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[0:06] David Armstrong: Welcome to Broadway Nation, the podcast that explores the remarkable history of the Broadway musical with a particular focus on the immigrant, Jewish, queer, and black artists who invented it.

[0:18] David Armstrong: My guests today are Dustyn Martincich and Phoebe Rumsey to tell us about a recent book they have edited and authored, along with a number of other contributors, which is titled Dance in Musical Theater: A History of the Body in Movement.

[0:32] David Armstrong: As anyone who has listened to this podcast must know by now, like the authors of this book, I believe that dance has always been one of the most important and key elements of musical theater.

[0:32] David Armstrong: From Oklahoma and West Side Story to Spring Awakening and Hamilton.

[0:47] David Armstrong: And by pulling together a range of diverse authors and perspectives, this book not only tracks the emergence of the dancer as a key figure in the genre, it also connects the contributions of past and present choreographers from the beginning of the 20th century and right up to today.

[1:04] David Armstrong: Dustyn Martincich is a professor of theater and dance at Bucknell University, and Phoebe Rumsey is a senior lecturer in musical theater at the University of Portsmouth.

[1:14] David Armstrong: You can find their full bios in the show notes to this episode.

[1:18] David Armstrong: If you enjoy this podcast, and I sincerely hope you do, I invite you to become a patron of Broadway Nation and join such generous individuals as Judy Hucka, whose support helps to make this podcast possible.

[1:30] David Armstrong: If you're interested, there'll be information at the end of the episode about how you too can become a patron.

[1:36] David Armstrong: Here we go.

[1:37] David Armstrong: Welcome Dustyn Martincich and Phoebe Rumsey today to Broadway Nation.

[1:41] David Armstrong: It is such a great pleasure to have you here to talk about your new book, Dance in Musical Theater: A History of the Body in Movement.

[1:48] Dustyn Martincich: Thank you for having us, David.

[1:50] Phoebe Rumsey: Yeah, great to be here.

[1:51] David Armstrong: There aren't a lot of books about Broadway choreography.

[1:54] David Armstrong: You would think, as prominent as dance is in the Broadway musical, it is an iconic aspect when we think about Broadway, the image is often people dancing.

[2:05] David Armstrong: But in terms of writing about it, much less scholarship about it, you've done something that hasn't been done very much.

[2:12] Dustyn Martincich: Well, I think there is a long trend of sort of monographs about certain stars.

[2:18] Dustyn Martincich: Like there's a lot out there about Jerome Robbins.

[2:20] Dustyn Martincich: You know, Agnes DeMille herself was a prolific author.

[2:23] Phoebe Rumsey: And a terrific writer.

[2:25] Dustyn Martincich: Yeah. So you can read a lot about dance in musicals and the people that created it.

[2:30] Dustyn Martincich: But I suppose, like diving in and sort of getting to the meat of what is going on and what dance can do hasn't quite been brought out recently.

[2:40] Dustyn Martincich: We certainly took inspiration from Liza Gennaro's Making Broadway Dance, and we know many other scholars that are doing our same sort of work, which is kind of from our maybe this is segueing into how this book came together, which is these different musical theater and dance groups that have grown out of academic conferences.

[2:58] David Armstrong: So let's just make sure everybody understands that this book is made up of 15 separate chapters, mostly by different authors, but all of them have been edited and shaped by the two of you.

[3:09] David Armstrong: You're the central figures in wrangling all of this and bringing it into a cohesive whole.

[3:14] Dustyn Martincich: Because we're both from the dance community, I think this idea of ensemble was important to us as a topic to study, but also as sort of a mode of working.

[3:23] Dustyn Martincich: So I don't know, maybe this is a little far out, but in some ways we're sort of the dance captains, I guess.

[3:29] Phoebe Rumsey: But like I love that adaptive topic.

[3:30] Dustyn Martincich: Yeah, and we're sort of keeping the proposal structure intact, but through these different chapters that are split up into two sections.

[3:38] Dustyn Martincich: So the first section is choreography and function, a little more of the nuts and bolts of how the history and how things are working and deep dives into that.

[3:46] Dustyn Martincich: And then the second part approach to choreography and the body gets a little more contemporary and looking at sort of the body as an archive.

[3:53] Dustyn Martincich: We had topics for each of these chapters, but the call was often to sort of expand from that, like what case studies you wanted from that.

[4:01] Dustyn Martincich: So we were sort of saying, we want something in this world, but feel free to use your own flair and style and research interests to sort of come to life.

[4:10] Dustyn Martincich: And then we'll sort of shape around that.

[4:12] Dustyn Martincich: So a bunch of like little solos amongst a big ensemble production number.

[4:16] Phoebe Rumsey: Yeah, and I love that.

[4:17] Phoebe Rumsey: And I think that trying to keep us centered on contributors who don't often get the top billing, right?

[4:23] Phoebe Rumsey: In a lot of our documenting, you know, centering women and folks of color who had contributed to the body of work and centering also members of the ensemble, naming members of the ensemble, for instance, as opposed to just saying all those people, which I also really appreciated in Bud Coleman's chapter about the dream ballet, actually talking about the dancers who were a part of that.

