An Interview with Dan Knechtges

SMT 8 (1) pp. 89–94 Intellect Limited 2014 Studies in Musical Theatre Volume 8 Number 1 © 2014 Intellect Ltd Re:Act. English language. doi: 10.1386/smt.8.1.89_1 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. 89 SMT_8.1_ReAct_89-94.indd 89 7/3/14 5:20:27 PM Joanna Dee Das 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, 90 SMT_8.1_ReAct_89-94.indd 90 7/3/14 5:20:27 PM Making Broadway musicals 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.

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