Radio City: Swingville

I totally did it to myself. I angered the swing gods.

At least, that's what we say here in the Radio City dressing room when you do one or more of the following before a performance in the Radio City Christmas Spectacular:

* stay out late
* forget to buy eyelash glue
* skip the red lipstick
* had one too many the night before
* don't shower

I stayed out late last night. I undoubtedly angered the swing gods.

As many of you know, I am a swing in the show, which means that I am an understudy for three of the singers. Normally, I get to the theater between 8:30am and 9:30am, leisurely pour myself a cup of coffee with half a packet of Swiss Miss with marshmallows (we call this a ghetto mocha), put on a little makeup, and check my email. That way, I would look as if I could go onstage at any time, just in case someone falls down the stairs or something. (But since that only happened once in my four years, I mostly expect to do this as an unnecessary precaution.) Well, today my lovely morning routine was rudely interrupted when Mrs. Claus called out sick! PANIC ENSUED.

With just 30 minutes, I had to put on heavy stage makeup, put my hot rollers to work, find my costumes, go over all my lines and spacing, and step out on stage. The latter was especially terrifying because swings don't have an opportunity to rehearse on stage at all, let alone with unfamiliar costumes and microphones. And since Mrs. C. was the sickie, I would also be singing a solo while wearing a ginormous dress with hoopskirts and climbing up and down the Christmas train.

As you can image, I was more than a little nervous.

Luckily, that early morning hour infused everything with a dream-like quality. It barely registered that I was standing on stage in front of 6,000 people and singing something I've never sung in public before. And somehow, I was still relaxed enough to enjoy it. I looked around at all my friends on stage and had a grand old time. It was a Christmas miracle!

And I'm so, so glad that first unplanned performance is over!

Radio City: Animal Orientation

As you may or may not know, the camels are the real stars of the Radio City Christmas Spectacular. I'm talking real live camels, people! They travel to Bethlehem in the Nativity scene at the conclusion of the show.

Don't ask why I'm making that face.

The camels are not alone, however. The show also stars sheep and a donkey.

Since these animals are not exactly house pets, their handlers introduce them to the cast at Animal Orientation. Here are the things I have learned at Animal Orientation:
     * Sheep behave like dogs.
     * Donkeys like to eat French toast.
     * Camels' hips are way up on their backs, so they can kick you if you're standing anywhere in a six-foot radius.

The camels take a daily constitutional around the block.

Some very lucky (or unlucky, depending how you look at it) dancers play shepherds and get to stand with a sheep in Bethlehem, which earns them Animal Pay in their weekly paycheck. This is a real thing. Simply for standing there with leash in hand, they get extra dough. So in addition to learning animal facts and cautionary tales at Animal Orientation, they also get up close and personal with their sheep.

Even though we rehearse for at least four weeks, the animals only arrive the day of our final dress rehearsal. Why? They're pros. Ted the Camel has been doing the show for years. And loves it. I swear he even smiles and poses for pictures. He and the other two camels live in a little room (aptly named "The Camel Room") on the right side of the stage. The sheep and donkey live in a pen one level down from the stage; they ride the elevator up to the stage, hit their marks on stage during the show, and ride the elevator back downstairs. Seeing six sheep in an elevator is definitely a treat.

This year, Animal Orientation was set for Thursday at 2pm, but the camel truck broke down on the Thruway. So it was rescheduled for 10pm that night.

In case you're wondering, all of the above is completely true. I swear. Don't believe me? Take a gander at this little video I made in 2007.

"I can't. I'm in tech."

Ahhh, the joys of tech.

Never heard of it, you say? Then you must not have watched the so-bad-it's-good episode of Smash in which Karen told her live-in boyfriend that she couldn't decide if she wanted to get married because she's in tech.

Once an entire show has been taught and practiced in dance studios, the director and choreographer work with stage managers, designers, and other members of the crew to put the show on stage with lights, microphones, props, scenery, and more. This is a slooooooow process with a lot of stopping and starting. It often means very long hours and very little sleep.

We all moved into the Radio City theater yesterday. Because it's such a huge space (6,000 seats!), we are assigned different quadrants to lounge in--Rockettes are mid-house left, singers are lower house left, and dancers are upper house right. And lounge we do. When not working or watching others work, we chat, snack, play on our iPhones, and even write blogs.  :)

Where were we before this, you may wonder? Well, the Radio City stage is used for a ton of concerts (the JoBros sold the joint out two weeks ago), so it's off-limits for us during the early part of rehearsal. Because there are only two rehearsal studios in the building, neither of which is nearly as big as the actual stage, we rehearse in a church basement on Ninth Avenue. Seriously. It's a giant basement that is big enough to be divided into two stage-sized spaces, 4 common rooms, a lunch room, a music room, a physical therapy room, and several offices. There are sprung dance floors, soundproofing equipment, mirrors, and more. The amount of work that goes into transforming the basement for just a month of rehearsals is insane.