[4:44] Phoebe Rumsey: And what does it mean when you do a revival or you do a piece of repertory and dancers are teaching other dancers like what does that mean for folks like Gwen Verdon to be seen as that center point of Fosse's choreography?

[4:57] Dustyn Martincich: And it's not Fosse, it's Fossey and Burton.

[4:59] Dustyn Martincich: And then from there, stylistically, what happens next is movement gets passed from body to body as well.

[5:05] Phoebe Rumsey: I very much appreciate that analogy, the dance captaining.

[5:08] Phoebe Rumsey: I think that's right.

[5:09] Phoebe Rumsey: I've always been interested in how individual dancers have an effect that we don't even know they had, and they don't even know they had.

[5:17] Phoebe Rumsey: It's ongoing throughout the history of a show.

[5:20] Dustyn Martincich: One specific example of that, when you're doing an old show, sometimes you'll, especially when the scores used to be in manuscript, in the score, it'll say, Tommy does so and so here.

[5:30] Dustyn Martincich: And it'll be naming the not the character, but the dancer who was in the show originally is still in the score 40 years later as having done something because that was the cue that the music team needed.

[5:43] Dustyn Martincich: You know, for me, things, well, Tommy's still with us, whoever that was, and we could go back and try to figure out who that was and what they did in that particular ballet or whatever dance sequence was.

[5:54] Phoebe Rumsey: But I just think that's a metaphor, I guess, in its own way for the legacy of the individual dancers who sometimes get named and can be named today, but mostly are lost to us.

[6:06] Dustyn Martincich: Yeah, the anonymity of a dancer.

[6:08] Phoebe Rumsey: You know, I guess vocal ensembles also were like that for eons as well.

[6:13] Dustyn Martincich: Yeah.

[6:14] Phoebe Rumsey: Yeah.

[6:14] Phoebe Rumsey: I also love what you mentioned there because something I think that we also hoped to focus on here, that dance is actually this intersection between design, music, acting, the movement of the body and the translation of the piece from production to production.

[6:31] Phoebe Rumsey: The movement is actually really important because it is the thing that ultimately starts connecting all of the various pieces through costume, set, moving this prop, all of those kinds of things and citing some great case studies, I think, in the book, that you're like, oh, right.

[6:46] Phoebe Rumsey: That show probably wouldn't look the way it did if it didn't have the choreography that it did at the time, if those dancers who were doing the choreography at the time weren't participating to DNA.

[6:56] David Armstrong: So I'd love to talk about each of these sections of the book and delve into a little bit what you would cite as the highlights that people would want to look for when they pick up your book.

[7:06] David Armstrong: Say again what that first section is called.

[7:08] Dustyn Martincich: Yeah, that's choreography and function.

[7:10] David Armstrong: Yeah, tell us a little bit about what makes that a subject matter of its own.

[7:14] Dustyn Martincich: I'm just looking at the table of contents here, and basically it's through seven chapters.

[7:18] Dustyn Martincich: We're unpacking in different ways sort of the nuts and bolts of stuff.

[7:22] Dustyn Martincich: Like the opening chapter, reading dance, I think is a really helpful chapter because a lot of people are nervous about how to talk about the body.

[7:30] Dustyn Martincich: In this chapter that I wrote, but I try to bring in as many people as I can who are trying to give like tools of how to talk about dance, from stuff that's quite technical to things that are really, really accessible.

[7:41] Dustyn Martincich: Like just look at are they dancing in unison or what kind of shoes are they wearing?

[7:45] Dustyn Martincich: Almost like a laundry list of things you can look for.

[7:47] Dustyn Martincich: And if that doesn't work, then I shift to a totally different way of how you might be able to talk at dance.

[7:52] Dustyn Martincich: And this was inspired by a colleague who studies experimental theater and was like, I just don't know where to look.

[7:57] Dustyn Martincich: Who do I look at in a musical?

[7:58] Dustyn Martincich: And everyone seems to be saying, look at me, and how do I do that?

[8:01] Dustyn Martincich: So I think that sort of starts to unfold an entry into anyone looking at this, going, like, oh, I saw Sound of Music lawns, and then like, why does that happen?

[8:10] Dustyn Martincich: So I think it starts to inspire a whole bunch of questions.

[8:12] Dustyn Martincich: And so this first chunk is very sort of all sorts of little containers of a toolbox.

[8:16] Dustyn Martincich: One of those, a big container, you know, the longer one is a lot of history.

[8:20] Dustyn Martincich: So, like the second chapter goes into the roots of the musical from a whole bunch of different areas, bringing in British roots and Irish roots and African American roots.

[8:30] Dustyn Martincich: It's a long chapter that really expands on what that is.

[8:33] Dustyn Martincich: So if you're a student looking at the historical trajectory, there's a lot of places that you can springboard off of.

[8:39] Phoebe Rumsey: I also appreciate that you shine the spotlight on individuals who don't always get talked about.

[8:44] Phoebe Rumsey: When Broadway dance does get talked about, there's a whole range of really important people who get left out of the conversation most of the time because it just focuses on those sort of particular stars that we all know.

[8:56] Phoebe Rumsey: You know, Robbins, Fosse, and Agnes DeMille.

[8:59] Dustyn Martincich: The book talks quite a bit about Albertina Rash, who, you know, did dozens and dozens of Broadway shows and was so significant.

