Actor-Dancer-Choreographer Anne Reinking Dead at 71
Sad news: Tony Award-winner Ann Reinking died today at 71 in Seattle . I first saw Reinking on stage in the 1975 Boston out-of-town tryout of “Goodtime Charley,” a musical starring Reinking and Joel Grey, about Joan of Arc. (Don’t laugh. It wasn’t bad. She was terrific, of course.)
I got to interview Reinking several times over her career. This first time was for the film “All That Jazz” in 1979 for The New Haven Journal Courier. The two pieces below are based on an interview in 1998 and the one that follows was four years later. Both were for The Hartford Courant.
BY FRANK RIZZO
It was a you-had-to-be-there moment in the theater, the kind that people talk about for decades, the kind that elicits goosebumps just in the retelling.
In the spring of 1996, a concert version was presented of the 1976 Fred Ebb-John Kander musical "Chicago" as part of the Encores! Series at New York's City Center. The series takes older musicals, many of them overlooked or which have not been revived in a long time, and gives them a first-class concert treatment for four performances.
But even before the first "Chicago"' Encores! show bowed, the Broadway tom-toms started beating out the message that this was not going to be just another grand night for singing. Though production values would be lean and mean, this was going to be a show, full of killer-diller performances, drop-dead dancing and plenty of sex.
"Everything seemed to fall into place," says Ann Reinking, her low, throaty voice wafting over the phone lines in a recent interview from New York. "It was perfect."
And by all accounts, perfectly cast.
Reinking, who re-created and elaborated on the dazzling choreography of Bob Fosse -- the show's original choreographer -- teamed with the top-drawer talents of Joel Grey, Bebe Neuwirth, James Naughton, Marcia Lewis and the creme de la creme of Broadway chorus guys and dolls.
The response the first night? Ecstatic. Ditto the reviews.
"That was wild," says the 47-year-old Reinking, who starred as the aging femme fatale Roxie Hart in the concert production. "We knew we had a great show but we didn't expect that kind of a reaction. It was exhilarating. We knew we had something."
The response led to immediate negotiations of bringing the Walter Bobbie-directed show back to Broadway for a fuller, though --by megamusical standards, still elemental production. The expanded show, which duplicated the Encores! essence, was a smash, winning the six Tony awards,including best musical revival, and launching multiple national companies. One of these companies -- starring Karen Ziemba ("Steel Pier") Stephanie Pope ("The Gershwins' Fascinating Rhythm"), Brett Barrett ("Candide") and Tom McGowan ("La Bete," Yale School of Drama graduate) -- opens Tuesday for a two-week run at the Shubert Performing Arts Center in New Haven.
Reinking does not promote the revival of the new "Chicago" at the expense of the original, which starred Gwen Verdon, Chita Rivera, Jerry Orbach and Barney Martin ("Seinfeld"). (In 1977Reinking, a longtime Fosse favorite, on stage and off, succeeded Verdon in the leading role in the original production.)
Though the original production had a healthy two-year-plus run, its surreal cynicism and sass were overshadowed by the realism and sentiment of "A Chorus Line," which took home the honors. (The 1976 "Chicago" was nominated for 11 Tonys and won none.)
"I think it was timing," says Reinking of the original production. "I thought it was a fantastic show. The subject matter and all that stuff [the subjects of murder trials, media and show biz] didn't fly then as it does today. The fact that we opened during the O.J. trials couldn't be more fortuitous."
And the fact that the show is so sexy?
"That's always good," she laughs.
Reinking currently is only "peripherally involved" in what is now called "The Fosse Project," a new musical made up of dances by the choreographer, who died in 1987 of a heart attack. The show is being mounted in Toronto by producer Garth Dabrinksy ("Ragtime") under the eye of director-writer Richard Maltby. "I went in representing what I had done with Bob [for the show's creators.]"
And as for the movie version of "Chicago," "it's still in development," says Reinking. Madonna, Goldie Hawn and Bette Midler have been mentioned in leading roles if the project, written by Larry Gelbart, ever progresses to the filming stage.
And another piece I did in 2002
By FRANK RIZZO
There's a wondrous scene in the autobiographical movie "All That Jazz" that is pure Bob Fosse.
It is worlds away from the strip joints, nightclubs and jail settings usually associated with the director-choreographer's cool, sensual and pulsating dances. A little girl and her father's girlfriend play a song on the stereo -- "Everything Old Is New Again" -- and with nothing more than a pair of hats as props, dance around a living room to the delight of the dad. The routine is magnetic yet simple; inventive yet natural; sassy, smart, goofy and full of joy. As much as any other dance number from the choreographer's canon, this piece also defines his signature style: the twitching shoulders, the slumped hip, the backs arched, the knees knocked, the pelvic thrust, the elbows in, the wrists flexed, the hands in tea-cup position, the slouch, the drip, the look.
"There's a lot of heart to Bob's work that doesn't always get recognized because of all of the sensuality, dark statements and wit of his work," says Ann Reinking in a telephone interview last week from her home in Seattle. "I always have to remind people the same man who did [the film] 'Cabaret' is also the same man who did the dance [for the song that began] 'Pardon me, miss/But I've never been kissed/By a real, live girl.' He did the baseball numbers from 'Damn Yankees' and the 'Rich Kids' Rag' from 'Little Me' -- and all sorts of really charming pieces. Even his later works still had this heart-felt quality to it, like 'Bojangles' [from 'Dancin'])."
Reinking says that beneath the cynicism of Fosse's work, there is a sweetness that tugs at the silky sleeve, reminding us of the battle of emotions that make up the human experience.
