Giulio Scatola No Illusions
Italian born Giulio Scatola is the Line Captain and Resident Choreographer for Las Vegas' "The Beauty of Magic" starring Hans Klok and featuring Pamela Anderson. He holds no illusions about how he got where he is. He got there through exceedingly hard work.
Giulio's credits are impressive. He's studied dance with Maurice Bejart, David Howard, Pina Bausch, Carolyn Carlson and Mikhail Baryshnikov. He's performed in "Starlight Express," "Cats," "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat" and "Promises, Promises." He was the lead dancer and featured singer in the European tour of Ann Reinking's "Fosse." The list could go on.
Then he decided it was time to try something different. "I've never actually seen a magic show before in my life and it was kind of a challenge to see what it was going to turn out to be. It's something different and we all like to do something different in our careers. I mean, I've done twelve musicals before this and I thought, 'OK, another musical. I don't want to do that.'"
So he opened the show in Europe with Hans and then followed it to Vegas. "Well it changed quite a lot. First of all, the show in Europe was probably over two hours long and we had to do it a little bit tighter because here you have a ninety minute show only, which is great because I guess the audience wants to be in and out and go on and hit the casino."
"Dance-wise it's very technical and it's very good when you build up a show that's very technical for yourself because you want to be able to go onstage and do something that's hard for you. When I'm going to do shows just because I have to be in a show then I will retire, because I'm not that kind of person that just does this business for the money. I've never been like that."
No, dance for Giulio is an art and he expects it to be appreciated as such. He said, "...We do such hard work and I don't think that anybody understands dance, how hard a dancer's life is. Everybody's like, 'Oh you're a dancer' and I just want to smack her face. People don't get how hard it is to be a dancer in a show."
"The dancers all the time are considered the back, the backup for a show, no matter what. I've done 'Cats'...and you do twenty minutes dance number at the ball and you're just really sweating and then Grizabella comes and sings one minute and a half and they're all, 'Oh my gosh!' Well, I just danced for twenty minutes, you know?"
"For this show, I don't believe that we are just backing up. For this show, I believe that we are pretty much carrying the show throughout the whole thing. Hans is fantastic and Pamela is great, don't get me wrong, but I believe that without us that this show in this format would not exist. And I think they know that or they would not have built it like that."
"I think the hardest part of the show is the fact that we don't have a break. I mean, like as much as the dance numbers are hard, they're pretty quick." In other words, an amateur wouldn't make it past the opening number and Giulio doesn't work with amateurs.
He said, "...I have to say the standard of dancing has really, really dropped compared to my years. When I was young, I remember when I wanted to be a dancer I was doing ten hours a day of training...I just feel like nowadays everybody thinks that they can be dancers. Everybody thinks, 'Oh, I can go there and do a hip-hop class and I'm a dancer'...I've been working and training all my life and I go on an audition and this person who can't even do a double pirouette and maybe doesn't even know what is a double pirouette."
"When I was young my idol was Baryshnikov. It was Nureyev. Their idol now is a TV star and it's so different. When I want to go and give a workshop on Bob Fosse, nobody knows who Bob Fosse is. They don't know who Martha Graham is. They don't know who invented this movement. When I choreograph, when I do something, I always study. I want to know, 'Why is this movement this way. Where does it go?'...Now they just don't care. They want to be on television. Or they're like, 'Yeah, I've done two ballet classes and I'm a ballet teacher.' No. I'm like, 'That's not how it works.'"
Giulio has no illusions about how it works. It works because of long hours and endless practice. But, he'll tell you, when it works, it's magic.