[9:06] David Armstrong: Just talk a little bit about that.

[9:07] Dustyn Martincich: Who are some of the people that get highlighted in the book that we don't always hear about?

[9:11] Dustyn Martincich: Well, I'll just say on the Albertina Rash chapter five, Bud's chapter, goes deep into the genesis of the dream ballet, which I think is something dance scholars enjoy sort of picking apart.

[9:21] Dustyn Martincich: As often it's said that Agnes DeMille in Oklahoma was the first dream ballet.

[9:25] Dustyn Martincich: But in fact, you can go quite far back to sort of these ways of thinking through people's mental challenges through dance.

[9:33] Dustyn Martincich: That so, yeah, bringing her and some of her affiliates from earlier days.

[9:37] Dustyn Martincich: Robert Alton is another one there.

[9:38] Phoebe Rumsey: Yeah, absolutely.

[9:39] Dustyn Martincich: Absolutely.

[9:40] Dustyn Martincich: And I'm gonna also just mention, you know, the con of conversations in dance and musical theater that tend to focus on the Ziegfeld Follies, and not always to Albertina Rash, but like just putting Adrian Naylor's chapter, put Darktown Follies in the same kind, like we're working at the same time as well as all of the different, you know, that the UK contingent with the Tiller Girls and talking about not just the Ziegfeld Follies as being the only thing that's happening at the time, but all of these other influences, and particularly with the Darktown Follies, I think that was one of my favorite moments where I'm like, oh, look at all these resources that are happening at the New York Public Library extension that's in Harlem.

[10:17] Dustyn Martincich: Oftentimes, if we only had certain everybody's like, oh, we only have 3,000 words to share.

[10:21] Dustyn Martincich: Like we should be making more of an effort to make sure that the 3,000 words have more people's names or have more influences acknowledged.

[10:29] Phoebe Rumsey: I also feel like talking about historical consciousness tap in Broadway, I know Benet Bayman really focuses on the female cat contributors as opposed to not necessarily just the Savion Glover and Gregory Hines, who are really, really essential and important to the history, but also Diane Walker and like Lady Diane, these incredible tapping hoofing folks who had, because of the collective mentality of creating choreography and creating movement and shared bodies of vision in terms of choreography.

[10:58] Phoebe Rumsey: A lot of the times you get to the point where, like, oh, what we need unname, you know, like all choreographers who we will share, not the collective.

[11:06] Dustyn Martincich: And so I think chapters like that were really exceptional.

[11:09] Dustyn Martincich: I also really love Ankin Varholos chapter on Asian faces and American bodies.

[11:14] Dustyn Martincich: And really, this is really not a lot of conversation specifically about the movement components of a lot of Asian influences of like where that fits in with dance, but also who's doing that, who's actually doing that choreography?

[11:27] Phoebe Rumsey: What is cultural consciousness in 2024?

[11:30] Dustyn Martincich: And how do choreographers make that happen by bringing in other folks, other specialties?

[11:34] Phoebe Rumsey: Andy Blank and Bueller's work, Amanda Olmsted talks about that and how he sourced out.

[11:39] Phoebe Rumsey: He's like, I'm not a salsa expert, I'm not a hip hop expert.

[11:41] Phoebe Rumsey: Here are all of the folks who are going to come and create with me.

[11:44] Dustyn Martincich: I think that's useful.

[11:45] Phoebe Rumsey: Absolutely.

[11:46] Phoebe Rumsey: And of course, that's something that's been happening throughout the history of the medium, but not always acknowledged or credited, certainly.

[11:54] Dustyn Martincich: The Tony goes to one person.

[11:56] Phoebe Rumsey: That's exactly right.

[11:57] Phoebe Rumsey: Even today, it still goes to Andy Blank and Bueller and not to his whole team, which I don't know if there's any other way to do that, but that's the nature of it.

[12:05] Dustyn Martincich: Which is why these books I think are very important, because it gives context.

[12:08] Dustyn Martincich: We're not just going to read who won the Tonies, that doesn't feel as important.

[12:11] Phoebe Rumsey: My students certainly don't feel like that's important.

[12:14] Phoebe Rumsey: My colleagues who work in the industry don't necessarily feel like that's important.

[12:18] Dustyn Martincich: It's not truth telling in our history.

[12:19] Phoebe Rumsey: You know, so that's why I think some of the work here is just trying to integrate, not necessarily be like, oh, here's the unknown person.

[12:26] Dustyn Martincich: No, it's just naming the names, right?

[12:28] Dustyn Martincich: And making sure that everyone's a part of the story that needs to be told.

[12:31] Phoebe Rumsey: Acknowledging the full history as opposed to just the skim off the top.

[12:35] David Armstrong: I did think the dream ballet chapter was particularly fascinating.

[12:38] David Armstrong: And I knew a lot of that, but I'm always the sign of a book because when I learned something I didn't know and get a new perspective on it.

[12:45] David Armstrong: And that just filled in even more of that story in terms of that long, long history of the dream ballet, which I have to say, my students are always fascinated by.

[12:54] David Armstrong: I make them watch Oklahoma.

[12:56] David Armstrong: We look at the Trevor Nunn, Susan Stroman version of it, and then they have to watch the original Agnes DeMille from the movie and then compare and contrast them and talk about that.

