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[0:00] Mo Brady: You're listening to Let's Talk About Auditions from The Ensemblist, the only podcast that shows you Broadway from the inside out. Welcome back. I'm Mo Brady.

[0:16] Mo Brady: This is the second part of an interview with Stephanie Klemons. She is the Associate Choreographer and Global Dance Supervisor of Hamilton. As she told us in the first part of this interview, that means that she supervises the movement for what is now seven worldwide companies of Hamilton. It was such a great interview, and we had such a great time really diving into how Hamilton works as a global phenomenon, that it was too much for one episode. So I've split it up into two podcasts. So this is the second half. If you haven't heard the first half, go back, listen to the first half. As we said then, Stephanie is a multi-hyphenate. She's a director, choreographer, wife, mother, dancer. And the second half is really a look into how the auditions for Hamilton work and how Hamilton has affected her work as a director and choreographer outside of the show. Here's our conversation.

[1:42] Mo Brady: A little bird told me that when you are running auditions, you like to tell the dancers to bring themselves to the choreography.

[2:04] Stephanie Klemons: I obviously as a performer, I've been to a lot of auditions. And I know that what we're trying to do is create a picture with choreography. With Andy's choreography, the picture is based in intention. It's not based solely in shape. And I know that that's the case across the board, but it features so prominently in the way that you do a movement, right? So a piece of his choreography will be stand up off the wall, be leaning on the wall and then stand up. I can watch a hundred people do that and it puts me to sleep and then someone will do it and I'm like, they get it. Like they understand what it means to engage because they've brought themselves to the plate.

[2:42] Stephanie Klemons: I can tell you that could be my type cut. I could have 50 people come in, have them lean against a wall and say, show me what it means when you engage, when you go from being passive observer to an engaged observer. So that to me is the type cut. So in the initial dance call, literally that's all I'm looking for. You're doing lots of choreography. I want to know if you can get counts and whatnot, but I want to see if you know the difference in delivering choreography with something that's that subtle of an intention. And so I try to explain that because I don't think that's something that we're asked. I know it's not something that we ask in when we're taking class at Broadway Dance Center or this or that, right?

Like the purpose there is to hone your craft or hone your technique. So no one's telling you what does it mean when you actually, you know, we don't do batmas in the show necessarily, but like when you do with this chasse or this ball change and the intention is to pounce or the intention is to attack or the intention is to listen closer, like show me the difference between those three things. Every dancer in New York can do a chasse or can do a ball change. But truthfully, I can tell you not many dancers understand what it means to bring themselves to it when I give them a reason to do it. And they stand out in the room. Like it's like sometimes I just want to like stop the dance call and like stop wasting time because I'm just like, okay, I got what I needed, you know?

And then I remember also when I was a dancer, you know, I am still a dancer, but like when I was auditioning all the time and I'd be like, I feel like I just didn't get to show them. And I know that dancers feel that way a lot in the room. And so I'm always like, come back. You know, I'm inviting you to come back. This is not, I never say no and then don't look at people again. Like there are people in the shows, I won't say who they are, but there are people in the shows who are auditioning for us for four and five years. And then all of a sudden four years in, I'm like, okay, great. You get it. You've been here enough. You've heard enough of what I've said. You've either taken Andy's class or you've sort of like it's saturated and now you understand.

Like we found in London, the first time we went there, Andy and I were like, oh my God, like they don't dance like this here. They don't get it. And the auditions were like super tragic. And then we came back for callbacks and then we were back a year later and we were like, okay, like the critical mass is sort of understanding how Hamilton works and people are coming in now from the get just performing better and understanding what it is that we're looking for.

[4:50] Stephanie Klemons: Yeah. What I say to people in the room to try and get that out of them is I'm like 0% interested in seeing you perform the choreography well, if your intentions are fake, I'm a hundred percent interesting in seeing what kind of human you are because half of the choreography in the show is you being a fresco. It's you painting the picture for the audience and being part of the air that the song is breathing. It's like intendable commandments. You're echoing what the principle is saying word for word. And so I need to know that who you be is as exciting as the way you dance opens up the world of possibility. I don't know. It's exciting to think about that as an artist.

[5:31] Stephanie Klemons: Yeah. And I feel like, you know, I always say to people, like, again, like don't limit yourself. If this Hamilton can be for everybody. If you don't want to do that thing that we're saying, then great. Do a million other shows. Like we're in like such a Broadway golden. There's so many shows available for people to do right now. And Hamilton asks something really specific and it puts that thing first and some people find it exciting and some people find it limiting. You know, you'll come in and you'll think you're doing the choreography great. And then I see you over and over and over and you just keep doing your version of great instead of the thing that I'm asking for. I'm not going to put you in the show.

