Rehearsal days were full of learning Lin-Manuel Miranda’s dense musical score and trying to solidify Andy Blankenbuehler’s complex choreography. Just when you think you know Andy Blankenbuehler, the choreographer takes on a completely unexpected project. Andy Blankenbuehler joined us live on The Broadway Q&A Series, presented by Playbill and The Growing Studio, to answer your questions about the … It’s the founding fathers and it’s the American Revolution, but the whole musical is contemporary. "Especially for dancers right now, with their particular tragedy where their identity is linked to their artistic life that's on hold, learning self-care is fundamental," says Jo-Anne La Flèche, resident psychologist at l'École Supérieure de Ballet du Québec and co-vice president of Healthy Dancer Canada.
During the workshop, it felt like we were doing a new version of something like Les Mis. Ben ’s roles as a performer include Boq in Wicked, Tobias in Sweeney Todd and Dorando Pietri in BBC Four’s The First True Olympics. So I had to figure out how to be really stylized. But I went to a concert that he did of songs from the show, and it was thrilling. Dunn has since brought more guest choreographers in to teach via Zoom conference, including Josh Bergasse from NBC’s The BFA in Musical Theatre offers unparalleled opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration and creativity by blending the extraordinary resources of three of the nation’s leading arts schools: USC School of Dramatic Arts,
Last week, the BFA Musical Theatre program learned a few virtual moves from Broadway choreographer Andy Blankenbuehler.
He asked the students to keep their movements specific, for clarity and style.“Dance long and small.
The bigger you dance, the more it looks like [performative] dancing,” he said.Blankenbuehler has become known for this subtler style; he leaves out the big production numbers one might expect from a Broadway show.“We don’t want them to ask, ‘why is that character dancing?’ We just want them to take off their seatbelt and see our physicality as physicalized thought or physicalized emotion.”The class, taught by faculty member Kathryn Dunn, moved online last month due to preventive measures to slow the spread of COVID-19. Broadway may be shut down until 2021, but there's one especially bright light amidst the coronavirus cancelations: the Hamilfilm.Instead of its originally planned theatrical release in October 2021, the filmed version of Broadway's Hamilton got fast-tracked to a July 3 release on Disney+. Yet looking after our mental health has never been more essential.
To him, the individual instruments provide subtext that inform the melody.