The choreographer calls it a warm-up. For most people it would be 45 minutes of self- torture. The cast of “A Chorus Line” is used to it.
On the third floor of the Buell Theatre lobby, 20-plus dancers are alternately using the balcony railing as a barre on which to stretch their legs, hitting the floor for push-ups and kicking their legs over their heads.
Welcome to Chorus Line Academy, a.k.a. Baayork’s Boot Camp.
Baayork Lee, who has been with the show since it opened on Broadway in 1975, first as a dancer and now as the choreographer, developed a workout three decades ago to help dancers build the strength and stamina needed night after night to dance, sing and act, and look amazing while doing it.
“There are a lot of down lights in the show, so the dancers need long, lean muscles,” Lee says before one of her warm-up sessions. “This workout helps with that body toning.”
A Broadway hit from 1975 to 1990, “A Chorus Line” was revived in New York in 2006. It opened its national touring production in Denver last week, and with it, a fresh crop of gypsies — as the dancers are known — is again entertaining audiences with its leaps, kicks and stylized dance moves.
Lee has been leading the cast in her warm-up since the show began rehearsing in New York five weeks ago. While the exercise routine has changed some through the years, it always combines elements of ballet, modern dance, Pilates, Alexander Technique and such gym-class staples as crunches, push-ups and leg lifts. A less intense version would be a great full-body workout for the average gym rat.
Lee conducts the sessions using a sing- songy voice and quick pace. “On your mats, hips up, exhale, up two, three and four,” she commands, snapping a finger to keep time. During the core section, 20 pairs of feet scissor-kick toward the ceiling. Legs are a blur during bicycling. At the barre — or balcony railing — toes point and flex, arms extend, legs plie, reveille, degage. Then it’s to the floor for splits, stretches and “on our bellies,” lifting up for cobra, holding ankles, swimming. Next, push-ups, and from a seated position with arms extended to the side, “window washing.” Finally, a section just on breathing has the cast rapid-fire inhaling and exhaling.
Whew, take a breath.
“It about killed us the first few times we did it,” says Colin Bradbury, 24, the show’s dance captain. He also is an understudy for the roles of Don and Bobby and “swings,” or substitutes for the male members of the ensemble, when needed.
Is there moaning and groaning? Always, he says. “But we groan with love.”
The warm-up was mandatory when the show was in rehearsal and previews, but is optional since the regular performances began. Bradbury conducts the warm-up 90 minutes before curtain.
Being part of “A Chorus Line” is a dancer’s dream, says Bradbury, who spent his early childhood in Colorado Springs, where his father was stationed at Fort Carson. His mother was a ballet teacher, and he started taking lessons at about age 7.
The style of the dance moves in “A Chorus Line,” created by the late Michael Bennett, has a 1970s feel to it that still holds up well today.
“It’s a fantastic show to perform; it’s so much fun,” Bradbury says. “The placement of arms and body isolation was very angular then.”
The style, he says, is hard for some dancers to pick up. “The steps may not be as difficult, but the style of it is so specific. I love it because my dance teachers were trained in that jazz technique, and I grew up with that. The choreography and placement take me back.”
Lee, whose job it is to make sure the choreography stays true to its origins, says she never tires of teaching a new set of dancers the moves. “Michael Bennett developed that angular, low-to-the-floor movement style with a lot of pulsing and rhythm,” she says.
“We were ahead of our time,” she says. “Audiences still enjoy it, and dancers enjoy how it expands their vocabulary.”
It’s a far cry from hip-hop and contemporary moves, she says, adding, “There are no new steps, they’re just recycled.”
Lee says that when she was performing, it was enough to be a dancer. Today’s talents head to auditions as “triple threats,” she says. “They sing like Pavarotti, dance like Nureyev and act like Olivier.”
And in show like “A Chorus Line,” dancers have to be “so careful,” she says. “Their bodies are their instrument.”
Lee says she’s glad the cast had some time to adjust to Denver’s altitude and dry air before the show started. They’re drinking a lot of water, and oxygen tanks are available backstage, just in case.
“A Chorus Line,” performed without an intermission, is physically taxing. “It’s a really difficult show to do,” Bradbury says. “The first 10 minutes or so you have combinations of ballet and jazz, with lots of jumps and turns. In the middle there’s a montage section, and through the solos there are monologues with singing and dancing. It’s a lot of stop and start. By the finale, two hours later, everyone’s body is tired.”
Suzanne S. Brown: 303-954-1697 or sbrown@denverpost.com
