John Carrafa: Read My Feet : Choreographer brings a dramatic approach to two new films, ‘Sing’ and ‘Rooftops’

“Film is like a language,” says John Carrafa, who created substantial dance segments for two upcoming major films. “Once I had figured out what the rules were, I started to be able to speak it. Eventually you start thinking in that language.”

A leading dancer with Twyla Tharp from 1978 to 1987, Carrafa has choreographed sequences in “Sing” (Tri-Star Pictures) and “Rooftops” (New Visions) that help delineate youthful characters in tough, urban settings.

“There’s no reason to dance in a movie except if it’s going to further the plot,” Carrafa, 34, says. “Movement can tell us things we don’t know that can’t be expressed in any other way. I’m interested in how movement identifies a person. Twyla did a lot of that. And that’s what (Jerome) Robbins is so great at: The way the characters move shows who they are.”

Carrafa had always been interested in theater as well as dance. His multifaceted pre-Tharp background included tap dance, mime, clowning and juggling as well as modern dance, and throughout his time in her company he studied acting, as he continues to do today. When he faced stepping out on his own, his interests led him naturally and rapidly into film work.

“I first felt it (the need to leave Tharp) when we did ‘Singin’ in the Rain,’ ” he says, referring to the 1985 Broadway musical--based on the classic 1952 film--that Tharp directed and choreographed. “I started to feel, ‘I would do it this way,’ and you can’t think that way when you’re working with someone else. . . .

“I realized I couldn’t work for somebody else anymore,” he says. “I wish I could, because it’s a great job. . . . What I needed to do, what was interesting to me, was to work with dancers who were characters in a dramatic situation.”

Both films he worked on have given him an opportunity to develop this approach to movement. Each had a script that included dance scenes as an integral part of the action. “Sing,” which is the first directorial effort by composer/record producer/music- and video-director Richard Baskin, is set in a Brooklyn neighborhood where high school students produce their own musical shows for an annual competition.

“Rooftops,” also set in New York and directed by veteran Robert Wise (“West Side Story,” “The Sound of Music”), takes a quasi-documentary approach as it examines a group of abandoned tenement kids who find refuge by creating their own world on the buildings’ rooftops.

But Hollywood does not come knocking on the door of a fledgling choreographer; Carrafa had to aggressively and persuasively pursue “Sing,” the first of the two projects. He had obtained a script early in 1987, when he was still busy with Tharp performances, and immediately sensed he had found a project to which he could contribute.

His previous film work consisted of his involvement in Tharp’s work for “Amadeus,” “Ragtime” and “Zelig,” but the fact that the “Sing” producers (Craig Zadan, who produced “Footloose,” and Neil Meron) had already chosen a choreographer with music-video experience didn’t stop him.

“They were reluctant to meet with me,” Carrafa says. “I made a videotape of myself dancing in the studio to some music I thought would be appropriate for the movie, with dancing that I felt would be right for its characters.” That tape convinced the film’s team, and a subsequent one, in which he used several dancers, persuaded the Tri-Star executives.

Carrafa worked on the “Sing” numbers that carry the students’ story along. (Otis Sallid choreographed the actual performance numbers.) These include the opening credits sequence, an audition scene, two numbers set in a club, and a confrontation in a warehouse. Filming took place in late 1987.

Learning to choreograph for the camera was basically a process of self-instruction for Carrafa, who acknowledges his good fortune to be living in the video era. Intense, repetitive study of such landmarks as “West Side Story,” “Cabaret” and “All That Jazz” helped him grasp the possibilities of movement for the camera.

“The revelation hit me when we did (the Broadway version of) ‘Singin’ in the Rain,’ ” he says. “I had to reconstruct all the tap choreography from the film for the stage, and I realized how much I could learn by watching those old films. It’s all right there for anybody who really wants to find out how to do this. I’ve watched ‘West Side Story’ a million times, and I still keep learning more about camera angles by watching it.

“I played with video cameras and I found that my dance training had given me a really strong movie screen inside my head, since a lot of it involved envisioning movement.

“When you’re looking at a stage, your eye can move around. The camera does that for you when you watch a film. In some ways it’s easier, because it’s so restrictive.”

During the movie’s pre-production period, Carrafa created his dances for “Sing” on a skeleton crew of dancers, and then taught them to the non-dance-trained cast members. In addition to the young actors who portray the students, the cast includes Lorraine Bracco and singer Patti LaBelle as teachers. “Lorraine Bracco had never performed as a dancer in her life, but she does some great dancing in ‘Sing,’ ” Carrafa says.

Since both he and Baskin were new to their tasks, Carrafa encountered a very open working situation on the film. “He was very willing to figure things out together,” Carrafa says. “Rooftops” provided a very different situation, since he found himself working with one of the masters he most admires, to whom he deferentially refers as “Mr. Wise.”

“It was an incredible working situation, because everyone respected the director so much. Everyone listened to one another, and we all gave each other ideas. There are certain conventions I learned from him--for example, there’s a certain ratio of closeups to long shots and medium shots, and that balance will determine how you feel when you watch the film.”

The script of “Rooftops” called for a new form of martial arts--something the kids would engage in that would convey competition but also look like dance. Carrafa says the concept was to create movement “that’s not Hollywood, but something you look at and accept, as you would in a documentary.”

This time he choreographed directly on the actors. “I wanted it to look like it really came from them. I pulled things out of them as people; the movement had to come from the characters.”

Carrafa is now taking a brief respite from coping with the camera, deliberately taking on a non-dramatic assignment: choreographing an abstract classical piece, complete with pointe work, for 16 members of the Columbus, Ohio-based Ballet Metropolitan, a company headed by John McFall.

But a future film project still in the discussion stage and a Broadway musical in the planning phase will allow Carrafa to continue to investigate dramatic ways of using movement.

His years with Tharp, whose work he regards with a respect that approaches awe, left him with a strong sense of responsibility. “If I don’t do something that’s up to that level, I’ll feel like I’m cheating myself,” Carrafa says. “I have to go and do something with what I learned, take it somewhere.

“I’m interested in choreography that doesn’t look like choreography. ‘It never made sense to me to just go and choreograph separate dances.”