Messenger - Vol. 2, No. 2, Page 18 Winter 1993 Susan Stroman; Lights up a stage Susan Stroman loves music. Music sends bright, glittery figures gliding, boogeying, tap-dancing across a stage in her mind. It's a professional hazard when you're a Tony Award-winning choreographer. As she told an interviewer for the Fairpress: "Music makes my brain dance." It's a typical state of mind for this University alumna who, as a child, often sat under the family piano while her father played show tunes. She also would tap- dance around her Wilmington, Del., home, throwing props into the air, leaving marks on the ceiling that her mother had a hard time explaining to family friends. Today, that same little girl is creating dances for actors in the smash Broadway musical, Crazy For You. The petite, blonde and energetic Stroman has them dancing on the tops of limousines and corrugated tin roofs. She has them tossing wash boards and mining picks in the air. She has them falling in love as they waltz across a Nevada desert. Dance Magazine called her "the new choreographer most likely to follow in-though not imitate-the steps of such hallowed theatre names as Fosse, Bennett and Tune." When Crazy for You opened on Broadway in February of 1992, Frank Rich, influential theatre critic for The New York Times, credited Stroman, above all others, in the Crazy for You creative team for reawakening interest in the American classic, boy-meets-girl musical. He used adjectives like "ingenious" and "extraordinary" to describe her work and said she is able to "work magic" on the Broadway stage. Last year was indeed a magical year for Stroman. As she told Hillary Ostlere of Dance Magazine: "In the beginning of February...I woke up knowing I had three shows running in New York City...all within a five-block radius of Broadway. I sobbed for half a day because it was 'dreams realized.' " Indeed, the little girl from Wilmington, who longingly watched Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire's old movies on television, now has a framed congratulatory letter that Rogers sent her after she won her Tony Award for Crazy for You. Stroman started taking dancing lessons when she was 5, and ever since she can remember, she's been able to "visualize music." During her high school and college years, she worked in local theatres like Candlelight Dinner Theatre and Three Little Bakers. On campus, she was a member of the Harrington Theatre Arts Company, and Metamorphosis, a dance company. While she always knew she wanted to choreograph, she says, "I knew I couldn't just come to New York and take over. I knew I had to come as a song-and-dance girl first." And that she did-just a year after her 1976 graduation from the University. "I went to New York to audition for the Goodspeed Opera House's production of Hit The Deck. Out of 300 dancers who auditioned, they picked me. I got my equity card and was off." She danced in and around Broadway for much of the early '80s, including in a production of Chicago and a tap extravaganza, Whoopee. She also worked in numerous stock, regional and touring shows. "Then one morning seven years ago, I woke up and said, 'You've got to stop this and go do what you came here to do.' "You can't have a split focus in New York. If taking that chance hadn't worked, I don't know what I'd have done," she says. Fortunately, things not only worked out, they worked out well. Stroman made her transition from dancer to choreographer in small steps, starting out choreographing and directing cabaret acts, industrial shows and commercials. "I started to be known as a person in charge," she says. "I wasn't seen in an actor's light anymore." Then came the chance to choreograph a revival of Flora the Red Menace in an off-Broadway, Greenwich Village hole-in-the-wall that held about 50 people. Stroman thought she'd make about $200 and that no one would see it. She was wrong. The audience fairly glittered with stars. Broadway producer Harold Prince came, as did Liza Minelli, who was in the original. Both were suitably impressed and hired Stroman to work for them. And, during Flora's run, Stroman became friendly with John Kander and Fred Ebb, the composer-lyricist team who wrote the show as well as Cabaret, Zorba, Chicago and a host of tunes made famous by the likes of Streisand, Minelli and Sinatra. Prince asked Stroman to choreograph his l989 New York City Opera production of Don Giovanni. When Minelli needed a tap-dancing choreographer for Liza-Stepping Out at Radio City Music Hall, Stroman was her choice. Early in 1991, Stroman collaborated with the director and book writer from Flora to create And The World Goes 'Round, a re-staging of 30 Kander and Ebb songs from nearly a dozen musicals, television shows and film scores. Described as "an exuberant, dance-y cabaret show," And The World Goes 'Round played off-Broadway for more than a year. For her choreography of that show, Stroman won the 1991 Outer Critics Circle Award and the Calloway Award. Crazy for You, which won the 1992 Tony Award for best musical and is still running at the Shubert Theatre, is a choreographer's chance of a lifetime. Stroman included glitzy numbers featuring chorines in fluffy pink, a romantic waltz in which the leads fall in love and lively chorus numbers in which cast members use just about everything that's not nailed down on the set as props. "Because I dance through an emotion, the character in the dance is very important to me. There is also a strong comic element in my dance. And The World Goes 'Round was filled with comedy, and I think it is because of that I got Crazy for You. "I do use a lot of props but the props are never extraneous. They are always an extension of a character. "When I choreograph, the dance steps are the last thing I think of. First, I concentrate on the story behind the song. In Crazy for You, the dances push the plot forward. The acting blends into the music and the dance. Once I've developed the music to tell a story, then I can start to develop the steps." When considering a job, Stroman says she first reads the script and listens to a tape of the show's music. "If I can't connect with the music, I know I can't be part of it," she says. Working with a creative team to develop a show is one of Stroman's favorite parts of the creative process. "I work closely with the director and the musical director, and one of us is always sacrificing. We have to change keys or make changes to make the dancer look great. If a dancer tells me he turns better the other way, then we change it. We feed off of their talents," she says. "With Crazy, we worked intensely for seven months before our opening at the National Theatre in Washington. After that, we worked for another six weeks, fixing things. It's great to be part of a team, to be able to ask a set designer to give you a limo that 12 women can pour out of and have him agree." Other Stroman projects in New York have included A Little Night Music and 110 In The Shade. For television, she co-conceived and choreographed Carnegie Hall Salutes Stephen Sondheim for PBS's Great Performances; A Little Night Music (Live from Lincoln Center) and An Evening with the Boston Pops-A Tribute to Leonard Bernstein. Last fall, she choreographed Prince's revival of Show Boat in Toronto where she said she froze in the cold weather, but did get a chance to see a World Series game. She most recently received the 1992 Dance Educators of America Award for her dedicated service to the profession. The momentum continues with the national touring company of And The World Goes 'Round, which played at The Playhouse in her hometown this spring. And Stroman and Crazy for You director Mike Ockrent have already met with Universal Studios to discuss their idea for a screenplay tentatively titled Silhouettes-a romantic comedy about a New York City choreographer who moves to Montana. "It's not a musical but it does involve music and dance," Stroman said. "Movie audiences will no longer accept musicals on film, but they will accept a movie about music and dancing, if it's presented in a realistic manner, like Dirty Dancing." A movie? Yes, but her first love will always be the Broadway stage. "Crazy for You and And The World Goes 'Round are shows that excited people in musical theatre, excited them about singing, dancing and acting," she says. And right at the heart of it, Susan Stroman was one of the most excited of all. "I guess you could say musical comedy is the light of my life." -Beth Thomas