An Interview with Dan Knechtges

SMT 8 (1) pp. 89–94 Intellect Limited 2014

Re:Act

Joanna Dee Das Columbia University

Making Broadway musicals: An interview with Dan Knechtges

Abstract Keywords As a director and choreographer for the stage and the screen, Dan Knechtges’ Dan Knechtges work is known for its captivating spark and exuberant energy. Dan’s choreog- choreography raphy for the 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee (2005) and Xanadu Making Broadway (2007) has received nominations for the Tony Award, the Drama Desk Award Musicals and the Lucille Lortell Award. Most recently, Dan directed and choreographed Lysistrata Jones Lysistrata Jones (2011) on Broadway. Below are excerpts from a conversation 25th Annual Putnam between Knechtges (DK), Princeton undergraduate students Adam Hyndman County Spelling Bee (AH), Abigail Williams (AW) and Angela Caruso (AC), and members of a James Lapine general public audience about Knechtges’ experiences as a choreographer and choreographer-director. This conversation took place as part of the Making Broadway Musicals: Artists and Scholars in Conversation symposium at Princeton University on 21 April 2012.

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AW: Dan, thank you so much for meeting with us. I was wondering if you could start off by telling us how your dance background and your training at Otterbein College prepared you for working today. DK: My dance training is just like A Chorus Line. My sister was two years younger, and she was taking ballet. My mother didn’t have extra income to have a babysitter, so she brought my brother and I along. My brother hated it, but I said, ‘No no no, I’ll go’. I immediately said, ‘Oh, I can do that’. The next year, my sister started giving me lessons in the basement, so I knew all the ballet stuff. I told my parents, ‘I really want to do it’. And my parents – I have great parents – they sat me down and said, ‘You have to be prepared that people might make fun of you’. I said, ‘I don’t care, I want to do it’. So they said, ‘Okay, you can do it’. I started in tap and jazz. At the dance studio I went to, they started out the boys in tap and jazz, and the girls started out in ballet. So my sister had two years of ballet, and then she was allowed to take tap and jazz, which is of course what every kid wants to take. I didn’t have really any ballet training. So after one year of tap and jazz, I then had private lessons [in ballet] for a little bit to get up to my sister’s level so that my mother didn’t have to drive us five times a week to all these various [classes…]. My dance teacher at that school, called ‘Miss Steven’s Dance Studio’, had a daughter Kathy, who was one of the original Peggy Sawyers [from 42nd Street] on Broadway. She wasn’t the original, but she took over at some point. In our second year, we did the opening of 42nd Street, which is not an easy number. I think I was 8 or 9. We were doing pullbacks and all that. I told myself, ‘I’m getting this. I’m getting this’. At the end of my second year, I was like some tap prodigy at Miss Steven’s dance studio because I could do all of these things. When I got into high school, I started being exposed to more musicals and singing and dancing. I could sing very well. I also played the French horn for ten years, and I played piano for about six years. So I got really involved in band and choir and drama club, which pushed dance off to the side for two years. Then I got a voice and acting scholarship to Otterbein College […]. When I got there, they said, ‘Wow, you can really dance’. I said, ‘Oh yeah, I took dance for all these years’. And they said, ‘Well, you’re taking dance every day now’. The woman who eventually took over the department there was a Fosse dancer on Broadway, so I got a lot of that into my training. I had choreographed even when I was little because I’m really bossy, and that’s where I go. In high school I choreographed all of our high school musicals, and then in college I assisted Stella [Hiatt Kane], who is my mentor. Then I got to choreograph a couple of kid’s theatre shows, and that’s where it all happened. Stella said, ‘You know, you’re really good at this. You should really pursue this’. So that’s how I got my choreography background. I directed in high school too, and in college, so that just came naturally to me.

AC: Can you talk about your experience in doing the dual director-choreographer role? What does that role look like now that a lot of people have said that dance has taken a back seat in modern musical theatre? DK: I have a theory on why it’s in the back seat, and I think a lot of it has to do with economics. If you look back, there used to be dancing choruses, slots for people whose primary focus was dance. I was just thinking about [the 1962 Broadway musical] Milk and Honey. In those days, they still had dance choruses for people with years of dance training. And now they do not,

