In the first of this three-part series, director-choreographers Andy Blankenbuehler and Wayne Cilento discuss how dance has evolved on Broadway in recent decades and the state of choreography today.
Ever since choreographer Agnes de Mille created the “dream ballet” in Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “Oklahoma!,” dance has been used as a storytelling tool of theater. Prior to de Mille’s experiment, dance served primarily as a break from plot. But over the past 80 years, the use of choreography in musicals — and plays — has continued to evolve. The 2022-2023 Broadway season featured a range of choreography, particularly with regards to how much was present in each show and the ways in which it was used.
Across that season’s 15 musicals, choreographers used dance as the main storytelling device and as a supplemental one. Some employed distinct dance sequences to entertain (“KPOP,” for example), move plot (“Some Like It Hot”), embody emotion (“Sweeney Todd”), evoke a time period and develop character (“New York, New York”) or all of the above — while others utilized minimalist staging to help focus on music, lyrics and dialogue (“Into the Woods,” “Kimberly Akimbo,” “Parade”).
The five nominees for the 2023 Tony Award for Best Choreography — “& Juliet,” “KPOP,” “New York, New York,” “Sweeney Todd” and the winner, “Some Like It Hot,” further distilled the range of uses recognized for excellence. As three-time Tony Award-winning choreographer Andy Blankenbuehler noted, “This year [demonstrates], with shows like ‘New York, New York’ and ‘Some Like It Hot,’ that dance serves many purposes and different kinds of audiences enjoy dance for different reasons.”
What’s more, looking at the past five seasons of Tony nominees in this category, one will notice a similarly broad spectrum represented across a small number of productions. For example, in 2018, the Tony nominees included “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child,” “Mean Girls,” “My Fair Lady,” “SpongeBob SquarePants” and the winner, “Carousel.” Choreography differed from lengthy ballets to scene transitions.
Choreography can be used in so many different ways, but its versatility — particularly as seen in the 2022-2023 season — may indicate a current inflection point for the role of dance on Broadway.
“It has changed so much over the past 30 years,” said “Hamilton” choreographer (and former Broadway performer) Blankenbuehler of the standing of dance on Broadway. “It ebbs and flows.”
Director and choreographer Wayne Cilento, who made his Broadway debut in the cast of the 1973 musical “Seesaw,” worries about the current position of dance and dancers on the Main Stem. Having been part of the original company of “A Chorus Line” — the show that made ensemble dancers the stars — before earning a Tony nod for his turn in “Dancin’,” Cilento came up in a time when — to him — dancing felt as respected as straight acting when it came to methods of storytelling. It was an era when principals were dancers.
Cilento recognized the late ’70s as a high point for choreography on Broadway. “Then it kind of dropped out, and then Twyla [Tharp] did her thing,” he said of Tharp’s reinvigoration of Broadway dance in the ’80s followed by 2002’s “Movin’ Out.” That musical used dance to tell a narrative, set to the songs of Billy Joel. “Yet, it was still principals [out front] with ensemble dancers,” Cilento noted of its structure. “I think what Michael Bennett and Bob Fosse were trying to do was say that dancers can hold the stage, and they are principals. We didn’t need a star in front of them.”
Cilento was trained by legends like Gower Champion, Peter Gennaro, Bennett and Fosse — who featured the acting power of dance — before becoming a Broadway choreographer in his own right. He was trying to revive that mentality with his 2023 revival of “Dancin’.”
“Our journey [with ‘Dancin’’] was taking that [philosophy] even further because I really featured this company to the hilt,” Cilento said. The revival did not receive any Tony nominations, which Cilento took as a blow not to himself or even the individual production, but to Broadway dance. “Not being acknowledged made me feel like there is something wrong with the system,” he said. “I’m pushing to go forward, but we all just got pushed back.”
What Blankenbuehler has noticed, of late, is the use of dance in downtown theater, which he hopes will influence Broadway. “Shows like ‘Hadestown’ [which originated Off-Broadway] are also dance theater because they’re impressionistic,” he said. “Promoting the idea that stories could be told in impressionistic ways is good for dance [in] theater.”
But choreographers also need great material to work with. “Now the pressure is on composers,” Blankenbuehler said. “People have to write for dance because not everybody can write for dance like beautiful compositions, but you can’t dance to them.”
Beyond that, Blankenbuehler argues that theater professionals beyond choreographers need to have faith in the power of dance to convey story in order for choreography on Broadway to strengthen. “Teams in general — producers, writers, composers — have to be open to dance finishing the story, finishing the moment,” he said. “I was very lucky with [the “Hamilton” team of] Lin[-Manuel Miranda] and Tommy [Kail] and Alex [Lacamoire] that they were open to me finishing sentences with dance. People have to have faith.”
Correction: An earlier version of this article misstated Cilento’s recognition for his performance in 1978’s “Dancin’.” This has been corrected.