Authors: Kristi Lynn Davis
Our footwear caused quandaries, too. To keep track of all my shoes, I would line them up on the shelf under my dressing table in the order they were to be worn. To confuse matters, we wore silver
tap
shoes for the opening number and silver
character
shoes for the closing number. The shoes were identical except for the taps. Inevitably, one of the Rockettes went on stage for “Diamonds” in her taps instead of her character shoes or, even worse, in one tap and one character shoe. As soon as the music started, and we heard the click-click of the taps, we’d all start to snicker, whisper, and look for the poor soul who would be next to receive “The Dork Award.”
“The Dork Award” was an ugly, little rubber guy presented to whomever made a big flub on stage. As if messing up wasn’t bad enough, you had to keep that hideous dude on your dressing spot until someone else pulled a boner. Then you gleefully gloated “Ha ha! You get The Dork!” and ceremoniously passed it on to the new winner. After performing in a show long enough, you live for other entertainers to make mistakes, because it breaks up the monotony. The goofball is generally ticked off, but everyone else thinks it’s hilarious. (Excepting when you have friends or family at the show; then you want everyone to perform perfectly.)
Being the only one clicking in taps was embarrassing. Everyone in the audience was watching
you
. (I know; it happened to me.) Also, kicking in taps was extra slippery and especially difficult with only
one
tap shoe, as the tap made that foot higher off the ground than the foot wearing the plain character shoe. Not to mention the fact that you were so distracted by the taps and all the stares that it was easy to lose track of the choreography and goof up.
The Grandmommy of costume calamities, however, was our “Diamonds” outfit. The main culprit was the swag of beaded fabric that hung down from one arm. It was a terrible nuisance because the dangling strands of beads would get caught in the beads adorning the front of the costume, and you’d end up like a spider snared in its own web. More often, your beads would entwine with the beaded swag of the girl next to you, pulling you together like Siamese twins needing to be surgically separated. The other dancers would be off leaping around in a circle, while you and your neighbor were still yanking on your swags in a tug-of-war, trying to pull the blasted bead strings apart. The final pull that successfully disentangled you would send stray beads flying all over the stage, leaving potential slipping catastrophes in the wake of all the dancers. A tiny, unnoticed bead could be more dangerous than a discarded banana peel. The poor wardrobe people spent a great deal of their time sewing strands of beads back onto our costumes.
Much like loose beads, a runaway earring posed another real disaster. Because it was so small, a performer was likely to overlook the sparkly sphere resting innocently upstage left, poised and ready to be underfoot during a jump kick that could land you back-smacking to the floor or twisting an ankle. If you perchance had the good fortune of noticing the earring or bead and planned to kick it out of your path, you’d better be confident about your ability to lob it all the way off stage, because if you moved it directly into someone else’s spot, you were bound to get an earful. Unless you were a sure shot into the wings, the best bet was to boogie around it and warn everyone you passed as you danced by.
“How did we warn each other without the audience knowing?” you might wonder. On stage, Rockettes could relay information, virtually undetectable by the audience, to other Rockettes using the most minute eye signals and/or ventriloquist-type whispering while maintaining the requisite, toothy smile. We used this covert communication to transmit messages like “My zipper is coming down! Can you zip me up?” “Look at that hot guy in the front row.” Or “Watch out for beads!”
Eventually, most of us, myself included, dropped our dread of the free-range earrings and beads and dealt with these diminutive nemeses as a fun challenge. I’d be chasséing downstage for the final “Diamonds” kickline and catch a glimpse of a bead sitting smack on number 3 ¼—the exact mark I was heading towards. “I see you, you little bugger!” No longer a newbie, instead of cowering in fear, I’d hone in on my target with determination and laser-like focus and launch that missile, whizzing past a group of jet-lagged Japanese. Some of the girls became absolute masters at punting the small objects without compromising the choreography. They were like soccer pros, kicking the ball without missing a beat.
