story thought coming from the choreographer on the stage. There’s a step, but the step doesn’t mean anything. It’s not telling a story. It’s not moving the narrative forward; it’s not lifting the lyrics.
HARVEY | We have to understand what choreography is. The bottom line is that there is character. There is a story. There’s a reason that a dance exists. Let’s use Hairspray as an example. As the choreographer, you’ve got a bunch of kids at a school dance, you need to show us what that school dance would’ve looked like. You have to consider character, story, music—
JERRY | Period.
HARVEY | Period. Of course.
JERRY | Authenticity to the period of the story, which I find sometimes is out the window. John Waters did two things for me when we first started on the show. He set me up with a couple who were on The Buddy Deane Show to teach me the authentic Madison. They came to New York, and I worked with them. Then he said, “I want you to go to the Museum of Television [now the Paley Center for Media] and watch all the shows from before 1963 that had dance. When Kennedy was assassinated, America lost its innocence. We were innocent prior to that.” And it was true. If you watch some of those American Bandstands, they’re dancing 12 inches apart. They’re a foot apart! It really was informative to watch all of that and then watch Hullabaloo [a musical variety series that ran in 1965–66] where everybody was cutting loose and getting down and getting dirty. Integration had happened and things had changed.
HARVEY | Right. You have period and you have the actual dances going on in the period, and you have your music.
JERRY | I listen to the music nonstop. If Marc and Scott [Shaiman and Wittman, the composer and co-lyricists of Hairspray] give me a CD or Cyndi [Lauper, composer of Kinky Boots] gives me a CD, I listen to the music nonstop. The music starts to formulate visual ideas in my head. Thoughts just start to appear based on the rhythm I’m hearing and feeling.
HARVEY | And then you go into a room with a couple of your dancers, not the cast yet, but just to try things on people.
JERRY | Try steps. When I first started, I wanted to do it all. Then as I got better, I released myself from having to figure it all out the first time I walked into the room. Now I use the time to explore all possibilities. I listen to the music, create the steps, and go back to the script and look at the story and the lyrics and what it is I’m trying to tell with this story.
One of the examples I always use when I’m talking to people is the conveyor belt number in Kinky Boots. You had written in an early, early, early draft that the shoes are on conveyor belts.
HARVEY | All through the show. That’s how we were going to tell the story of the show, through conveyor belts.
JERRY | Conveyor belts, conveyor belts, conveyor belts. I went to the Tricker’s Factory, in Northampton [a shoemaking shop in England where much of the original movie of Kinky Boots was filmed], and there wasn’t a conveyor belt in the store; they pushed everything on carts. In the movie, the guy gets on the conveyor belt, and he walks in the boots. I thought about a video that I had seen years ago when YouTube first took off, of OK Go dancing on gym treadmills. And I thought, “Ah.”
I went to [scenic designer] David Rockwell and said, “Can you make me a conveyor belt three-and-a-half feet off the ground that that will hold my weight, so I can dance and jump on it?” And he said yes, and he made one, and I got on it, and I fell off about 10 times. There were no rails on it, so I said, “You’ve got to put rails on it.” “Where do you want the rails.” “I don’t know where I want the rails, so give me eight holes and rails that I can move around.” Then I called Stephen Oremus [responsible for music arrangements and orchestrations] and said, “Give me the tempo of this number. Once we set it, this number will be like this for eternity, because I’ve gotta make a belt that moves to the beat you’re gonna play. We’re going to have to lock it all in so it will stay on the beat no matter where we do it.” That was six months of figuring out that treadmill. But it all goes back to the script. What inspired the treadmill number was the very first draft, where you had the shoes on a conveyor belt.
HARVEY | I’m trying to give people an idea that choreography is not just about steps. There is a vision. You had gone to England to see the factory, and you called me up in the middle of the night and said, “Harvey, you’re not gonna believe it. We’re in a pub and on the second floor there is a boxing ring. We’ve gotta do that.” And, of course, I had been struggling with the arm-wrestling contest [from the movie], which I didn’t want to do. How boring is arm wrestling? And you came up with that boxing ring. That made a perfect sense. It gave Cyndi something theatrical to write; she gave you the music for it, I gave you the structure for it, and then you came in. I think there are many genius moments of yours in Kinky Boots, but the thing that will always touch my heart is that you threw a drag queen down on the floor, put a rubber band on her leg, and it became a boxing ring. Where does that kind of genius come from? Where did that vision come from?