[13:05] David Armstrong: My students are mostly non-musical theater students.

[13:08] David Armstrong: I do a big lecture course for students from all across university.

[13:11] David Armstrong: So they've never dealt with these issues before.

[13:13] David Armstrong: And as you said, even just making them talk about dance is terrifying to them because they don't know where to begin.

[13:20] Dustyn Martincich: And that first chapter is really helpful in that regard.

[13:22] Phoebe Rumsey: I may be taking some of that for my students because I just say just describe what you're seeing.

[13:27] Phoebe Rumsey: You don't have to know anything about dance.

[13:29] Dustyn Martincich: Inevitably they all start, well, I don't know anything about dance, but you don't need to know, just tell me what you're seeing.

[13:35] Phoebe Rumsey: It is helpful to find ways into that.

[13:37] Dustyn Martincich: I just found it interesting that the dream ballet for a 20-year-old seems to be a fascinating new device that they've never thought about before if you're not immersed in musical theater.

[13:47] Phoebe Rumsey: Yeah, right.

[13:48] Phoebe Rumsey: And like if they're familiar with competition dance, sorry, you think you can dance or these like, oh, well, this three minute dance piece drops in.

[13:54] Phoebe Rumsey: I'm like, yeah, it's functional.

[13:57] Phoebe Rumsey: This is what it's trying to do.

[13:58] Dustyn Martincich: And when you watch that, like, what do you feel?

[14:00] Dustyn Martincich: What do you think?

[14:00] Dustyn Martincich: What are you experiencing?

[14:01] Phoebe Rumsey: Can I also just shout out?

[14:02] Phoebe Rumsey: Dustyn is an amazing guest to have in a class like that, also?

[14:06] Phoebe Rumsey: I had Dustyn in as a guest from one of my classes, and she did this workshop, like just going through about like, okay, what do you see here?

[14:12] Phoebe Rumsey: And what do you see here?

[14:13] Phoebe Rumsey: And it really unlocked, I teach a writing class called Reading the Body.

[14:16] Phoebe Rumsey: It was fabulous to be able to have this chapter, but also Dustyn actually doing like a bit of a workshop to sort of empower students and empower someone who doesn't feel like they're a specialist in the area to know, like, hey, you're watching the body move all the time.

[14:31] Phoebe Rumsey: We're not practiced always at talking about it in a way that isn't sexualized in a way that isn't only talking about identity, you know, like all of those sorts of things.

[14:41] Dustyn Martincich: So I do think that that have to shout out Dustyn there.

[14:50] Dustyn Martincich: I was gonna say no one, yeah. Because I thought that the chapter on time as a function of dance and musical theater is one of the things that I thought was super fresh about this perspective of thinking about dance and inserting it into this whole discourse of the function of choreography in ways that people have talked about maybe in music, and they've talked about in playwriting for sure, on the libretto side, but very rarely talking about it in the dance perspective.

[15:19] Dustyn Martincich: And time is so essential when you're thinking about choreography. I mean, in the real perspective of the performer, but also in the perspective of how do you show time passing? Oftentimes it's through movement. I know she didn't really talk about it, but Peter Darling's choreography in Groundhog Day is a really excellent example of that. Her case studies, I think, were really, really helpful in getting me to think about another way that I hadn't thought about choreography function in a musical.

[15:44] Dustyn Martincich: I also wanted to shout out one of our folks who has performed in China as well as in the US, MJ Hey. And he's in the US now performing, he's done two of his master's degrees here, but his experience with how you train for musical theater dance in China versus how you train here is completely experiential because he's trained in both spaces. The cultural value systems that are implied in both of those things also helps us look at musical theater outside of the US and the practices that are being on a global stage.

[16:15] Dustyn Martincich: I just saw Jerry Mitchell put up a clip of Kinky Boots in Korea. I don't know if in South Korea. I did see it was there, yeah. Fabulous. But the rehearsal videos are so fun and so fantastic. But how musicals get put up outside of the US, outside of the UK is actually, I think where we need to look at next, right? Because we're talking about different cultural idioms of the body and how choreography translates to that. So I just wanted to shout out MJ for his work on that area too.

[16:42] Phoebe Rumsey: Yeah, that was a really fascinating chapter, which I knew nothing about in terms of how people are studying musical theater in China, which of course they are because they're studying it around the world now. Wow. And how many folks also like that Lee Theodore Becker had put together the American Dance Machine as repertory for choreographers to have their musical theater work set on dancers to tour even if the show didn't do well. That was also new news to me.

[17:07] Phoebe Rumsey: And so many folks can remember now that they're talking about they're like, oh yeah, I remember that. I remember that company touring. And what was that? Like that's pivotal to the archive, to the physical archive. This is it. I'm happy to say that in the 1980s, I went to Lee Becker's class every day for about three years in New York at the Harkness House on the East Side. And it was the greatest musical theater dance class that ever was and ever will be.

[17:32] Dustyn Martincich: It was phenomenal. Every day, Monday you did the 1920s, Tuesday you did the 30s, Wednesday you did the 40s, 50s, and what a great day was formatted. Friday was West Side Story. Of course, you're learning it right from, you know, anybody's.