Thanks to these destructive and dangerous little orbs, we developed a “Rockette Showgirl Revenge Kit,” which consisted of an Altoids box filled with single beads that had fallen off our costumes. Inspired by the movie
Showgirls
, which depicted jealous underlings sabotaging lead dancers to steal their limelight (by pushing them down stairs, for instance), the Revenge Kit was ostensibly to be used to derail an irksome dancer by tossing a bead in her path while on stage. Of course, no one would ever purposely jeopardize a fellow Rockette. It was all in jest. But we all recognized the hazards inherent in those peewee pellets.
*******
One of the big challenges of
The Great Radio City Spectacular
was that we often found ourselves burning the mid-day oil in rehearsals. Our contract specified that we could be called in to rehearse anytime after noon (except on our day off, which was sacred) with only twenty-four hours’ notice. Consequently, it was difficult to plan a life during the day (except before noon, but come on, that’s when we snoozed), because, like doctors, we were “on call.”
Our job required an assortment of rehearsals. Regularly scheduled “clean-up” rehearsals were run by the dance captain to keep the choreography and formations in tip-top shape. “Put-in” rehearsals were essential to accommodate the revolving door of new Rockettes coming in. Rehearsals were held to plug new stars into the star spot, to take out “Gold and Silver,” to reinstate “Gold and Silver,” to put different soloists into “Bolero,” and to insert special Christmas numbers at holiday time and then reinstate the original numbers once Santa had returned to the North Pole and the tinseled trees had been taken down.
Clean-up rehearsals were not my favorite; it was hard to get enthused about rehearsing a show you’d done hundreds of times and would do again twice that very evening. But Radio City was intent on making sure we were functioning at our highest level, and there always seemed to be formations that needed fine tuning or moves that some of us were interpreting slightly differently than the others or spacing that needed a tiny tweak.
We were watched and evaluated not only during clean-up rehearsals but during nightly performances as well. We even had to meet on stage every Monday before the first show for notes. When the dance captain dispersed her list of peccadilloes and transgressions, I held my breath, hoping that I wouldn’t get any and bristling when I did. The worst part was getting notes to make minor changes in the choreography, because I was now performing fully on autopilot, and if I had to think about what I was doing again, I was bound to make mistakes. None of us particularly enjoyed being critiqued and scrutinized, let alone singled out for dancing out of line, but this kind of painstaking attention to detail is what makes the Rockettes the household name they are today. They strive for a level of excellence that necessitates fastidiousness, so scads of rehearsals and corrections were a part of the whole shebang. I had to learn not to take it personally.
In addition to clean-up rehearsals with the dance captain, we also had random visits and clean-up rehearsal calls from the show’s various choreographers and directors. For instance, Violet Holmes, the visionary seventy-some-year-old choreographer of our magnificent “Dancing with Diamonds” number, dropped by with plans to polish her fading jewel back to its original glory. It was a real treat to have this legendary choreographer working with us live and in person. She was a superstar in the Rockette world, and we loved to watch her shake her groove thing. Her way of moving was so stylistic, however, that it was difficult to imitate precisely. Come hell or high water, she intended for us to get her little hip bump right. “No, Ladies, it’s like this,” she’d insist, popping her pelvis in a manner totally unnatural to the rest of us. We couldn’t argue with her; she created the dance, after all. After a heavenly afternoon with Violet, we shined brightly and were no longer diamonds in the rough.
Rehearsals with our show’s director, Boris Leghorn, on the other hand, were hell on heels. I trembled in my tap shoes at the mere mention of his name. Based in New York City, he wasn’t around much, but when he did fly out to Vegas, he returned to the stage with a vengeance. Most directors and choreographers were grateful to work with the Rockettes and treated us respectfully. He was not one of those people. To minimize any chance of provoking his ire, I came into rehearsal exquisitely made-up, with hair perfectly pulled back, and danced at full performance level with a smile plastered on my face. Otherwise during rehearsal I kept my lips zipped and mouth shut. “Zip it. Clip it. Collect it,” was my motto (as well as that of many other Rockettes) about refraining from complaining so that I could collect my paycheck and keep my job. The best way to handle any and all personalities, I decided, was to take the high road, remain professional, and, as a last resort, submit a formal complaint to Radio City if a leader truly stepped out of line. Eventually, karma caught up with Mr. Leghorn, and he got the boot, while the Rockettes remained employed.