We started at the top of the show yesterday (Spoiler alert--it's a 3-D movie staring Santa Claus!), and after working 1pm-10pm yesterday and today, we are only at the fifth number in the show. Sometimes, I kind of hate tech. It's just so slow and boring. But there's something different about teching at Radio City. The house is just so huge and grand. It feels like a privilege to be here when it's virtually empty. It makes me feel like Annie when Daddy Warbucks takes her to the movies. I mean, how many other people get to do this?

Please remind me of this feeling in a few days. I'll probably have forgotten it by then.

Project Radio City

Well, folks, it's almost that time again: time to sing carols, trim the tree, and elbow your way past tourists in Rockefeller Center.

I was absolutely thrilled to began rehearsals for my fifth year in the Radio City Christmas Spectacular™ last week. But I was over the moon when I walked by the costume shop and saw this stunning design created by Project Runway's  Christopher Palu:

Now, in case you missed it, Heidi and Tim challenged the designers to create a dress for the Rockettes to wear at a future performance. While watching the episode, I thought that Christopher's idea and design were absolutely brilliant and well-executed--and utterly New York. I knew he would win the second I saw it.

But upon seeing the dress in real life, I must say that there are some flaws:
*The skirt has no movement, no give. So it won't be flattering when the girls kick.
*The trim outlining the buildings is hot glued on and is already crumbling.
*The design of the dress doesn't really allow for undergarments to be concealed.
*The flesh-colored material isn't supportive, which means the garment will begin to lose its shape the second the wearer puts it on.
*There isn't enough color contrast between the buildings and the fleshy material, making the buildings harder to distinguish.
*Even if there was more color contrast, the buildings wouldn't be visible to anyone past the tenth row. And Radio City is a 6,000-seat house.

My Nina-like critique is not to say that any of these flaws are Christopher's fault. I'm sure there are many, many challenges dance designers face when creating new costumes, and the Rockettes are an iconic brand performing in an incredibly unique space. There are few that would have succeeded in this challenge, given the time, resources, and requirements. Interestingly, after seeing the dress firsthand, I can't help but wonder if Dmitry's dress should have won.

Here's the big question: WHY WEREN'T THE ROCKETTES IN THE WORKROOM? They would have easily been able to communicate their needs to the designers, who would, in turn, have more information with which to create usable costumes. They also would have looked stunning on the runway. Perhaps the producers thought that might be setting the designers up to fail? Though they did give the designers a little lesson in dance.

I suspect that Christopher may not be able to claim his prize. Costume costs range from hundreds of dollars to thousands of dollars. Each. And there are 36 girls to costume. I'm not sure anyone would invest that much in a dress that will only be worn once to an unidentified event. So, I'm sorry, Christopher. I don't want you or your adorable Long Island family to be disappointed. But don't worry--I'm sure you have a well-dressed future ahead of you on the runway.

(Curious about how the other contestants fared? Check out this recap on EW.com.)

Living the Dream? Or Smash-ing It?

Smash, that lovable/terrible/fascinating/aggravating show has brought a touch of NYC theater to the small screen in small towns across America. As a result, many people have asked me about the show’s content—What’s true? Is it realistic? Is there a Terrible Ellis in every production?

For these burning questions, and many more, I suggest checking EW.com, Vulture.com, and Sharon Wheatley's SMASH Fact or Fiction? on a regular basis. But for a day in the auditioning life of a small town girl (like Karen) who has been in the biz for a while (like Ivy) and who has made some questionable fashion choices (like Julia), read on…

I hate to break it to you, but the chances of a complete unknown getting an appointment to audition for the lead of the workshop of a new Broadway show are slim to none, even if you’re stunningly gorgeous and your voice is second to only grey-haired blues singer (and Teen Angel) Taylor Hicks.

Rather, you’d probably have a day like I just had: you do your hair and makeup, you pick out an outfit, and you schlep a three-ring binder full of songs you sing well and two pairs of dance shoes, and you arrive at a chorus call, where you sit on the floor like a kindergartener in a room full of 100-200 girls. When they call your name, you dutifully file into the room with a group of 20-30 girls, learn a dance on the spot in 30 minutes or less, and perform it in a smaller group of 3-5 while the casting director, choreographer, director, and various assistants whisper about your height, your hair color, your experience, your looks, your shoes…oh yeah, and your talent.

