©broadway.com
Dec.12, 2000


A Swing Diary
by Lynne Taylor-Corbett

A Note on the Author: Lynne Taylor-Corbett has been a part of the New York dance community since she was 17. Her dance credits include roles in Broadway’s Promises, Promises and A Chorus Line. She also choreographed for the Broadway productions of Titani and Chess. As a director, Lynne supervised many Off-Broadway productions. Here, she talks about the inception of Swing!, a show she both choreographed and directed.

In July of 1998, I was working in Korea on a project for Richard Frankel Productions. Associate Producer Marc Routh and I were sitting together in the hotel dining room when he proposed that I take on a project called Swing! I nearly leapt across the table into his arms. Swing was the joyful music of my childhood: my dad whistled it as he fixed up our ramshackle house in Denver, my five sisters and I sang those songs at the top of our lungs in the car on mountain outings, and we danced to them in ballet recitals with my mom at the keyboard. And who among us didn’t dream of stepping into an MGM musical as Fred’s partner?

The opportunity to create a show from scratch was an even better dream come true. However, I had no desire to do a “swing revue,” per se. Swing had made a comeback and I wanted to juxtapose the new and the old, to somehow capture the spirit they had in common and make an event, a party for the spirit. After all, we are often "entertained," but rarely elated.

In order to reach that level of emotion, I needed a miracle cast. Ann Hampton Callaway was the first performer we pursued. Not only a fabulous singer, but a great writer and collaborator, she was a mainstay during the process. Everett Bradley, another multi-talented performer was next. Young leading lady Laura Benanti and triple-threat Michael Gruber were added in a later workshop.

Destiny was responsible for my finding Casey McGill. I was in Los Angeles and had driven two hours east into the hills to visit West Coast Swing guru Buddy Schwimmer. As I was leaving, he said, "Have you ever heard of Casey McGill? I just got his CD." I went back into his house and within 5 minutes I knew I had found my bandleader. I reached Casey in Oregon that night and within 48 hours had his CD in the hands of Jon Smith, my musical director, and my producers.

Casting the dancers was and continues to be the trickiest task. I wanted to share with the audience my enthusiasm for the diverse forms of swing, so World Lindy Champion Ryan Françoise and his talented wife, Jenny, were essential to the project. I met them in London where we went clubbing. Ryan took me for a spin on the floor where I learned that I would never be much of a "follow." Ryan and Jenny became not only dancers in the show, but great teachers. Ryan was also my first associate choreographer. Later in the development, adagio partnering expert Rod McCune and longtime colleague Scott Fowler were added to the team as associate choreographers.

After poring over competition videos and filtering through recommendations, I made an audition trip to Los Angeles where I found Beverly Durand, a West Coast Swing dancer, and Robert Royston and Laureen Baldovi, world champion Country Western Swing dancers. I had already cast Latin dancer Maria Torres in New York. The authenticity of these performers and their fierce devotion to their specialties was to set the tone for the passion that was later to come off the stage.

The rest of the cast came from dance companies and from Broadway: Caitlin Carter (Chicago), Aldrin Gonzalez and Carol Bentley (Beauty and the Beast), Carlos Sierra (Ballet Hispanico), Keith Thomas (Ragtime), and Geralyn DelCorso (The Phantom of the Opera). Edgar Godineaux, whom I found in Los Angeles, left his lucrative work with Michael Jackson to burn up the stage each night with Caitlin Carter. Kevin Gaudin and Kristine Bendul were the original "swings" (in this case meaning "understudy") and continue to awe me with their talent and versatility.

My objective in harnessing all this great talent was to give each couple’s specialty a dramatic context and, in some cases, to transform their existing routines into theatrical numbers. For instance, in presenting the West Coast Swing and the Latin Swing, I created a competition in a dance club. In the case of Country Western Swing, I set the number in a fairground atmosphere. Set designer Tom Lynch provided an old Texaco sign for atmosphere and costume designer William Ivey Long whipped up what he likes to call "barbeque costumes." I cast Robert Royston as a loser with two left feet who arrives overdressed and is transformed into a virtuoso by a magic cowboy hat provided by the caller, Everett Bradley. In every instance, there was a conscious effort to humanize the individual’s experience, so the dancing was even more of a celebration.

Finding an arc for Ann Hampton Callaway and Everett Bradley was a three-workshop journey. I had initially planned "Cheek to Cheek" as their Act II song, but when we actually began the third workshop, I realized I was stubbing my toe on the wrong path.

Ann suggested "All of Me" and came in the next day with wonderful musical ideas. She and Jon Smith went to town and the "plot" evolved organically. Frustrated because Ann "won’t dance, don’t ask me," Everett is sidetracked be any opportunity to dance. In Act I, he is pulled into the dance club and, in Act II, into the Country Dance. Ann is furious because it makes him late for his dates with her. During the course of "All of Me," he not only wins her back, but also finally gets her to dance.

Creating the show was not a linear experience. It was a mosaic that came to life bit by bit, complex and messy in the making. It was collaborative, unwieldy, and caused many a sleepless night. However, I look around the theater on countless nights and see people dazzled by the routines, moved by the USO segment, laughing out loud at the bungee number. They have a sort of glow in their faces and that means we have succeeded. They have been caught up in the magic of Swing!


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