"There's often those moments of introspection where you see someone's soul -- and you also see their soft spot, even in [non dancing] films like 'Lenny' and 'Star 80.' You see it in Liza Minnelli in 'Cabaret' and you see it in anything Gwen Verdon has done. And, of course, there's that living room piece from 'All That Jazz.' Which was based on a dance that [his real life daughter] Nicole and I did once to cheer him up. So the number rang of truth, which is something that Bob always wanted to portray in all of its glory and all of its underpinnings as well."
Reinking played the girlfriend in that film, as well as in real life. Since Fosse's death at 60 in 1987, Reinking and Fosse's ex-wife, Gwen Verdon, have been the keeper of the director-choreographer's flame which burns especially brightly in the Tony Award-winning show, "Fosse." The national tour of the Broadway hit, which is still running in New York, comes to Hartford's Bushnell Sept. 5 for a two-week run.
Reinking, who with Verdon and others, put together the show -- a re-creation of some of Fosse's greatest routines from the stage, film, television and nightclubs. Highlights include: "Steam Heat" from "The Pajama Game," "Glory" from "Pippin," "Mein Herr" from the film "Cabaret," "Razzle Dazzle" from "Chicago," "Who's Sorry Now" from the film "All That Jazz," "Rich Man's Frug" and "Big Spender" from "Sweet Charity" and "Mr. Bojangles," "Sing, Sing, Sing" from "Dancin"'
The show had its beginnings in the mid-'90s when Verdon started a lab, which ran for two years, at which dancers worked for free to help recreate the Fosse canon in exchange for her instruction in the Fosse technique. The lab resulted in several informal presentations, which later evolved into several workshops where it became evident that a real Broadway show could emerge, along the lines of "Jerome Robbins' Broadway." At that stage, Reinking was brought in to help further develop and shape the show, which landed on Broadway in January 1999 and won a Tony for best new musical that season.
What made Fosse such an original that audiences still fill theaters to see his famous and familiar movements once again?
"He once said he had God to thank for giving him such imperfections," says Reinking. "Because he was balding when he was just 15, he wore hats a lot. And he loved handwork, but he didn't like how his hands looked and he felt his fingers were kind of short -- so he put on gloves. And he was literally a bit bent, kind of crooked, and slightly knock-kneed and pigeon-toed, so that defined his style as well. That hunched-over, hung look, well, he really stood like that. He created all these things because that's just the way he looked. And that's just the way he was. He so much wanted to be a very, very good dancer -- which he really was -- but in order to make it work he had to find a way of making his body look good dancing and that's what he came up with."
But the dancing style only worked, she says, if it succeeded in telling a story.
"It's all an acting piece, whether you're speaking or not," she says. "The moves are only a vocabulary for the storytelling and in musical theater you have to tell stories. But even in a concert-like show such as [the dance revue] 'Dancin',' he tried to inform the dances with a story, a feeling or a mood. Whether the audience literally got it or not, didn't matter. You could just tell there was a subtext of humanity and something behind the eyes, more than just the physicality of dance."
The style became so well known, it was often imitated, not always with the best of results.
"The Fosse technique really does have to have a delicacy and an elegance to it," Reinking says. "If you just go for the obvious and don't have any real finesse and taste, then it doesn't really work for me and comes close to parody."
Such as the scene in the film "The Birdcage," where Robin Williams performs a hysterical pastiche of choreographic icons in hyper-fast succession: "Fosse! Fosse! Fosse! Martha Graham! Graham! Graham! Twyla! Twyla! Twyla!" It was a flashcard quiz, with just the barest bit of movement defining an entire body of a choreographic career. The mention of the spoof sends Reinking into giggles.
And what of signature styles of choreographers today? Fosse worked in an era of artists such as Agnes de Mille, Twyla Tharpe, George Balanchine, Michael Bennett, Tommy Tune and Jerome Robbins. The line-up seems a bit thin today.
"It's all cyclical," says Reinking. "Sometimes things just come in packs. At one point you had this collection of great choreographers where you would see eight bars and you would know definitely who did it. We do have brilliant choreographers who don't particularly have a signature look. But we have some who do, like Mark Morris, David Parsons and Mark Dendy, but they are primarily choreographing for the modern dance world as opposed to Broadway shows."
One of the ways that people like Fosse defined the look was by becoming directors, which empowered them to set the style of a show.
"Michael Bennett, Tommy Tune and Agnes de Mille fought to be director-choreographers. They were just not going to do it any other way because the choreographer is so often at the bottom of the creative totem pole when you put a show together. So with that power you get a more direct point-of-view and that helps something called style."
And a lot of people now who have been just choreographers in shows are graduating to the role of director-choreographer, like Graciela Daniele, Rob Marshall, Kathleen Marshall and Susan Stroman.
"A lot of them are girls and that might take a little longer than it would be for the boys," says Reinking, who also choreographed the hit revival of Fosse's "Chicago." "I hate to sound like I'm making a social commentary but there is a truth to that. We do have to prove ourselves a little bit more."
Reinking is currently set to choreograph the Broadway-bound "The Visit" whose director is Frank Galati, and the Burt Bacharach revue, directed by Scott Ellis.
As for "Fosse," the national tour and Broadway run continue with intriguing speculation for the future. "Gwen reconstructed about 45 numbers originally, all of them excellent," says Reinking. "Even I didn't realize the wealth of Bob's legacy. There's enough really good material for a 'Fosse II,' while still using some famous stuff."
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