When everyone in the group of 20-30 has danced, the casting director calls names of the women that the creative team would like to stay to sing. Sometimes you can sense a pattern (all the girls are 5’ 6” and above), and sometimes it can seem completely random. And on very bad days, someone who looks exactly like you can get kept and you don’t. The girls who are asked to sing have to stick around until all 200-300 girls have danced, and then they file back into the dance room one by one and sing 16 bars (about 1-2 pages of sheet music) of a song of their choosing. After that, they are dismissed in a, “Don’t call us, we’ll call you,” sort of way. Meaning, the casting director might call you to come back again to dance or sing or even to read a scene—but if you don’t get a call, you don’t get a call. They don't call you to tell you the job went to someone else. You only know that you didn’t get a call when you read someone’s Facebook status that says: “Soooooo excited to get my dream role in Show X at Theater Z!!!!” Then, you immediately text your friends to meet you at the corner bar.

A singing chorus call works in much the same way—you gather in a room of 200-300 ladies, except this time, you’re sitting on the floor in a party dress and heels. You line up in a group of 20, and you file into the audition room one by one to sing 16 bars of your choosing. The creative team (which is sometimes represented by a casting director’s assistant’s intern and the theater producer’s coffee boy) writes cryptic notes about you on your resume as you sing. Sometimes they’re on their phones. Or the computer. Or eating lunch. Your job is to ignore all that and sing pretty. When you’re done singing, you often just get a, “Thank you,” and you walk out of the room. Sometimes they’ll ask you to sing a second song, sometimes they’ll call you back to dance, and sometimes they won’t call you at all. I dragged my sister to a singing chorus call when she came to visit, and her analysis is as follows: “People wore unusual outfits and tons of bright lipstick. You had to wait around forever and were only in there for two minutes. Some people seemed genuinely excited, some pretended, and some were too old to be there.”

And this is what we go through on a daily basis. Sometimes multiple times a day. To top it all off, booking a theater job isn’t like booking a regular job—chances are that the job you did all the above work to get will last for less than three months. Then you’re back to the drawing board.

I seem to have painted a very bleak picture today (probably because I have the post-audition blues, a very common side effect of this lifestyle), but I must say that the upside of this business is huge. HUGE. You never know when you may get a phone call that will change your life. For example, on my very worst financial day ever (the one and only time I had to ask my parents to help me pay my health insurance), I got a call that I had booked my very biggest show ever—The Radio City Christmas Spectacular—a show that would solve my financial problems for what turned into four years! And you’re always just one audition away from that all-important phone call—just inches away from the carrot dangling in front of you. You get addicted to the feeling of success being just around the corner.

But…

That darn carrot is tricky to grab. In a (very) recent fit of exasperation, I asked a friend, “Why do we torture ourselves?!?!” She hit the nail on the head, pure and simple: “For the clapping.”

Any questions about show business or Smash? Ask away!

Little Gimp in the Big City

Manhattan really isn't built for gimps.

It's truly not. With its crowded sidewalks and the fast pace, Manhattan caters to the strong, the healthy, and the able-bodied. You can’t be too young (strollers are hard to lug everywhere and take up valuable square footage) and you can’t be too old (walkers and wheelchairs are essentially verboten). It’s survival of the fittest around here. Eat or be eaten. And according to my completely unscientific study, the fittest pedestrian predators seem to be healthy men and women between the ages of 18 and 50.  

I had only a vague notion of this subconscious anti-gimp attitude until I actually became a gimp. Temporarily, that is. I had to have more than 20 stitches in my ankle (long story), and as a result, I was not supposed to exercise, point or flex my foot, take the stairs, or walk. At all. When my doctor told me all the details (after the stitches were a done deal), I just stared at her numbly.  Not take the stairs? Did she not know that I live in a fifth floor walk-up?! Or that there were 150 stairs, two transfers, and 3 avenues of walking just to get from her office to my apartment via subway?!

I wanted to cry.

I was so terrified of ripping the stitches that I followed her instructions to the letter. Well, to the lowercase letter. I hobbled as little as I possibly could. This involved me putting most of my weight on my left leg and keeping my right leg straight, sort of like a peg leg. I had to take shuffling baby steps, which was infuriating. Avenues I used to travel in 2 minutes flat now took me at least four times as long. People with two good legs passed me left and right—well, mostly left, since I stuck to my sidewalk etiquette and hugged the right side of the sidewalk with the other slow movers. I traveled up and down my stairs at a snail’s pace. Actually, I probably made a snail look as speedy since I had to painstakingly put two feet on each step to inch my way to my apartment. I took cabs to and from work, which cost a small fortune. And I had to deal with salespeople, strangers, and cabbies asking if I was okay.