I'm not mad at you. You're a great performer. It's not to say that you're not a great dancer. There's loads of great dancers that don't get in Hamilton. And that's because they don't understand that the subtlety thing is the most important part of the performance.

[6:17] Stephanie Klemons: Like we used to say all the time when we were doing In the Heights that you could book the show on a clean mark. So what is a clean mark? So that means that you wouldn't have to dance at full out as long as we saw you sort of going through the motions and going through the intentions. Right. So sometimes the thing about a clean mark when you're doing something full out and I know this as a dancer, you go internal sometimes and you actually take yourself away from your eyes. Right. Like there's something that happens inside and it happens all the time. Like when we see contemporary dancers come in, it's like it's so internal and it's so beautiful. But I can't put you in the show because the show essentially the choreography is a conversation, right?

It's not showy choreography. It's not like fast footwork that some choreographers do. It's not the super tricky choreographer that other I can say their names. Right. But like all these choreographers that we know and we've seen their work, we don't do that in the show. What we do is we create a room of human beings and then we orchestrate the way that their isms show. That's basically what it is. Like the man one has to be this type of personality. The man four has to be this type of personality. It's more based in their personality.

[7:27] Stephanie Klemons: So the thing about the clean mark in the room is that if you come in the room and you do a really clean mark and your intention is like on point one hundred, then we see everything we need to see. If you come in the room and you do the choreography like you really like go for it. What usually happens is the person behind it actually like melts away and the choreography supersedes that. So I have to see your human first executing choreography as opposed to choreography on a human. That's such a cool way to think about it. And it's so compelling to watch. We had this girl who's just now in the Broadway company. She's brand new. She's so young and she came in. I think she came in from like an open call and I was like, she'll never be able to sing. She was such a great dancer and she so got it and people don't get it right away. I always say.

[8:08] Stephanie Klemons: What is Hamilton Boot Camp? It's a fully equity paid week with benefits and insurance. We teach you four numbers from the show. We do men 1-4, women 1-4, and two swings. And we teach you numbers from the show when we're basically getting a better look at you. Boot Camp can serve as one of two things. It's either we know we're going to hire you and we want to get you a head start on learning the track that you're going to be doing. Or it's we're not really sure where you fit or we're not really quite sure if you're ready and we want to get a better look. So when we first did the boot camps, it was funny because everyone was like, I'm doing the boot camp. I'm definitely going to be in Hamilton.

And we're like, that's not really the way it works. Yeah, so it serves a couple purposes. And you never know why you're there, if you're there because you're going to get hired or if you're there because you're basically like on the chopping block and we want to know if you're in or out. And at the end of the week, you know, Andy comes and Tommy comes and Alex comes. You get to meet the whole creative team and they get to see you do all the things that we've been teaching you all week.

[9:40] Stephanie Klemons: How often are you holding boot camps now, now that you have so many alumni? Like you said, you cast the whole LA company from people who had done the show before. We usually try to foresee either a big turnover or a new company. Like if we have no one on the bench, we'll be like we should schedule a boot camp. Because the great thing about a boot camp is we're like, I know that's a woman three, I know that's a man two, I can just pull them from there when those jobs open up in different companies. I would say right now we're having boot camps like probably once every six months, depending. We do them in London once a year, because their contracts are year long in here, just because everyone's like patchwork where their contracts start and stop. It's probably like twice a year.

[10:15] Stephanie Klemons: How has your work on Hamilton though affected the work that you've done since? Being the associate choreographer of Hamilton has definitely opened doors for me, right? Like the Super Bowl commercial that I did, they were like, we wanted the associate choreographer of Hamilton to do that. Like they were very much like we sought you out. So I would say it's opened a lot of doors. So it's influenced my work in that it's influenced the type of work that I'm doing. And in addition, you know, it's influenced my work, because I understand, you know, being part of the creation of a show like Hamilton, it's like a masterclass in musical theater, right? So I got to see this team of people who I've been working with, you know, since In the Heights, so I've been a part of it as well.

But this team of people has been working together for 10 years, really execute something with excellence from the beginning. So it's easier for me to sometimes spot, I'm like, that's probably not going to work out so well. And I try not to sort of like, I've really seen something built from the bottom up in a way that was just so efficient. You know, I'm sure Lynn would say the first two years of writing two songs was not efficient in that it was not the most prolific creation at the beginning. But once he started writing, like, I'm so impressed with the amount of original material that was in the off Broadway version of the show that's like, still in the Broadway production, right? Like, what came out was really great material. And I say that of his work and of Andy's work.