JERRY | You know where it came from? It came from me loving puzzles and that little square that we decided to make the factory office. I kept saying, what can I do with that square? We ended up cutting it in half and opening it up and I said, “Oh, there’s two sides of the ring. I need to make the other two sides.” I took two pieces of elastic and stretched them and put a leg in the air, and now I’ve got a boxing ring.
HARVEY | So there’s more to dance than steps. There’s character, there’s the interpretation of music, there’s the period that we’re in. What else would you say?
JERRY | Space. How to define the space you’re in. Because theatres can be used in a lot of ways. I’m working on a show now where I’m planning to use the aisles. I’m really psyched about it because I don’t like to use the aisles just to use the aisles, but it’s perfect for this story because it’s going to represent something that makes the story work. I’m using them because they serve a purpose in the storytelling. So how do you use space to tell your story? Whatever the theatre is, how do you transform it? Nowadays you go into the theatre, and you see shows like Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812, where they changed the entire space completely. Even Moulin Rouge!, they changed the space into the, you know, the Moulin Rouge.
HARVEY | Now we’re into something else called collaboration. You are now at a point of your career where you direct and choreograph. Can you step back to just choreography in your mind, and explain to the people reading this article what that collaboration is?
JERRY | You know this better than anyone, because you’re the star on stage, but I’m the person watching you—I’m watching everything you say, everything you sing, and every step you take, and I’m crafting with you how to best tell that story of that character you’re portraying. I never get tired of watching someone on stage when I’m working with them, because literally you’re doing a dance with that actor and crafting that thing to make it work for them and the audience.
I had the pleasure of working with [Michael] Bennett and with [Jerome] Robbins, two great master director-choreographers. But it wasn’t until I had the experience of working with Jack O’Brien on The Full Monty that I realized the difference in the jobs and how they need to feel like one, even if two people are doing them. Manny Azenberg had tried to set us up 10 years earlier; he said, “You two should work together. It will be a good collaboration.” It took us 10 years to get to that date, but we finally did. And then we were together for 10 years, and did some amazing things, and had an incredible time doing them, because there was complete freedom shared between us.
The brilliance of Jack is that Jack was absolutely comfortable letting me go. He would let me get up and direct a scene if I wanted to direct a scene. And, in turn, I would let him get up and choreograph one if he wanted to choreograph one. That was the kind of collaboration we had right from the start. The other gentlemen were brilliant, but their collaboration efforts weren’t quite as successful. Jerry [Robbins] was certainly a dictator from the start, from the get-go. Michael had learned to manipulate people so they would think that he was collaborating with them, but he was getting exactly what he wanted. Jack genuinely lets people collaborate. He’ll let the best idea in the room win. And I learned that from him— being able to listen to the people you’re doing the show with, knowing that we’re all there together to make it successful.
HARVEY | Let’s get to putting the dance on an actor. With Hairspray, you all hired mostly actors.
JERRY | Yes. There were only two dancers. Everybody else were actors and great singers. The challenge with Hairspray, which is the challenge with a lot of musicals these days, is every single person in your ensemble has to be able to act and sing, because they have to cover a role.
HARVEY | Exactly. It’s not like the old days.
JERRY | No. You need double covers. You can’t have just a dancer on stage. If I’m dealing with someone who’s a star, like you, and I have to work with them in a choreography number, I use it to my advantage. I will only look good if they look good. That’s a great lesson I learned from Bennett. He said, “If they don’t look good, you don’t look good. You have to figure out the moves that work for their bodies and make it charming and wonderful for you.”
I loved that. And Robbins loved that. Susann Fletcher was not a dancer. She was an actress; she played Golde in Jerome Robbins’ Broadway. But she also played the lead in the Billion Dollar Baby Charleston number, because she could come out the door and scream and shake her fringe and shimmy and make Jerry laugh. She made Jerry laugh when she did it, and that’s why he cast her, because it was funny and he wanted that to be funny. He said, “I’ll teach you the steps, but you’ve gotta make me laugh.” That’s how she got the part.