[17:45] Phoebe Rumsey: Yeah.

[17:46] Dustyn Martincich: That's a dreamboat way of. I mean, Phoebe and I, especially, who are dance historians who just swoon over especially the integration of social dance, like that would be my jam. And her warm-up was the greatest warm-up, again, for musical theater dance that there ever will be. She had just figured out the bar and the warm-up process that would perfectly support everything that you needed to do as a musical theater dancer. It was phenomenal.

[18:37] Dustyn Martincich: She's a crazy one to know us.

[18:45] Phoebe Rumsey: Jesus, but now I find her.

[18:51] Dustyn Martincich: Simply irresistible. You know, that does make me think about in one of my favorite chapters in the second section, which is about choreography and the application of it, sort of what we're talking about, this kind of circulation of dance and how that is possible. Is the chapter of 12 that we did with Tomei Cousin, who was in the original company of Susan Stroman's Contact.

[19:13] Dustyn Martincich: And it was a really interesting way of working because Dustyn interviewed him, and we have that recording. Of course, we could talk about that forever, and then we distilled it down to certain parts. But what he does talk about quite a bit is the creation of Contact and just how much generosity and openness Susan Stroman had to the dancer's own ways of moving and own ideas about the story she was trying to tell and this new way of working.

[19:39] Dustyn Martincich: It's a really interesting read because he's also, it's a term from ballet, and I don't think we use it here, but in ballet they call it the repeater, you know, the one that goes and sets Giselle on the other company or what have you. But like there's so many people that go and set Jersey Boys for the company and wherever outside of the US. And so Tomei has set many companies of Contact. The challenges of that, especially in relation to the music and how grounded it is, and just that sort of exploration of different ways people are learning, and some are just trying to pick up the exact choreography and MJ's chapter about learning choreography in China from like sort of the repertoire.

[20:19] Dustyn Martincich: I think it's a really fascinating thing to consider. Maybe Dustyn, you could talk more about that too, having talked to Tomei about it.

[20:25] Dustyn Martincich: We could have talked forever about that.

[20:26] Phoebe Rumsey: Yeah. Truly, the second section, the approaches to choreography and the body, I think, in terms of that section of the book really focuses on identity. And I think both in from Winkler's Gender and Sexuality in Golden Age musicals, which I think is I love his Fosse book so much. I thought it was such a gift to be able to read this person who is so well versed in that area, go in this deep dive about specifically this expression that is not necessarily Fosse, like the conversation about applause and taking it from the perspective of the folks who are engaged in the work.

[21:01] Phoebe Rumsey: Same for Kim Varjola's chapter, Benet Bayman's chapter, and Ramon Flowers' chapter. You know, it's about the people who are in the work. And then we get to the interview with Tomei, who's saying, oh, it's in the work, you know. And so this idea that first person perspective is coming out and talking about it in the context of where MJ, you know, the MJ chapter that I got to work on with him. The repertory is exact. It is a cultural method of teaching. Where in the US, we believe in interpretation.

[21:28] Dustyn Martincich: Whether we want to acknowledge that or not, I want to shout out Anthea Kraut's book about copyright and movement, because that I think is crucial when we talk about this. But the idea that this sharing of knowledge and interpretation is indeed like you need to talk to the actor. The dancer is the actor in Contact, right? There's no separation here. And so everybody's interpretation of that role, very Robbins-esque in that way, has to be very, very clear, or else you do not get what the stories will be about.

[21:59] Dustyn Martincich: And it doesn't become a musical. And I think that's one of the things that I took away in talking with Tomei through that process and why the process was a really unique and incredible one for so many Broadway dancers who got exposure to it, and then folks who were able to pick it up where Tomei is setting the work elsewhere.

[22:19] Phoebe Rumsey: There's no tilly with the homework.

[22:53] Dustyn Martincich: The idea of receiving this choreography firsthand, second hand, third hand, down the line is so interesting. And how does that affect the choreography and ultimately how does that affect what the audience is being presented with? The tradition of the theater is that you're getting it as close to firsthand as you possibly can. That's why it's been hand down from one person to the next and still is.

[23:17] Phoebe Rumsey: But I thought that was interesting too. You have several people in the second half, especially who work directly in the shows that are being talked about. Remind me of the person who wrote the chapter about Pacific Overtures and Flower Drum Song.

[23:31] Dustyn Martincich: Yeah, Tim Varjola.

[23:33] Phoebe Rumsey: I think Kim brings a real interesting embodied knowledge as well as critical lens to both of those shows because they're both revivals and both shows are rethinking the original. I mean, I in our current moment of reviving musicals, it's very tricky to decide what you know, some of these shows shouldn't be revived. And if you are gonna revive them, what sort of political context will you take into consideration or will you not?

[23:57] Dustyn Martincich: So Kim has such an interesting perspective because she talks also about being I think this is a threadline through the entire book, is dancers who were there who also contributed. Liza Gennaro really unfolds this in her book about those that should be given credit for actually some of the creative development because they were offering things. And there's a certain generosity in dancers that were so ready to go, like, yeah, how about we do this next? And how about we do a pas de bourrée would feel good here?

