Dance Duo Leads Way to “42nd Street”

Jack Tygett and Joyce Schumaker are a married couple with much in common. They are both trained dancers. They have both directed and choreographed major musicals. They both teach at schools.

But for all they have in common, they do have a striking difference. Each is a product of a different era of musical theater.

Tygett, 62, was weaned on the Busby Berkely-style of musical extravaganzas. He danced in lavish movie spectacles, including “Oklahoma!” “No Business Like Show Business,” and “Flower Drum Song.”

Schumaker, 42, didn’t even begin dancing until a couple of decades later, long after the heyday of movie musicals.

“When I went to Los Angeles in the early ‘70s,” said Schumaker, “they weren’t even doing musicals. I had a ballet background as a child, and I also studied tap. But even then, tap had already fallen out of favor.”

Tygett experienced a different time there.

“When I began dancing in movies and television in the early ‘50s,” Tygett recalled, “it was a breakaway period, the last of the big movie musicals. It wasn’t a lack of audiences. The problem was with the budgets. In the old days, we had hundreds of people in the casts. The big spectacles just got too expensive.”

These days, the dance duo spend most of their time teaching a new generation of hoofers and gypsies. Tygett, who developed the musical theater program at United States International University in 1969, still heads the department, staging old-time musicals at the university’s Old Town Theater.

Schumaker is chair of the dance department at Chula Vista High’s School for Creative and Performing Arts. She has been directing musicals as well for the past five years. And this summer, they are hard at work staging “42nd Street” for a run at Vista’s open-air amphitheatre. The show will kick off the 10th anniversary season July 3.

The couple last teamed up in 1988, when they directed and choreographed a successful Moonlight production of “Gypsy.”

“42nd Street” is an appropriate choice for a couple of dance makers who span two diverse periods in musical theater. The show is of relatively recent vintage, but in style and content it harks back to the golden age of lavish, large-scale musical comedies.

“ ‘42nd Street’ only debuted in 1980,” Tygett reminded, “but the style of the dancing comes from the ‘30s.”

“It’s basically a tap dance show--a tribute to the musicals of the ‘30s,” Schumaker added.

Typically, Tygett and Schumaker make no clear lines of demarcation between their duties when they’re working on a joint project.

“We’re working so independently on this show, we hardly even see each other,” Tygett said.

However, because Schumaker danced in Starlight’s early-’80s production of the show (which was faithful to the original choreography by Gower Champion), she will take on the responsibility of re-creating the big production numbers that abound in this tap-happy musical.

“I’m re-creating what I can remember from the Starlight production. The rest, I’m filling in,” she admitted. “We’re trying to be faithful to the period, but we’re also bringing more story line” into the dance numbers.

“We’re making the dancing much more dramatic,” Tygett stressed. “We’re sticking to the style of the show, but there’s more of a ballet and contemporary feeling to the activities. Joyce’s ballet background will come through.” It’s not just danced with the end of the feet as in old-time tap, he said.

Though many of the performers in the Moonlight Amphitheatre cast of “42nd Street” are tyros, Tygett and Schumaker are gung-ho about working with them.

“What’s special about Moonlight is that it involves high school kids. It gives them a chance to work, and this summer they’re even doing ‘Into the Woods,’ a contemporary musical. (Moonlight) will be the first local group to do it,” he said, referring to the Stephen Sondheim show scheduled to open Aug. 29.

“Living with Rodgers and Hammerstein--much as I admire them,” Tygett said, “gets a little tiresome. You need better opportunities. Jobs in performing are hard to find. Budgets keep getting in the way. But some new and different things are happening now. Unfortunately, most of it is coming from England.”

The Moonlight Amphitheatre’s outdoor production of “42nd Street,” with Patti Goodwin, William Nolan, and Judy Clark heading the heavily non-professional cast, will be performed on July 3, 5-8, and 11-15.