HARVEY | Did Jerome Robbins walk into the room, and everything was done?
JERRY | No, we rehearsed for two years. One of my favorite memories of Jerry was when we were trying to put together the On the Town ballet for Jerome Robbins’ Broadway. Fancy Free had been running for forever at New York City Ballet, but he wanted the On the Town ballet to be different. We started to work on a new version, we worked for six weeks, and he came in one day and he chucked it all out. He said, “This is terrible. I don’t like it. We’re starting over.” And I just thought to myself, “You know, if Jerry Robbins can work on something for six weeks and chuck most of it and start over, I should never be afraid to throw out my own crap.” Because you don’t know what you’re gonna learn.
Perfect point—you came into the room [during Kinky Boots rehearsals] when I was doing “What a Woman Wants.” I had done weeks of pre-production with a Latin tango scarf dance, with all the Angels dancing. I turned to you and said, “This isn’t any good. I have to change this.” You asked me, “What do you want to do?” “I think I want to cut everybody except for Lola and the factory workers.” And you said to me, “Try it”—and that’s all I needed. I just needed permission to cut my own shit. That’s the best thing a collaborator can say to you.
HARVEY | Here’s the difference. The first one was a fabulous dance. I mean, I remember that tango, but it had nothing to do with the story.
JERRY | It was purely because I loved the Angels, and I wanted to put them on stage in another number because they were so good. But they didn’t have any reason to be in the factory.
HARVEY | No reason at all. They took away from the meaning of that number, which was Lola dancing with women.
JERRY | Yep. It’s story, story, story.
HARVEY | You learned these lessons because you always had dance in you. Was The Will Rogers Follies your last role?
JERRY | Most people don’t know this. I stopped dancing after On Your Toes in 1984. I was 26 and working for Michael Bennett on Scandal and Chess, and I said I wanted to be a choreographer. I was going to stop dancing and just assist and work. And I thought, “Oh, I’ll be on Broadway in a year. I’ll have my own Broadway show. I’ll be doing a Broadway show in a year.” I spent 17 years as an assistant: 17 years as an assistant working for Michael, working for Jerry, working for Ron Field, working for Joe Layton. Working, working, but never getting the gig. I did the first workshop of Smokey Joe’s Cafe. I did an audition for Jerry Zaks for Guys and Dolls; Chris Chadman got it, God bless him, and it was brilliant. I auditioned for other things, I just didn’t get them. Then finally Michael Mayer saw my production of Follies at Paper Mill Playhouse, because Andrew Lippa and I had done Broadway Bares together, and he said to Michael, “You should talk to Jerry.” He did, and he asked me to do You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown with him. That was the start. That was my foot in the door. But it was 17 years as an assistant.
HARVEY | Go back. Why did you do The Will Rogers Follies?
JERRY | I did The Will Rogers Follies in 1990 because Jeff Calhoun, my dear friend—we had done the film of Whorehouse together— was assisting Tommy [Tune] and he knew he needed somebody to dance without their clothes on, basically. He knew I was in great shape, and that I had just broken up with my first partner of seven years. I wanted to go to work, I wanted to get my self-respect back. He asked me to do it, and I said, sure. Okay. I went into the show for a year and a half.
HARVEY | By then you were already on your trail to be a choreographer.
JERRY | But I was still working as an assistant and not getting a Broadway show. And while I was in The Will Rogers Follies, Tommy’s agent Eric Shepard, who was trying to help me, said, “Tommy’s got a movie that he doesn’t want to do, and he said to send you over there.” I went across the street after the show, at 11 o’clock at night, and I met the producer and the director of the film; they told me they had a star who had to do a dance, and he was uncomfortable and unhappy, and could I help them? And I said, “Who is it?” They said, “Come tomorrow to practice and you’ll meet the star.” I came, and I walked in, and in the corner, Al Pacino is doing authentic tango with some girl who was just pushing him around the room. He was doing authentic tango, but he wasn’t being choreographed, so he was getting frustrated because he couldn’t remember anything.