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because of economics […]. I also have a theory that there has been a lot of institutionalization of the making of musicals by authors, composers and lyri- cists, but we choreographers have yet to do that. ‘Institutionalize’ is the wrong word. We need to develop the art of choreography or choreographers in musical theatre. The good ones, I think, understand that Broadway choreography is more than steps. It’s ideas. It’s the same as good concert choreography. [George] Balanchine, [Jerome] Robbins, they all understood that it is really ideas, and that the steps are really just an output of the idea, rather than the reverse. There again, it is economics. In the past the dancers rehearsed for six weeks opposite all of the other elements. I’m not advocating we go back to that because there were pitfalls in that too, but you had six weeks of being able to play around. Now oftentimes I’ve had to pay out of my own pocket to get that kind of experience of two to three weeks of prep with my friends in a room. Now I make the producers pay for it […]. It is economics really coming to play in all of it, especially in commercial musical theatre. As far as being a director-choreographer, what was great about doing that for Lysistrata Jones [2011] is that there were times that we had drama- turgical problems in the show and I would say, ‘Oh, don’t worry about that. That’s my job, and I’m going to handle that in this dance’. And the writers would say, ‘What are you talking about? That’s not [a dance issue]’. I would respond, ‘No no no, I’ve got it. Trust me. I’m going to handle that section in the dance’. Sure enough, in Lysistrata Jones there is a lot about playing basketball games and questions of whether the team wins or not. I would say, ‘I’m going to do it in the dance, and it’ll be very clear’. It’s helpful as a director-choreographer as opposed to just being a choreographer. If you have a very close collaboration with a director, they will say go ahead. But sometimes on a new collaboration with a director, it is hard because sometimes they do not trust you […]. Now, that’s not always the case. I have a really good relationship with James Lapine, who in the first meeting we had told me that he hates dance. Which, he really doesn’t, but it was a test to see what I would come back with. So there was a testing out of that relationship, and now we have this rapport where I can go, ‘Oh James, don’t worry about that, I’ll handle this’. Most of the time he trusts me, and I do it and I can show it to him. But I do know that in some early collaborations with other people, it’s hard. There’s a lot of ego. On Broadway, you do much more than what your job is. You are not just a lyricist or a composer, you’re also a dramaturg. You are the other set of eyes for the director and the choreographer. That is the same for the choreographer. I’m not just the choreographer; I also have a good eye for sets, for lights, for costumes. I am somebody to bounce ideas off of. Being a director- choreographer, I’m able to utilize all of those talents. It’s fun. I felt especially on this last show [Lysistrata Jones] that I really was fulfilled in a way that I had not been fulfilled on other adventures. It was the same at Princeton Triangle Club, where I was the first director-choreographer to take over Princeton. There was a fusion of elements that had not taken place in my previous show the year before and in the other shows. I mean, there are some shows you do not ever want to have a director-choreographer on because the jobs are too big. But Kathleen Marshall, who I assisted, says that the difference between a director and choreographer is that a choreographer has all the responsibili- ties a director does, but none of the power. The director has all of the power. There is some truth to that. I don’t think that’s the whole truth.

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AH: I’d love to hear you talk about authorship, which is a larger topic in the world of dance. Can you talk a little bit about ownership of your work? DK: [The 25th Annual Putnam County] Spelling Bee [2005] is a good example. [Director James Lapine] and I went back and forth. James would say, ‘Okay, do what you did before, and I’ll come back in fifteen minutes’. I would reply, ‘James, I can’t do it in fifteen minutes’. So he would say, ‘Okay, an hour’. Which is still really not enough time, but I would put it up, and he would turn to me and say, ‘Okay, great’. Then he would take it all apart and do some cockamamie thing. In the middle of this three-minute number, there would be a germ of an idea where I would go, ‘That is genius’. Then I would put all of my choreography back on, and I would take that little thing that he did that would then shift the emphasis of what I was doing, and then we would pass it back and forth. So, on that show I can say, ‘I own “Magic Foot”, I created “Magic Foot”’. But it is so intertwined with how James directed me to do it that it’s really hard to say where that kind of left off […]. So, that’s one thing I can say. Ownership is ambiguous. Now, there is an ownership issue that I am really very ardent about. I see a lot of high schools doing my choreography. That is something that I have been fighting, because I get no residuals from anything. As a director-choreographer for Lysistrata Jones there is not a lot of financial remuneration, but there is some acknowledgement by the authors about my contribution to the show, and that will be done in high schools and community theatre productions. But for Spelling Bee, there’s none. How can I as an individual go to every show? All I can do is monitor what’s on YouTube videos. That is like a full-time position. I’m also very involved with the stage directors and choreographers union. It’s a problem that we struggle with at every meeting. More so the choreographers I think than the directors, because we record our work through video. Recording is actually illegal on Broadway stages because of the actors union and the designers union. You are technically not allowed to do it, but it is done and it’s a struggle. I don’t have the answer on how to protect that.