[24:23] Phoebe Rumsey: So there's a real collaborative cohesiveness to creating dance, the more that we included authors that had been there, as well as Adrian, who had been in The Producers and a variety of Broadway shows. So you get this sense of how much that's sharing. And in good faith, one always hopes. But of course, there's been many scenarios where it wasn't in good faith, and I think that's explored in other work.

[24:44] Dustyn Martincich: And Gennaro talks about that with her dad in West Side Story as well. I think looking at how some of the problems were solved in those two shows in Kim's chapter is a really, really juicy read because you see how those shows develop, not just based on one person's ideology, especially when it's a revival, because there's these ghosts to use Marvin Carlson's term already circulating in all those shows.

[25:05] Phoebe Rumsey: Yeah, and she's right there.

[25:06] Dustyn Martincich: I still want to know more.

[25:08] Phoebe Rumsey: Same.

[25:08] Dustyn Martincich: I'm really excited for more of Kim's work. She's publishing more, I think, coming out as well. Her lens of experience also has so much to do with audience expectation. You know, so what do audiences expect from revivals from the bodies who are performing in them, from the dance, the choreography, et cetera.

[25:25] Phoebe Rumsey: If you're looking at something like Pacific Overtures, yeah, okay, well, it needs to look like this because the kabuki was really important to Sondheim. And she's like, but in terms of interpretation, like what happens when you actually have Asian and Asian American collaborators having conversations about the body at work in those pieces as well, and what is actually useful, what styles, how are these movements useful?

[25:48] Dustyn Martincich: And the same for, you know, being able to work with David Hemming-Wong on the revival of Flower Drum Song and be able to work with a playwright's satire and like how does a choreographer translate that kind of satire into movement? How does the movement become part of the satire and not just something that is like, oh, we're gonna recreate cultural expectations of blanket word Asian Americans during, you know, this period of time.

[26:13] Phoebe Rumsey: Like, we don't need to do that in revivals necessarily. We can do other work. So I really appreciated her chapter there.

[26:19] Dustyn Martincich: I also want to shout out Michael Jablonski, who I got to work with on the movement direction chapter, who is a Broadway in tour performer, worked with Peter Darling, dance captain Matilda, having conversations with him about movement direction specifically. He grew up as a dancer, but he's also a director.

[26:37] Phoebe Rumsey: And having had experience with the UK, sort of really like the method and the model is really integrated that it's not one person telling the other folks what to do. It's folks contributing mutually to create character through movement, to create culture through movement, to create these things. It all has to be part of the process. The choreographer can't do it alone.

[26:57] Dustyn Martincich: And so I really appreciated his physical perspective and what that felt like to learn the original, but then also have permission. Like where do you have permission to allow the actor or dancer performer to interpret it for themselves? Just as someone would do for voice. People don't seem exactly the same from show to show.

[27:15] Phoebe Rumsey: How does the dance also evolve from show to show?

[27:18] Dustyn Martincich: Exactly. Let's just define that a little bit because that's the final chapter in the book, and it talks about probably the newest development in Broadway choreography, which is this movement director, which I think for a lot of people they won't know what we're talking about.

[27:31] Phoebe Rumsey: Sure.

[27:31] Dustyn Martincich: Yeah. So for Michael, movement direction is really integrating these perspectives of Laban, collaborative work from Joan Littlewood. I would say all the way to in terms of the UK traditions of Frantic Assembly, Complicité and DV8. These are devised theater techniques.

[27:57] Phoebe Rumsey: And mostly originally used in plays rather than musicals.

[28:01] Dustyn Martincich: Yes, absolutely. People might remember the amazing movement sequence in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night. Is that the name of the play?

[28:09] Phoebe Rumsey: Very yes, gorge.

[28:10] Dustyn Martincich: Anybody who saw that remembers the choreography in it, even though it was entirely a play.

[28:16] Phoebe Rumsey: Yeah, Stephen Hoggett's work, he and folks of Frantic Assembly being able to translate what it means to have neurodivergence and autism through movement to help contextualize that part of the narrative and the story in that play, in addition to the set, the scenic design, and the sound.

[28:33] Dustyn Martincich: There's a great history that we try to encapsulate in here. And a lot of it is really UK founded, I think, of Kate Flat as well as someone who has ballet, opera, and musical theater background and did the staging for shows like Les Misérables, you know, working with Cameron Mackintosh or Sweeney Todd and these stage pictures that are epic that we are like we kind of take for granted, they were staged, right?

[28:56] Phoebe Rumsey: But how do you stage them?

[28:57] Dustyn Martincich: You don't just tell everybody this is a pantomime and this is where the gestures go. You have to get them to act it and then finesse and craft it in the process. And that's what we talk about in terms of movement direction.

[29:09] Phoebe Rumsey: So instead of maybe having dance vocabulary per se, ballet dance vocabulary especially, or a sort of codified dance vocabulary, we're using descriptions of movement qualities to help compose the picture on the stage. And the other thing that the movement direction chapter also covers, the other person is Kelly Devine for Come From Away, which is just Phoebe's first description of that opening is so vibrant. You actually start the book talking about Come From Away and then sort of wrap it up by ending the book talking about Come From Away.