[11:39] Stephanie Klemons: What do you wish actors knew about your job? Well, I'll say this. I've gone to visit companies, right, which is part of my job to go and check in on the company. How's the supervisor doing? How are the new cast members doing? And I've had actors, like, introduce themselves to me not often. Every once in a while, I'll have someone be like, hi, my name is so and so and I play this in the show. Nice to meet you. And it makes me laugh because I'm like, if I didn't run your audition personally, how many times I watched your video to like, approve you and how many emails I've gotten about like, your name and your phone number and you're like, what town you're born in, like, as the supervisor at the top of the dance department, like, we have to approve every single person that goes into the show.

So if I haven't personally seen you, like, I've seen a bunch of videos of you. I know everything about you. There's been so much discussion. And so when people introduce themselves to me, I'm always like, like, I don't know what you think I do. But like, I definitely know who you are.

[12:30] Stephanie Klemons: I think that people don't really realize like, how much there is going on in the back end, how often we're auditioning people and watching videos or I'm in the auditions or I am discussing, for example, right now we have two cast members who have to go into the Angelica tour and they're like a bit overloaded over there and one of them still in a Broadway show. So we're going to train them in New York. So myself, Patrick Vassell, the associate director and the music supervisor, Matt Gallagher are going to train them here. So we're doing like a full two weeks of 10 to 6 rehearsal process with these people. In addition to I'm running open calls, people don't really realize. And sometimes I feel like people that I work with closely are like, so what do you actually do?

And I'm like, there's just a lot involved in the maintenance of seven huge ships with the one in London and then the one being built right now in Australia. If you think about it, I always talk about like the bathroom, you know, if you use a bathroom, it's got to get clean. And it's just like the maintenance of it is just constant. Like it doesn't matter if you use it, it's going to need maintenance. And that's what happens with the companies of Hamilton.

[13:27] Stephanie Klemons: Someone coming into the room tomorrow for the first time for a Hamilton call, what's something that you really wish they knew? So I always say that I wish people knew that it wasn't about being good. It's about being right for the job, right? Like I've done a million auditions where I see people that are so great, but you're not right for this. And as a performer, I felt that way on this side of the table, I understand it really well. And that's just, I think, a hard thing to explain. You can put your all into it and you can feel some type of way about how you did, but if you're not right for the spot, you're not going to get the job. And it doesn't mean anything about you. It doesn't mean anything about you as a performer. It doesn't mean anything about what your future in the business is. It doesn't mean that your next audition won't be the one that you book your Broadway debut from. It just means that you're not right for this. That's okay.

[14:11] Stephanie Klemons: And that's okay. And then you don't have to tell me on Instagram why you are or come back a million times and continue to do what you're doing. And it just means you're not right for it. And that's a hard thing to say. I think the other thing is I do always invite people to reach out to me on Instagram for feedback. I'm less inclined to be like, hey, you're just not right for it. Because I just feel like it feels like a bad thing to hear. I wish it wasn't. I feel that way. It's like, not a ton of jobs that you're looking for. No, it's not. And I have seen very skilled dancers who are beautiful technicians. They just don't get the Andy thing. And they can't do it. And we find ourselves in a position where six months in, when I cast someone like that, they're miserable, because they're getting 1000 notes.

And they're starting to question their ability as a dancer. We conflate who we are as a person with who we are as an artist. We all do that as artists. And so people start to comment on your artistry, and you start to feel bad about yourself as a person. And that's not a good company member. Because if you're not in the right place, you're not going to be happy. I know you think you want the job, but you don't. The right people come around. And when we cast the right person in the role, they're happy, we're happy. It's a great contract. Hamilton sort of thrives on that.

[15:23] Mo Brady: Special thanks to Stephanie Klemons for sharing her stories with us this week. You can learn more about her and how to connect with her online by visiting our website, theensemblist.com. The Ensemblist was produced today by me, Mo Brady. You guys can help others find out about The Ensemblist by leaving us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. Honestly, it does mean something. So just super easy. Just click some stars. You can also find you can also download episodes wherever you get your podcasts or at theensemblist.com. And make sure you're following us on Instagram to see the latest posts from our website, where we share the stories of talented artists working in ensembles every day. Thanks for listening. Until next time.