Dance (and flip) to bridge divide in rural America
Teens versed in hip hop join jaded theatre veterans in explosive new Broadway musical, The Prom Wayne “Juice” Mackins practises an aerial in the lobby before a performance for The Prom.
Dancing is to be expected in a Broadway musical called The Prom. But the happiest surprise is what an unpretentious delight that dancing is.
In The Prom, directed and choreographed by Casey Nicholaw, two musical-theatre actors from New York want to prove to the world that they’re not narcissists. Joined by a Juilliard graduate whose career is on the wane and a jaded chorus girl — she has quit Chicago after 20 years because the producers won’t give her a shot at playing Roxie Hart — they end up in Indiana, where a school has announced it will cancel the prom instead of allowing a student to attend with her girlfriend.
But in The Prom, whose book is co-written by Canada’s Bob Martin, there’s another lead character of sorts: the ensemble. While the movement of the main players, the New York gang, is rooted in musical theatre, the young dancers — the teenagers in the town — are grounded, more pedestrian. Their steps, performed mainly in sneakers, are rooted in hip hop.
The Prom, now at New York’s Longacre Theatre, emphasizes those contrasting dance styles. “It’s traditional versus new, and that is the two sides,” Nicholaw said in an interview. “The musical comedy side and the more realistic side of things.”
Dance is the conduit for bridging the two worlds. By the end, the forms build and blend, finding — just as the characters do — a way to get along. All the while, the lessons of dance are embedded in the story.
When Emma, the protagonist, who is a lesbian, needs to be convinced to protest on national television, Angie, the chorus girl — played with grit and sincerity by veteran Broadway dancer Angie Schworer — tells her: “Look, kid. Not everybody gets a chance to step out of the chorus. You got to do it for all us people who used to be called ‘gypsies.’ ”
Nicholaw, 56, whose credits include Mean Girls and The
Book of Mormon, knows a thing or two about that. He spent years working as a dancer on Broadway. “I waited tables in every restaurant,” he said. “I did a few regional things here and there, but not that much, and then the strangest thing happened: I started losing my hair, and then I got so much work.”
As a character actor who could dance, he appeared in eight Broadway productions — in all but one, as a member of the original cast. For Mary Antonini, an ensemble performer in
The Prom, that matters. The resulting choreography in
The Prom is so explosive that Antonini said it must start, for the dancers, from a deep, in- ternal place.
Recently, Nicholaw talked about the purifying power of
The Prom, what turned the show around and the energy of dance.
Here are edited excerpts from the conversation.
Do you find the spirit of the dancing in The Prom cathartic?
Yes, and I just love that everyone is dancing together at the end and that the song is called “It’s Time to Dance.” In every way. Do you know what I mean? The world has gotten so serious. It’s time to dance. It’s time to let loose. It’s time to be on a dance floor together.
And to feel your body?
That’s it. When it feels right, you’re going to move.
You don’t really see those kids dance until three-quarters of the way through Act 1, and it keeps building to the finish. So there’s more dancing and more dancing and more dancing until it just gets huge at the end.
Not to be corny, but isn’t it also about showing how different styles can live side by side?
Correct. That’s what it’s all about: the styles, the people. Musical-theatre people learning a different way and the people from the town learning a different way and finding a place where they all connect.
It’s so aspirational.
This show particularly moved me. I started working on Prom seven years ago. It was before I worked on Mean Girls. No one wanted to leave it. We wrote for everyone’s personalities and around everyone’s strengths. Angie is playing an aging dancer named Angie.
How does the finale, “It’s Time to Dance,” fit with that aspirational quality?
I wanted it to feel like everybody can dance together, which is why the entrances are so important. The moment when the kids all come in to the dance gets me every time. You see a straight couple and a straight couple, and then two guys. And then another straight couple and two girls, and it’s the normality and wide-eyed joy of just looking at a simple thing like a prom that I think is so delightful.
How did you verse yourself in hip-hop movement?
It was a little daunting at first. My way in was the percussiveness of it. I started as a tap dancer, so I got into it by thinking about the rhythms of things and what I would do if I were tapping.
A little less traditional tap, but that’s kind of how I got into it. It was just thinking about rhythms and then putting feet and arms to it.