Christopher d'Amboise's "The Studio"
Set in a Manhattan studio with its Marley floor and mirrors, "The Studio" is a 90-minute engaging play about two dancers and a choreographer. The first-rate production focuses on dancing, the creative process, hard work and dead ends, eccentricity, perfectionism and "excellence."
Carrying on the artistic heritage of his family, Christopher d'Amboise wrote, directed and choreographed the play - his first. It is certainly rooted in his own experience and that of his legendary father, Jacques d'Amboise, New York City ballet principal and educator, his mother, ballet soloist Carolyn George, and his sister Charlotte, a Broadway star. Rubbing shoulders with legends of the theater since he was too young to pronounce their names, Christopher also became a principal with the New York City Ballet, working closely with both George Balanchine and Jerome Robbins. He went on to direct the Pennsylvania Ballet and has been a Broadway dancer and/or choreographer for about 80 musicals and ballets seen worldwide.
"The Studio's" 2007 premiere at the Signature Theater in Northern Virginia (suburban Washington, DC), followed its successful 2006 debut at South Coast Repertory in California. Signature's Artistic Director/Co-Founder Eric Schaeffer said, "When I read 'The Studio'…about the creation of dance, a renewed spirit, and the soul searching of artists, I knew that it had to grace our stage. He [d'Amboise] has captured the creative process unlike anything I've ever seen in a play. It's thrilling to be in a studio and not just see but feel the blood, sweat, and tears of the creative spirit. Once you witness this journey, you will have a new appreciation for what it takes to work in the arts today. I can only hope it opens many eyes and ears to the unglamorous and unspectacular lives of artists and our unending and unrestrained passion for our crafts."
Bells of recognition rang out when I saw the play. It captured what I had learned from exploring dance for over half a century.
The play's two dancers came directly from "A Chorus Line" on Broadway and had a history of dancing together. In "The Studio," Jackie (Tyler Hanes) and Lisa (Chrissie Whitehead) enter looking like any two young people on the street, and then they transform into ethereal beings - perhaps doing what others may aspire to, try to do, but cannot do well.
The efficient, exquisitely conditioned dancers are the tools, the clay, from which choreographer Emil (Stephen Lee Anderson, a seasoned Broadway performer), a lean mature man who looks like a former dancer, tries to sculpt a new masterpiece. In the past, he had reached the pinnacle of choreographic success, and now he was struggling to regain his creative excellence. Haunting him are dreams about succeeding the great Balanchine.
Lisa, a successful free-lance dancer, knew of Emil's fame and his calling his dancers "movers." She deciphered his identity through his ad for "movers needed." She practiced a speech she hoped would set her apart from competitors in auditioning to work with Emil. But he asks her to dance out her identities. “Dance me your name and where you come from.”
As do many choreographers, Emil gives dancers ideas and images to embody. Barking commands fast and furiously -- "flap like a chicken," "clock ticking," "the window," "flying nun," "sticky feet," "a pretzel" -- he coaxes out concepts into the instrument of dance. From such improvisation Emil selects movements for his dance structure. Within the broad range of dance-making practices, some choreographers work more democratically in sharing ideas, moves and creating a dance. Emil also marks characteristics of the music on his apartment wall, squiggles that capture its swoops and swirls. He then translates these doodles into steps he calls "the flying nun," "sticky feet" and "jack-in-the-box."
Jackie had previously worked with the tortured choreographer and sticks with him despite his perfectionism, inconclusiveness and a fear of failure that led him 12 years earlier to halt the curtain rising while Jackie and other dancers waited onstage ready to perform his "The Rite of Spring." Jackie confronts other vagaries of working as a professional -- injury, finding a comfort zone with a partner onstage and off and choosing among alternative work offers.
Emil faced a crisis of faith in the genuine quality of his creations: Were they really masterworks of genius, or just fortunate mistakes? If he never produces another work, he remains an elusive legend. If he debuts "Rite of Spring," he risks vulnerability and failure.
Fifty days pass as Emil tests, rejects, recalls and recombines material, all of which the dancers must remember. "Version Five! I mean, Seven. No." "32, 12B." Lisa sees his inconsistent repetition of variations and tells him. He fires her, as he had with 22 girls before, because she no longer inspires him. Undeterred, she and Jackie show Emil the full bloom of his astonishing shapes, phrases and rhythm to the music of Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring." They dance his choreography with an erotic charge onstage that reflects offstage intimacy. The audience sees the differences between dancers marking, going through the motions and "dancing full out" with intense energy, feeling and extensions as humanly possible.
Given d'Amboise's history and the history of American dance-making with driven choreographers, d'Amboise is asked the obvious question: who is the demanding, eccentric Emil based on?
D'Amboise told Paul Hodgins of The Orange County Register: "All the characters are me, as well as everyone that I've worked with - from dancers to my dad to Balanchine to [choreographer William] Forsythe. The characters are an amalgamation of very strong, clear types that I've encountered throughout my career."
"The Studio" was the result of d'Amboise's desire "to share with a general audience what really goes on behind the scenes in the creation of a work, and the highly dramatic and passionate relationship (that can develop) between choreographer and dancer." Using recorded music by Bach, Schubert, Tchaikovsky, Stravinsky and Glass, professional-level dancing and a word-based story, d'Amboise sought "the kind of theater that combines the elements of movement, music, text and scenic design without creating a hierarchy -- not the traditional form of placing the text in front and the rest behind."
D'Amboise finds the process of being in a rehearsal studio with dancers very emotional. Something unexpected always occurs - nonverbal displays of courage, hilarity, sensuality, fear, and personality characteristics. He envisioned these moments as great theater. After viewing a hidden "magical" process of dance-making, the audience gave "The Studio" a standing ovation - fulfilling his vision.
1.See Partnering Dance and Education, pp. 110-117.
2. See "A Dance Career in the West" in Dancing for Health: Conquering and Preventing Stress and www.judithhanna.com