I said, “Wait, wait, wait. You’ve got to do eight counts and you’ve got to do it 10 times. And then you add the next eight and you do 16 counts and then you do another. Now you’ve got a routine and he can repeat it and he doesn’t have to think about it. And you’ll get the performance out of him.” We started building the tango that day and the producer, I think, gave me $2,500 in cash. Said, you just saved us, because now he wants to put the scene in the movie [Scent of a Woman].
HARVEY | That’s a great story.
JERRY | For the next seven years I choreographed films while I was waiting to get a Broadway show. I did In & Out with Kevin Kline. I did One True Thing, Meet Joe Black, The Mirror Has Two Faces with Streisand and Jeff Bridges—I did the last number where they dance around during the credits. I did all these numbers in movies. It was crazy.
HARVEY | Right. But there is a great example of building a dance on an actor, building a dance on a performer.
JERRY | Most of those were working with actors who were uncomfortable with moving, so you’re just trying to make them feel comfortable in a scene where they have to dance. One of the things that I think is really important for choreographers of stage to understand is that it’s different from film and television. In film and television, the story is controlled by the editor. You are not as responsible for telling a story with your steps; the edit is the final storytelling.
On stage, you have to tell a story. It can’t just be steps. Even if the number is just about an entertaining number, a show-within-ashow number, you still have to have a story of how that show number is going to be entertaining the audience. And that’s your job. Nobody does that for you.
HARVEY | Let’s talk about the person who does the dance arrangements. You’ve got a song, and now it needs to be a number in a show. In the old days, there was a different person who just came in to do the dance arrangements. Is that the way it is now?
JERRY | It depends on the musical. I’m using Zane Mark right now on Boop! [Boop! The Betty Boop Musical, based on the classic cartoon character, is currently in development, with a pre-Broadway tryout slated for this fall in Chicago. Jerry is directing and choreographing.] Zane did The Full Monty with me, and he also did Never Gonna Dance. Zane is one of my favorites because he just gets me and my rhythms. We have a rhythm communication.
In Boop!, we meet the character in the opening number, which is called “A Little Versatility Never Hurts”—so I have to show her versatility throughout this musical number. What better way to end a star number than in the classic Betty Boop look with the top hat and the tap shoes and the little pants in her black-and-white world, and so it turns into a giant tap dance where she is the star of the number. The goal of the number is to make sure the audience understands that Betty Boop is the star of Fleischer cartoons. I knew what I wanted to do, but I was having trouble figuring out where I wanted to cut into the song to do the dance break and then return to vocal. Zane was very helpful, because he helped me find the right place to get in. Once I was in, we built three different sections of dance and we tooled around with them all. I think I cut one down in half, I cut another one in half, I created another section, and it returns us to vocal in a big Broadway musical kind of way. That’s Zane building music. I start to work the steps with him rhythmically, and then we start to build music on top of that.
Stephen [Oremus] did the dance break for “Everybody Say Yeah” [in Kinky Boots]. Stephen would sit in the room and watch me on the treadmill. I told him that I wanted to mix it up, do a five section—a “1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 2, 2, 3, 4, 5, 3, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8.” We counted it out and then he came up with that beautiful music that supports it. Usually, I work from a rhythm place with the dance arranger first before all of the music is added on.
HARVEY | So there are no rules. It could be the dancer first and then the dance arranger. It could be the song first. It could be, as with any brand-new show, that all of a sudden you throw the whole number out and get a new number overnight and have to start all over again. Because in the long run, we all are working in service of the story.
JERRY | When we did the little Tracy break in “You Can’t Stop the Beat” [in Hairspray], I started go-go dancing, like I was in a ’60s movie, and Shaiman just started following me; again, it was someone I was working with where I was comfortable enough to do what I do and just let them follow what I was doing. That’s sort of what Zane and the drummer do—whoever the drummer is. I always have a drummer. I can’t work on a dance arrangement without a drummer in the room.
HARVEY | There are a lot of people who have a dream of one day doing this. What should the concentration be? Take the jobs as they come?
JERRY | There’s always a lesson to be learned in every job you take as a choreographer. The thing that I take away the most from the work I’ve done is the collaboration. The collaboration and how we build something together. Because as a choreographer, you can come in with all the bells and whistles, but if it doesn’t work in the story and the musical, everybody’s gonna be looking at their watch.
