December 11, 2021: Hi, Jerome!

Last night, I saw the new Spielberg version of West Side Story. It was lovely in itself, and it kicked off a wonderful memory festival.

In the thirty years that I choreographed high school musicals, I got to do West Side Story twice, and Fiddler on the Roof – also choreographed by Jerome Robbins – three times. 

The rehearsals were a workout. (Sorry about the photos. A friend took them for me, because I wanted to remember the show, and they were blurry to begin with, and have been fading for decades.)

The kids learned every note, every beat (you have to, especially in the Prologue, the Rumble, and the rape scene (called "The Taunt" in the score, sigh) - because the rhythm changes constantly). 

There were performances so fine I had my customary performing-arts-person “please take me right now” experience, wanting to just evaporate on the spot, seeing as we all have to go sometime.

I love one thing about Jerome Robbins, a story I know from reading biographies, and from doing those shows. I thought of the story while watching the credits – and if you go see the movie, and stay through the credits, notice how long it takes before his name comes up.  

The story is that Jerome Robbins hated the first movie, because when they made it, they messed with his dances. Of course they did – he choreographed a stage play, and when you move dances from the stage to the world, to parking lots and streets and buildings, and you get into doing fancy camera shots, parts of those dances are going to change. But he hated the result, felt he should have been consulted more, complained bitterly that he almost didn’t want his name associated with it.

I never saw the original West Side Story on stage. My parents didn’t fly newborn me out from Seattle to see it. So I don’t know what got changed.

But I understand. I got hired, just once, by a director who changed my dances. It was the strangest thing.

High school choreographers work somewhere on a spectrum between “honor the original choreography” and “start from scratch.” Unless you are in a performing arts school, your kids aren’t going to be trained dancers, so the original choreography will be hard to set on them. (That’s the verb: you “set” a dance on your dancers.) Still, some choreographers strive not to change a move – it’s a chance for the kids to learn Bob Fosse’s choreography of Steam Heat, just as they would learn Hamlet’s soliloquy. Don’t mess with perfection.

I was solidly in the middle of the spectrum. I would steal all I could, and I would fashion the rest around the talent I had, aiming not to make anybody look awkward. So I would plan everything out, and show up for rehearsal with my little notes, ready to go, and we’d set a dance, and then at the next dance rehearsal, we’d set another.

Except not in the strange show (it wasn’t at Clackamas; it was our near Gresham). I’d come back, and all my previous dances would have changed. Stuff that was formerly in the background would now be in the foreground. Moments in the dances that moved the story along – important falling in love moments and such - would have been jettisoned. Bizarre, stupid moves would have been added, or half as many kids would be on stage.  I’d say, “That’s new!” and the director would say, cheerfully, that she liked it better this way.

(One time, a cast member mentioned a problem during notes, and she said, “Now, there’s a REAL choreographer.” The kid, who was a sweetheart, looked at me in horrified apology, and later wrote me a note saying he had loved working with me. I kept it.)

SO. Opening night of that strange show, my friend Julie, choir director at Clackamas, where I did most of my shows, said she would come with me, as she always did. And I said no, please, don’t come, the choreography is so awful, I’m embarrassed to have my name on the program.

But she came, bless her. And guess what?

My name wasn’t on the program.

HI, JEROME! I feel you, man! And I have to say,  turns out that solution isn't great, either!

Anyway, the delightful coda to all of this is what happens when you do Fiddler.

Fiddler was Robbins’ next big show, and he wasn’t going to lose control again. So when you do Fiddler, the scripts arrive in a huge box, and with them is a fat choreographic script, which has a warning in the front, to the effect that (paraphrased) you will by God do the dances as they are written or somebody might show up (at the high school???) and sue you.

(The other show that threatens to sue is Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, but they aren’t out for the choreographer, which is good, because I don’t know how to make dancers fly into the air and do animated pinwheels. Disney just demands you call it DISNEY’S B and the B. Or else.)

The Fiddler choreographic script is wonderfully … cryptic. It’s got words and diagrams like football plays, but it’s not always clear what he’s getting at (Do three chicken squawk-squats and a log roll…. (again, paraphrasing)).

I loved those scripts so much, I was always tempted to keep one, not send it back when the show closed. But there was a steep fine, so I’d kiss them goodbye.

Go see West Side Story, if you have the urge. The dancing is divine.