Every three months we also had rehearsals with the dance captain to adjust for the incoming star spot. This injection of new star-power energy always created a lot of backstage buzz, curiosity, and excitement. The striking Susan Anton was a regular in the rotation, but we also shared the stage with the lovely Paige O’Hara and the legendary hoofer, Maurice Hines. Paige O’Hara was a lead Broadway actress (
Les Miserable, Showboat, Mystery of Edwin Drood
), most noted for being the voice of Belle in the acclaimed Disney movie
Beauty and the Beast.
The girls were happy to have her and her powerful, three-octave, bona fide Broadway voice on the bill. “She’ll be a perfect fit with the Rockettes!” we cheered, insistent upon a star whose professionalism and perfection matched or exceeded our own. But it wasn’t until we heard her belt out her solo, “I Want to Be a Rockette” (from
Kicks: The Showgirl Musical
, lyrics by Tom Eyen and music by Alan Menken, who also created the music for
Beauty and the Beast
), that we were moved to tears, fell to our knees, and kissed the glittered ground on which she glided.
That song was about us! Being a Rockette was our dream, too, and we were living it! Made me want to kick myself for all the times I had taken the gig for granted. This wasn’t just a job. This was a
dream come true
. Being just a little squirt, Paige played up her petiteness compared to the towering Rockettes. She was clearly too short to fulfill the fantasy, but her song hit me right in the heart. And she was as sweet as she was short.
Maurice Hines, a charismatic song and dance man, leant an entirely different vibe to the show. He was also an actor, director, and choreographer and had been discovered by his tap teacher, the famous choreographer Henry LeTang, way back when he was a wee, little tyke growing up in New York City. He and his brother Gregory Hines (film star, Emmy Award-winning television star, and Tony Award-winning Broadway star) started performing professionally as young children. The brothers had even served as the opening act for the real Gypsy Rose Lee, the actress about whom the musical
Gypsy
was written! I knew the dynamic dance duo from the 1984 film
The Cotton Club
, a gangster flick set in a 1930s Harlem jazz club (choreographed by their mentor LeTang). I was in awe of Gregory from the dance films
White Nights
(1985), in which he co-starred with ballet master Mikhail Baryshnikov, and
Tap
(1989). Gregory even came to see our show once when Maurice was headlining! Like his brother, Maurice was a shining star whose radiant personality captivated audiences and our cast alike. His fancy footwork and jazzy vocals were pure pizzazz. He made us look good.
The Rockettes always loved performing with Susan Anton, who was not only a real class act but also tons of fun. Prior to settling down in Vegas, she had toured the country for two years with
The Great Radio City Spectacular
. Hence, she was so comfortable with the show (and us) that she was able to goof around a bit. Occasionally, during the “Big Band” dance-off between couples, she’d play a secret “Guess the Theme” game, purely for the amusement of the performers on stage. She’d introduce the guys or gals with different names according to some particular theme that she had secretly chosen. For instance, “Please welcome Mr. Johnson, Harry, Richard, and Peter!” Of course, the audience didn’t have a clue that any hanky-panky was going on, but the cast was in stitches at the inside joke. Every one of our stars was delightful to work with and treated us well.
In spite of our wonderful stars and stellar production, an internal stigma had been attached to the Vegas show from the get-go. Our show wasn’t nearly as spectacular in scope or size as the one at Radio City. And our theatre seated only about 800 people compared to the Music Hall's 6,000. Perhaps size
does
matter. We seemed to be the black sheep in the family of Radio City Spectaculars, and it appeared that our parent company didn’t quite know how to handle us. At times, the attitudes from above made us feel like we were slightly flawed (behind closed doors, we jokingly labeled ourselves “The Factory Outlet Rockettes”). A lot of us had been well-respected Rockettes in other shows or eventually left to do the show in New York and became favorites there. So it wasn’t the individual Rockettes who were inherently defective. Something about that show made our superiors continually want to fix it.