[music]
--[both sing] Wunderbar, wunderbar!
--We're alone and hand in glove,
--Not a cloud near or far,
--Why, it's more than wunderbar!
--Kiss Me Kate is this amazing love letter to Broadway. It just is.
It's about show folk. It's about it's about me. It's about all of us people
that love putting on shows, actors. It's it's this great kind of onstage,
backstage story show within a show. It's Taming of the Shrew. It's incredibly
fun and it's fun to work on, and I think it's also fun for the audiences.
Cole Porter, imagine, that's my collaborator. That's what that's who
wrote the music for this and the incredible lyrics. And and it's my first
time doing a Cole Porter musical, so I was wildly excited by it and actually
very inspired by it. There's a great deal of range in Kiss Me Kate, you know,
choreographically. Tom Dick and Harry is character-driven, these three suitors who
kind of vie for Bianca's attention. Too Darn Hot is this kind of show-stopping,
epic number that really for me was a battle of the sexes. And then there's
Bianca where Corbin gets to of course tap-dance upside down. So, you know it's
just an incredible opportunity for a million different styles of dance, but
all built from the music of Cole Porter.
--I'm a fan of movies. I love the Golden
Age of movie musicals, so I look to all the movies throughout the 40s actually.
On the Town is a good example. Red Shoes is a good example. There is some great,
great movies with great dancing. And that was really what I wanted to do. I
really wanted to deliver a Broadway musical that danced. Not staging, not
movement, but dance. I mean, one of my favorite things is collaborating with
dancers. I love it. I don't I don't want to do a hundred percent of the show and
have it done and then just tell them what to do. I actually like leaving room
for inspiration. One of the things I love about dance is that it's like the
Olympics. Every single generation gets more athletic. They get stronger. They get
more technically adept. And Kiss Me, Kate is a perfect example
of that. Twenty years ago when Kathleen Marshall choreographed it, dancers
were different. Dancing was different. I think the dancers used to be challenged
by the choreographers. Now, me as a choreographer, I feel challenged by my
dancers. I feel challenged to come up with work that's good enough for them.
[tapping] [music]
--Too Darn Hot never felt like a task to me. I wanted to make something that never
really let up. I didn't ever want to take a break. I love the idea of the battle of
the sexes. I love the idea that if the men dance in one section, the women are
gonna do better in the next. I love that, and it gives them it gives a number a
kind of fun tension. For me, the audience responds for Too Darn Hot is about the
dancers. That's not about me. It's not about what I did. That is about
appreciating those dancers. It's interesting. The audience reaction is
very interesting for Too Darn Hot. There's very
polite applause. The number finishes, and
we applaud. And then something happens where the audience they realize actually
what just happened. They realize that these people just danced for ten minutes
and 45 seconds without stopping, and they're clapping for the dancers. They're
clapping for James T Lane and Corbin Bleu and those dancers. And it's a really
profound moment. It's something that I've never experienced in my 14 Broadway
shows. And I just love that those dancers get that amount of appreciation.
And imagine being able to tell a story without a single word too. That always
strikes me as extremely profound. When you can no longer speak, you sing, and
when you can no longer sing, you dance. And dance can express emotion in in a
way that other art forms cannot.
["Too Darn Hot" from Kiss Me, Kate]
[music]