Margaret Fuhrer

Feb 6, 2025 | nytimes.com | Margaret Fuhrer

If Christopher Gattelli's choreography looks familiar, that's probably the point. A veteran of more than 20 Broadway shows and a devotee of movie musicals, he has an encyclopedic dance brain, a catalog of musical theater references he deploys throughout his work onstage and onscreen. Homage is his calling card. For Gattelli, 52, those scare quotes might as well be hugs. Barbed as his dance humor can be, it's underpinned by his affection for the genre, in spite and because of its excesses and quirks.

Jan 29, 2025 | playbill.com | Margaret Fuhrer

Just before the premiere of Firebird, ballerina Maria Tallchief sensed disaster. She was to dance the title role, but a recent tonsillectomy had left her drained and sluggish. During the final dress rehearsal, a flying lift with partner Francisco Moncion had gone poorly, upsetting Moncion. Tallchief’s costume arrived from designer Barbara Karinska’s studio only a few hours before showtime, and neither Karinska nor George Balanchine were happy with the way it fit.

Jan 29, 2025 | playbill.com | Margaret Fuhrer

Just before the premiere of Firebird, ballerina Maria Tallchief sensed disaster. She was to dance the title role, but a recent tonsillectomy had left her drained and sluggish. During the final dress rehearsal, a flying lift with partner Francisco Moncion had gone poorly, upsetting Moncion. Tallchief’s costume arrived from designer Barbara Karinska’s studio only a few hours before showtime, and neither Karinska nor George Balanchine were happy with the way it fit.

Dec 22, 2024 | nytimes.com | Margaret Fuhrer

And it requires that dancers be intimately attuned both to each other and to the music. All partner dancers are expert communicators, but at the highest levels of West Coast Swing, they're practically telepathic. Anderson and Rutland compared a typical social partner dance experience to a segment on a talk show, with the leader as the host and the follower as the guest.

Nov 13, 2024 | taustralia.com.au | Margaret Fuhrer |Hollie Wornes

Like comedians, dancers tend to be good imitators. They’re both masters of fine detail, able to pinpoint and replicate the minutiae that make a choreographic phrase, or a sketch character, click into focus. As a dancer and a comedian, Sarah McCreanor, known as Smac, likes to up the ante. Why mimic a dance or a person when you can turn yourself into an emoji? A head-bobbing chicken? An object being crushed by a hydraulic press?