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Tiler Peck, Terrence Mann & More Pirouette Into Rehearsals for MARIE, DANCING STILL
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Oct 31, 2022
Broadway visionaries meet ballet royalty at The 5th Avenue Theatre this spring in Marie: A New Musical. Tony Award-winning authors Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty (Ragtime, Once On This Island), five-time Tony Award-winning director and choreographer Susan Stroman (The Producers, Contact), and acclaimed New York City Ballet principal dancer Tiler Peck invite you backstage into 19th-century Paris, where glittering opulence hobnobbed with underworld dangers. Marie was formerly titled Little Dancer in a previous production that played at The Kennedy Center in 2015.
View Video Transcript
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Hello, I'm Richard Ridge for Broadway World
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Marie Dancing Still, the new musical by Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty
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with direction and choreography by Susan Stroman, will begin performances on March 22nd at the Fifth Avenue Theatre in Seattle
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and we drop by the rehearsal studio to meet the company. ...in the midst of the twirl, that talented, obstinate, desperate girl
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who knew what she wanted but not what a price she would pay
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Looking at that sculpture with new eyes, I'd seen it so many times in so many museums
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and I suddenly thought, who is that girl? And I started to research her
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And for me, the way into this project was research, because I was fascinated by the backstage world of the ballet
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what went on, how these girls survived, what their home lives were like
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what they went through to try and save their families in many cases
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and I was so intrigued by all that. I just felt I had to write about it. So that for me was the key
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And you, Stan? Well, for me, first of all, I love the musical period. I just think it's an amazingly rich time
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So I got to study the ballet scores of the time, but also French street music
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But at the same time, we're writing for contemporary audiences. So trying to find an emotional truth
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an emotional way into these characters, that's been the challenge. In between inquisitive and rude Somewhere in between the laundress and queen
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ultimately lovely and comically crude, in between the corkilling donkey, and the woman she's beginning to..
1:49
I feel like this show is particularly special because it kind of joins the art world
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Art historians, I think, would enjoy the show as opposed to ballerinas because it brings so much dance into it
2:00
And then the theater goers. So I feel like it's the perfect blend of all of those things together
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It is. It's like a perfect storm of visual art and performing art coming together and then moving
2:13
Sometimes the visual art is what you're looking at moving. And sometimes the performing art that we're doing is the picture
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And it's a fascinating study. Yeah, and I think especially for my character, you know, ballerinas are kind of meant, they don't really have voices
2:28
And that's what's so interesting about her. And especially right now, like in this time period, I feel like it's telling like an amazing story that people need to hear
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That like, this girl has a voice and she needs to be heard
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And that's actually what I feel like you are kind of attracted to
2:44
You see that I'm like different than the others. Right, exactly. Being in the room with Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty and Stroh, what is that like
2:51
Well, they're incredible artists and this show, Marie the music, Dancing Still is about an artist
2:59
and wanting to be known for what she does and wants to work hard but wants to feel good about it and wants to create something beautiful And that what they do in life and that what they care about
3:14
And they just are great writers, and Stroh is so wonderful. She just is an incredible leader, and people just want to do for her
3:21
because she makes you feel like you're in a part of her family. Well, I love the dancers in the piece, you know
3:36
just to work with actually musical theater people who can sing and dance on point
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That is rare. And so Tara Rubin did an amazing job casting
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and finding these people. So to now to have the freedom to dance on point
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but then to ask them to, while they're dancing on point, please sing full out Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty's score
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So I think that's the most fun. I love art. I love painting
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I love ballet. And, of course, musical theater is my life. And this is the combination of all three of these themes
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It couldn't be more perfect. It's the poo-poo platter. Yes. The combo platter
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Yes. Of the whole shmageggy. Yes. And I really feel that this is a piece in which, and I told Stroh this
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she is really pushing the form of musical theater forward in an Agnes D'Amelie kind of way
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and no disrespect to anybody or overstepping. But it morphing it into something else that can combine the various genres if you will the music and the dance and the thing And there have been other plays that had to you know American in Paris and Sunny in the Park with art
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But this is like a whole kettle of soup. Better by far than gold or juice
4:51
Because we've been in the interesting lines between the blue bands. Who don't know the half of what's interesting
4:58
I mean, it's been a long time coming. And, you know, and the fact that we get to go to Seattle to present this evolved piece from the last time we did at the Kennedy Center
5:08
I think it's tighter. I think it's sharper. I think it's stronger. And I think we have a package that we can't wait to present to Seattle and hopefully New York
5:16
I'm one of the new kids. I started off with the 29-hour reading that was last May
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So I got on a moving bus. But I tell you what, I mean, crafted by some of the best in the business
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Right. And it's also lovely to be just dropped into scenes where they've already got their characters worked out
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And I show up and I do the thing that actors hope to do, which is to respond to their environment
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So this has been an amazing treat for me in that regard. For our audiences in the Pacific Northwest to be on the forefront of the creation of the next part of this journey of this show
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is something that as leaders of the Fifth Avenue, we couldn't be more thrilled
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Couldn't be more thrilled. Yeah, I mean, just artistically, it's so exciting to bring Susan Stroman and Lynn and Steve to Seattle
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it's like you know it's a gift it's a gift
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