[29:42] Dustyn Martincich: Yeah, well, and Michael's connection with Kelly Devine also was really useful. He had interviewed her for the chapter and talking about her perspective because she also has done dance vocabulary; her choreography ranges. You know, she's worked on Rocky, she's in Fight Choreo, you know, she's in a lot of different things. So the final chapter of the book, the 15th chapter, is actually with Alexandra Joy Warren. And she and I are in discussion about we focus on Camille A. Brown mostly. As a choreographer, that we're saying, like, this seems to be the future, right? Like this is going to be the future. The choreographer comes in for Camille Brown to be involved in the show. We know her specialty in concert dance is African American diasporic social dances.

Like that is inherent in all of her choreography. And that is inherent in so much of musical theater choreography. Let's be real, right? Yes. And so getting a chance. Alexandra knew folks who have worked with Camille Brown, dance captains, cultural consultants, you know, even someone who's a choreographer who's like, this is my specialty area, still brings in cultural consultants for things like Once on This Island, you know, what is Haitian dance form? So that we're not just saying, I'm gonna reference it. No, I want to know about it so it is dramaturgically supporting the rest of the show. And so we kind of talk through Sam Pinkleton, Spencer Lift, City Larve Shakuri, and some of the other contemporary contributors who are looking at, just like in movement direction, just like the rest of the folks in this section, are looking to create collaboratively with the dancer, with the actors in building an idea, so that the narrative is necessarily coming from this more it's contributing to the story as opposed to being like and now a dance.

[31:24] Phoebe Rumsey: Well, and I think that also brings in the notion of accessibility, the movement direction and devised work based on who's in the room and who you're working with. Helps to break down what's been out there about sort of the Broadway body. If you want to know more about the Broadway body, you must read our friend Ryan Donovan's book that's just so exploring the different sort of gatekeepers of who gets to be on stage. And so those final two chapters really explore disability on stage and how the field is changing for what requirements can be just broken down, which opens up a huge can of worms of like how training works and which then sort of returns back to conversations with MJ's chapter. So you start to like go on this choose your own adventure pathway through it as you see sort of different footnotes that say you can go back and look at like what's asked of in this area now or at the current time where we're expanding. Which I'm also so curious, speaking of Camille A. Brown, like how Gypsy is gonna be, yeah, to see her approach a very traditional show in that way, which we haven't seen yet.

[32:21] Dustyn Martincich: Yeah, interesting. Also, it seems to me that movement direction has come up hand in hand with smaller shows that like come from a way mostly you have non-dancers in the cast. And it's a way to activate those non-dancers in a way that maybe more traditional choreographers sometimes have trouble doing.

[32:40] Phoebe Rumsey: Well, and I wonder also, now that we're talking about like what is a dancer then, you know what I mean? Like, oh, this person is a mover and this person is a dancer, and how do we get to those identities? How do we get to those categories? Choreographers who have the capacity to be a little bit more collaborative can work with the body who's in front of them, right? And with their individual skill sets. That I think opens up possibility for storytelling, but also representation, like getting more bodies on stage. Diversifying the kind of movement vocabulary we see. Does everything need to be ballet-based and you need to kick your leg to this height, and blah blah, and you have to do 45 turns?

That's one kind of virtuosity. But we've seen so many amazing kinds of virtuosity simply because the movement is really intentional for the people who are cast in it to convey what they need to convey as the actor in terms of the story. It'd be so much more important. I still shout out Jerry Mitchell for, you know, in terms of Kinky Boots. I'll go back to Kinky Boots for a second. How he uses drag performance and drag tradition of movement the same way that you would use a hook in a song that you want the audience to sing along or clap to. The fact that that is actually a thing that you see the angels performing throughout, and then eventually the entire ensemble performs it. And then you, as an audience member, can perform it at the very end of the show, right?

The very step touch, step, touch, boom, boom, pivot step, right? Like, are those all non-movers? Are they all non-dancers? I'm like, no, every single person is literally feeling like a dancer in that moment. Everyone feels like they are a star. I think that's also kind of amazing when you stop thinking about dance as only being descendant of ballet terminology. And now it's a uniting force, which is so exciting.

[34:21] Dustyn Martincich: Very interesting. Again, another rabbit hole you can go down in the various explorations. And I think a few different chapters talk about this is casting. And certainly Tomei talks about how they got to that cast of Contact. It was a real workshop scenario. And they didn't even know that that was the audition or how it was really from them outwards. Which also the chapter by Ramon Flowers that is a must read, which is about casting practices, especially as an African American performer and what sort of tokenism is involved and his experiences. He's been in so many different shows, and how he got in them and the ones he didn't get into for what reasons. He was the first black performer in Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake and what that concept was about.

So that was a real eye-opener on those practices that I think is a really interesting read. And also, we're really lucky to have him have shared that much experience. It's quite a personal chapter that goes into these kinds of experiences that are really challenging. He points out a lot of wrong practices that are happening.

[35:16] Phoebe Rumsey: Yeah. And speaking of practices, also want to shout out Ariel Naronson's chapter on Bill T. Jones because it's such a specific case study before we got to movement direction. If we're looking at the history of concert dance coming over to Broadway, this is vast balancing, right? The ballet, et cetera. So much of modern dance, Hanya Holm and Catherine Dunham, et cetera, has come in. Bill T. Jones's contributions to where musical theater can go next, I think really has to do about process and really about the practices of how you work with the people in your constituency. One of my favorite things about her chapter is that she also points to that as like a collide with traditional Broadway practice.