By some lucky coincidence, I had booked my plane ticket home for Christmas two days after the surgery. I was absolutely itching to get home, where I would be picked up from the airport in a car and transported directly to my parents’ couch, where I hoped to permanently remain, watching Candace Cameron, Amy Smart, and Jennifer Grey “acting” in their various Christmas movies on Lifetime, Hallmark, and ABC Family.

But first I had to figure out how to get to my plane.

I couldn’t take the subway (like I usually do) because I couldn’t walk down the subway stairs. Actually, I couldn’t even carry my suitcase to the street. I left for my flight a whopping five hours early so my Florence Nightingale-like roommate could bring my suitcase downstairs and help me to get to the airport shuttle bus before he went to work. The ride was bumpy and terribly uncomfortable, but I finally made it to the security line...where I got screamed at in front of a line of people because I asked for a chair to sit down while I took off my shoes. I was shocked. There was yelling and eye rolling and exasperated sighs. And none of them even came from me! It can’t be that unusual for someone to have trouble balancing on one foot to take of her shoes, right? What about all the not-quite-ready-for-a-wheelchair-but-unsteady-on-their-feet old people out there?

At long, long, long last, I made it through security, got on the plane, and headed home for Christmas. While I was nestled all snug in my bed (well, it was really the couch) with visions of having two good legs dancing through my head, I starting thinking that it was a Christmas miracle that I survived the concrete jungle and made it to the ease of suburbia, where the only walking I had to do was from the front door to the driveway.

I’ve certainly come away from my gimp days with a new understanding for slow walkers in the city. They might not be trying to get in my way after all. They might be following doctor’s orders. They might be injured. They might have stitches.

And I'm thrilled that I’m healing well enough to no longer be one of them. Don’t get me wrong—I’m trying to be careful and not push myself, but I can once again keep pace with the city. I have learned one thing, though. If I ever have to schedule stitches again, I’m scheduling them in the suburbs.

A Totally Radical Christmas for Jaded New Yorkers

Jaded New Yorker (noun): A resident of New York City (or the surrounding area) who has seen it all and is therefore unfazed by any sight, sound, or smell he/she may encounter. 
(Antonym: Overly Excited Tourist)

One of the greatest assets NYC has to offer is the jaded New Yorker. JNYs are fascinating creatures to behold--they don't even blink when passing a man with a cat on his head, a homeless man peeing on the sidewalk in broad daylight, or a Naked Cowgirl (a topless grandma with a guitar not quite big enough to cover her saggy skin) singing to people who can't quite look away in Times Square. New York City is like a giant Ripley's Believe It or Not! museum. It's insane what you can watch happening outside. But nothing can get this breed of urbanites to slow down on their race to the subway. I often marvel more at the JNYs than at the spectacle they're ignoring.

I get to see the JNYs firsthand when I film videos with my 80s dance troupe. Yes, you read that correctly. I belong to an 80s dance troupe that is changing the world one body roll at a time. Under the strict supervision of Deb and Ted Spangles, the Spangles Dance Company aims to bring back awesome moves and attitude and outfits from the 80s. We were even featured on America's Got Talent last year.

We film amazing music videos at various locations in midtown Manhattan. At least, until the cops kick us out. With blue eyeshadow, giant mall bangs, and sequin legwarmers, we make quite a spectacle of ourselves, and we often draw crowds of Overly Excited Tourists, who are pleasantly baffled that group dance numbers happen so unexpectedly on NYC sidewalks. You can almost see them trying to remember every detail to tell their neighbors in Iowa.

However, the Jaded New Yorkers could care less. They barely glance in our direction as they travel speedily to wherever they have to be in such a hurry. I love watching their blank stares in the background of the Spangles videos. We can high kick in their faces and they don't even flinch. I can't say I blame them. I know exactly how long it takes me to get where I need to be in the city, and I often get agitated if anything slows down my carefully timed travels. After 10 years here, I wouldn't say that I stop to watch oddities I see on the streets, but I do slow down when I pass a group of fast-talking breakdancers. Or a woman who has never cut her hair playing a musical saw. And when I see a drunk passed out in his own puke on the subway stairs, I always check to see if he's breathing. It seems like the charitable thing to do--especially around the holidays

And on that pleasant note, please enjoy the Spangles latest video: It's The Weather Girls (of "It's Raining Men" fame) singing a tune that sounds exactly like "It's Raining Men," but with the words "Santa" and "Christmas" in it. And if you like what you see, learn more at www.SpanglesDanceCompany.com.