AH: Do you consider Spelling Bee to be your big break? DK: Yes. Do you know the structure of regional theatres? It’s called LORT [League of Resident Theatres], and they go from A+, A, A-, B, C, C2, D, D1, D2, etc. I was at LORT C, and I went from LORT C to a high off-Broadway regional theatre with James Lapine. I was in awe of him. Into the Woods and Sunday in the Park with George were two shows that I admired, as well as Falsettos. I thought, ‘I am the only one in this room who doesn’t know who I am’. They were legends to me. So I went from being a nobody to not even somebody, but working alongside well-known people. My agent was so smart. At the time, he said, ‘From the very beginning, whenever James Lapine’s name is billed, Dan’s name must be billed’. Which then got my name with James every time it was billed. Of course they’re going to bill James’ name, because he’s famous. I got to be right there with him. I had a really good agent. A lot of people say, ‘Oh, you’re always working’. Which is not true. I mean, I am always working, but I’m not always working at that level. What I’ve had to do is fill in my resume now because I jumped all those steps. Spelling Bee did help me fill those in. Funny story – I’m from Cleveland, and all my parents ever wanted me to do was to choreograph for Ira Wrigley’s theatre festival at the Cleveland Playhouse. I wrote letters, I had my agent call, nothing. Just yesterday, I got a phone call from Wrigley’s theatre saying, ‘You know, we just

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thought you were too far along in your career to come back to little old us’. I thought, ‘Oh, gosh, it is so full circle’. That would not have happened if I had not had the career I had had.

AK: We are ready to move on to a couple of questions from the audience. Audience Member 1: One thing I noticed on your resume is that you’ve directed and choreographed in Berlin, and I’m really curious because US musicals are being exported all over the world. What is the difference between working in a big produc- tion in commercial theatre there and working on Broadway? DK: I was in Germany doing the show Der Schuh Das Manitu, basically a musical version of Mel Brooks’ Blazing Saddles. There’s a German writer called Karl May, who was their Mark Twain and created the characters of an American Indian and his sidekick Ranger. It went through all these various movies that they made, and they’re beloved characters over there. Somebody made a spoof movie of it, so, that was basically the musical. The Dutch producer Joop van den Ende, who produced Sister Act, which is currently running on Broadway, [produced it]. He runs an enormous corporate company that does a lot of musicals in Germany. They saw Xanadu [2007] and called me and said, ‘We love your work, we would love to have you on this project’. That’s how I got hooked up with that […]. For me, it was one of those times that I felt like I was at the height of my creative powers, and I felt like the director trusted me enough to let me go and do my thing. I loved it. I loved every minute of it.

Audience Member 2: Is the choreographer often a part of the original collaborative team, or does it often start with a lyricist and a composer? DK: It really depends on the show and the director. I’ve been on projects where I’m there when the show isn’t written. Which is actually where I prefer to be, because then you get into the head of the director, you get into the head of the authors. You’re getting the language of how you’re going to collaborate together […]. That’s what I prefer. But I’ve also worked on shows where they actually put it up in some fashion and go, ‘Okay, now we need a choreographer’. Which is fine, I just feel like I am using a tenth of my brainpower. You are reduced to steps. It’s interesting, though, because I think Bill T. Jones came on board on Spring Awakening later. I don’t think anybody can imagine Spring Awakening without his choreography, or without dancing. Yet it is a different kind of movement, I think, than people expect […]. The choreography told a story that was not being told in any other department. That is what I think we as choreographers can definitely bring to the table. It’s maybe not plot in the sense that, ‘Oh, he did this to this and that’. But it is psychological and emotional plot. And that is very important in musicals. Thoughtful entertain- ment. I call it good showbiz. That’s my term for the same thing.

AK: Thank you so much!

Suggested citation Dee Das, J. (2014), ‘Making Broadway musicals: An interview with Dan Knechtges’, Studies in Musical Theatre 8: 1, pp. 89–94, doi: 10.1386/ smt.8.1.89_1

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Contributor details Joanna Dee Das is the Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Dance Studies at Stanford University, where she is currently working on her book manuscript, Choreographing a New World: The Life and Work of Katherine Dunham. Her research on Dunham has been supported by Columbia University’s Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race, the Victor Barnouw Fellowship, and a Jacob K. Javits Fellowship. She has also written book reviews for Dance Research Journal and contributed entries on Josephine Baker and Aida Overton Walker for the Routledge Encyclopedia of Modernism. Before relocating to Stanford, she was a lecturer in dance history at Barnard College. As part of her interest in making performing arts scholarship accessible to a wider public, she is currently co-curating an exhibit on American Ballet Theatre at the Library of Congress.

Joanna Dee Das has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work in the format that was submitted to Intellect Ltd.

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