Bill T. Jones is coming in and he's like, here's how we create together, and here's what we're gonna do, and here are the gestures, but I need to workshop it. It's gonna take some time, right? I need time. Producers are like, we have no time, it's time to go. You know what I mean? They're all more in terms of this idea of workshopping and being able to cultivate this kind of collaboration. Her chapter, I think the case study with Bill T. Jones is excellent in pointing out a kind of practice that also is often so daunting, especially for choreographers who often get brought in late to a process as opposed to as part of the original team, and you're kind of there to fix things or you're kind of there to make it work.

So I really thought that his perspective in creating for Spring Awakening and then the additional Spring Awakening that we talk about, Spencer Lyft's creations for Deaf West's Spring Awakening, et cetera. That process really is important. Like, and you need to buy people's time in order to create something that's going to be truly meaningful in terms of physical storytelling. And you need to allow the choreographer time to make that happen. And so I did appreciate that chapter's perspective on that, in addition to just highlighting Bill T. Jones' contributions to what we think of as choreography today. I don't think that musical theater choreography would be where it is without that.

[37:09] Dustyn Martincich: Absolutely. I think that providing us with these various contemporary perspectives where we are right at this moment with these possibilities of where things might go. And it's impossible to know which, if any of these or all of these will move forward and take off and other people will pick them up or whether it will morph into something else. But that's really an interesting moment in what I think of as a continuing thread of theater, not just the dance part of theater, but I think all of it is all built on the past, but is then often a reaction to the past or a response to the past. And it'll just be interesting to see what the next step of that is.

[37:49] Phoebe Rumsey: Yeah. And that movement can make things about the present too, because it is like factoring in who the audience is culturally watching it and showing that back to them as we were talking about with the global export that is musical theater and the global import of influences that have been musical theater around the world, the movement component, the body, the live performanceness. That's what this book, you know, we didn't get to touch on film for the book. Next time. We've now expanded the world so much there.

[38:20] Dustyn Martincich: That's right, right. But like that liveness globally, it can't exist without the body. And so dance is really, I think that's why it's so exciting to like let's focus on dance because it gives us an opportunity to look at the body and sink our teeth into storytelling that isn't always textual.

[38:37] Phoebe Rumsey: Absolutely. And the thing about dance that often doesn't get talked about is that as an audience member, we are physically experiencing it at the same time. Our body is actually reacting viscerally to the movement that's on the stage. Same thing with singing. We have that same sort of kinetic reaction to it because we are somehow, especially in a live performance. I'm not sure if we do that as much in film or if at all in film, but we do in the live performance. We are partnering with them, even if we don't know what's happening, even if we don't dance, if you're a dancer, it's even probably even more so. But I think everybody is having that experience. We are kicking when they kick, we are jumping when they jump in some sort of, I don't want to say subliminal. It's not just in your head, it's in your body, I think at the same time.

[39:23] Dustyn Martincich: Yeah, I think bringing up visceral. I think we bring that up in the introduction that we really want to get into that really sweet spot of the liminality versus visceral. And liminality, of course, meaning like it's just there and then it's gone. And the visceral, you just feel it in your gut. I mean, if I was more scientific, we could get into the mirror neurons of how what you see, you feel you are also doing. I think something to sort of touch back on that is a way of doing that is when you talked about process and the past. And I think one thing the book brings out is the dancer's processes in rehearsal, as we mentioned. I want to give a huge shout out to, I think it's chapter 13 that's on the tap and the musical that Bene Long writes, chapter 10, where she talks about Shuffle Along.

Shuffle Along is mentioned throughout the book in 1921, sort of the foundational musical when jazz was brought on stage and the black chorus. And one of the scholars we mention a lot is Jaina Brown, who wrote Babylon Girls, The Black Female Performer, and the shaping of the Modern. In this chapter 10, Binet interviews two dancers who were in the 2016 Shuffle Along and the making of the show. So it's like the revival that George Sea Wolf or revisioning. In that, she interviews two of the dancers. So it's Lisa Latouche and Carissa Royston. She talks about how the rehearsal process for them made them aware of the agency that they have in history. There's just some wonderful stuff. It's a really great read of their experience and how that agency that they increasingly felt kind of brought them to a place of activism.

And this was through learning the movement of these black choruses from 1921 to 2016. So they're feeling it as well, viscerally within the show. And then you put that in front of an audience, and it just becomes this almost transcendent experience in a way, which is why I will forever say how important musical theater, especially the dances, into figuring out ourselves in the world. It's just you so connect with it in so many ways.

[41:19] Phoebe Rumsey: I don't think there could be a more perfect way to end this conversation than that to talk about the importance of dance in musical theater and in the world. That's phenomenal. Thank you so much, Dustyn Martincich and Phoebe Rumsey for joining us today to talk about this really terrific new book, Dance in Musical Theater: A History of the Body in Movement.

[41:37] Dustyn Martincich: Thanks so much for having us, David.

[41:39] Phoebe Rumsey: Thanks for having us.

[41:40] David Armstrong: Our pleasure. Absolutely my pleasure.

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