New York, London stage shows with local tie are on hold.
NYC and London stage productions with choreography by New London’s David Dorfman are put on ice due to COVID-19
Just a few weeks back, choreographer David Dorfman, who is a dance professor at Connecticut College and lives in New London, was busy working on stage projects in New York City and in London.
In New York, he was choreographing a new Off-Broadway show with music and lyrics by Duncan Sheik and book and lyrics by Kyle Jarrow. Sheik wrote the music for “Spring Awakening,” and Jarrow’s eclectic list of credits range from “SpongeBob Squarepants: The Broadway Musical” to the military drama “Valor,” now streaming on Netflix.
Dorfman took a weeklong break from his responsibilities with that show, titled “Whisper House,” to head to England. “Indecent,” the 2015 Broadway play that Dorfman choreographed, was going to make its bow in London. And Dorfman popped into make sure everything was OK and to tweak elements as needed.
“Indecent” enjoyed two preview performances and two standing ovations.
The rehearsals of “Whisper House” were likewise going quite well.
And then, of course, the coronavirus outbreak hit, full force, both in the U.S. and England.
“Whisper House” was supposed to have its first preview performance on the day that Broadway shut down, March 12.
“Indecent” hasn’t made it past that well-received second preview performance.
As with most things, it’s uncertain when or if the shows will be back onstage. It all depends on when the pandemic slows enough for stay-athome orders to be lifted.
But Dorfman is quick to put that in its proper perspective.
He is mourning the shows that are not being seen by audiences, and it’s awful that so many people are unemployed because theaters have shut down.
“With that said, there are people whose lives are at stake. We all have to join together to alleviate this virus, this very, very insistent plague so we can get back into action. Right now, it’s much more about life than it is about getting these productions going,” he says.
He says he tips his hat to the healthcare workers who are doing so much. One of his family’s closest friends is a doctor in New York. “Worry about her every day,” he says. “And we have so many other friends in the health profession. Those are our heroes right now.”
Haunted ‘House’
Dorfman was asked to join the creative team for “Whisper House,” and the schedule allowed it to happen. For the first time in his 15 years of teaching at Conn College, he didn’t have class on Fridays, and he got permission to pop into New York when he wasn’t teaching.
Work on “Whisper House” conveniently was scheduled to begin the Monday after David Dorfman Dance, the acclaimed dance company of which Dorfman is artistic director, performed “A(way) Out of My Body” at Connecticut College.
(A side note: Sheik came to Conn College in 2018 when students performed his musical “Spring Awakening.”)
“Whisper House,” which was to be produced by The Civilians at 59E59 Theater, is a musical ghost story that follows a boy sent to live with his aunt during WWII. The house is in a remote location in Maine, and the boy starts to hear strange music.
The storyline takes inspiration from the true tale of people on a ship drowning off the Maine coast because a young brother and sister living at a lighthouse hadn’t put on the light when they were supposed to. The siblings’ neglecting to do that wasn’t on purpose but rather a tragic mistake.
The show is “about intimacy, about getting close to people, about letting your prejudices fall away,” Dorfman said. “It’s all the things I think — and Kyle said this to the whole cast the day we canceled — it’s that suddenly the play in a very
unusual and poignant way is about what we’re going through. It’s about fears, it’s about someone’s peeking over your shoulder, about death, about life, about embracing the moment while we are all here together.”
A collaborative experience
Working on “Whisper House” was, Dorfman says, “on some level similar to ‘Indecent.’ It was very, very collaborative, and I really took my cues from Steve (Cosson, the show’s director). We had phone meetings about every single scene and every single dance.”
The ghosts are the prime movers in the piece. They were singers on a ship in the 1920s, so some of their moves echo the Charleston.
Dorfman says a lot of the movement is gestural, and that’s fitting for the piece. As with creating choreography for any play or musical, he says, “You just have to figure out what’s right for the storytelling.”
The “Whisper House” team was in the theater after a dress rehearsal and were modifying some things before the first preview. “And, then lo and behold, folks on their phones were getting the signals that Broadway was about to close down,” Dorfman says.
For a brief moment, there was a thought that they might present the show to an invitation-only audience that night, but the decision was against that for a lot of reasons, safety being the paramount one.
Bringing ‘Indecent’ to London
“Indecent,” a play by Paula Vogel, was playing at an off-West End theater called The Menier Chocolate Factory when it had to close. They are hoping it can reopen, but whether that can happen remains to be seen.
Associate choreographer Sarah Gibbons taught the choreography to the British cast until Dorfman arrived. (While Dorfman was in England,
Jordan Lloyd, a member of David Dorfman Dance, attended the tech rehearsals of “Whisper House” for him.)
“I came for a week (to London) to kind of OK things. I mean, everything was more than OK, it was fantastic,” he says, adding that Gibbons did a wonderful job teaching the cast.
“Then, because the stage is a little bit smaller, and there are different actors, obviously … i just suggested a few changes i thought would work a little bit better for that cast…,” he says. “The British actors are amazing. It was really gratifying.”
DORFMAN ON INSTAGRAM LIVE
David Dorfman has just started doing Instagram Live sessions. The half-hour sessions are at noon Mondays, and the topics range from where he finds inspiration to his love of dance citizens to his belief that “movement is necessary,” maybe now more than ever.
David Dorfman Dance can be found at @dorfmandance, and visit www.daviddorfmandnce.org for more details.