First Jumping and Jiving, Then Creating

It sounded like a simple concept: a show based on swing music and dance.

Lynne Taylor-Corbett had already choreographed the classic “Great Galloping Gottschalk” for American Ballet Theatre, the musicals “Chess,” “Titanic” and “Randy Newman’s Faust,” and the films “Footloose” and “My Blue Heaven.” Why not tackle swing?

Three workshops and six Tony nominations later, “Swing!” opens at the Ahmanson Theatre on Wednesday. Swing dance specialists and Broadway dancers jump, strut, tap, slink, slide, spin and toss one another to new takes on old songs and old takes on new songs. Pieces written expressly for the show by its Broadway cast members Ann Hampton Callaway, Everett Bradley and others blend with standards made famous by Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman, Duke Ellington and Count Basie.

“My dad loved those songs so much, he used to sing them in the car,” says Taylor-Corbett, a soft-spoken, self-effacing woman. “People ask why I think swing came back, and it must be that we need to feel better. Touching when you dance is fantastic, and it makes us feel good. You don’t see anyone swing dancing without a smile on their face.”

They certainly smile a lot onstage here at the St. James Theatre. New York critics called the show everything from “totally winning” to “exuberant,” and typical was the Village Voice’s Deborah Jowitt in calling it “a big-hearted, irresistible show.”

While there are such bittersweet standards as Sammy Fain and Irving Kahal’s 1938 classic “I’ll Be Seeing You,” the emphasis is on upbeat dances like the Lindy hop, jitterbug, tap and even a bit of reverse bungee jumping.

Taylor-Corbett, who was nominated for Tonys for her direction and choreography on “Swing!,” has called herself a “kind of privileged curator,” and putting together this show was far from easy. Broadway dancers accustomed to being in the chorus had to focus on dancing in couples, while competitive swing dancers had to learn how to be onstage for more than their five-minute routine.

Some of the work had already been done before Taylor-Corbett joined the show. Marc Routh, one of the show’s producers, credits Paul Kelly, a director and friend, with the original idea. The two men were already visiting swing dance competitions and listening to recordings from the period by the time Taylor-Corbett joined them. They brought in Ryan Francois and Jenny Thomas, winners of American Swing Dance and U.S. Open championships, as well as Francois’ mentor, Frankie Manning, one of the original Whitey’s Lindy Hoppers featured in the 1937 Marx Brothers film “A Day at the Races.”

With the help of word of mouth and swing dance Web sites, Taylor-Corbett and associates began assembling a cast, first for workshops, then for Broadway. Los Angeles-based casting director Pamela Cooper estimates there were 500 to 750 people for the first day of auditions in Los Angeles. Since then, Cooper adds, she and New York casting director Carol Hanzel have auditioned thousands of people for the show’s workshops, and Broadway and touring productions--all for about two dozen spots per incarnation.

Taylor-Corbett knew immediately that “the incomparable” Thomas and Francois--an associate choreographer--would “play a pivotal part” in the show. She later found a couple who were world-champion western swing competitors, and another who were experts in hustle and Latin swing. She visited “gurus” in various swing specialties in Los Angeles and elsewhere, and started pairing swing experts with versatile Broadway dancers.

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Casting and what she calls “construction” of the show went hand in hand, the choreographer explains over coffee in her producers’ office in Manhattan. “I was working in many cases with people’s preexisting routines, reshaping them and having music written for them,” she said. “The challenge was finding little contexts, stories and fragile through-lines that could unite the cast so it wasn’t just a bunch of people coming out and doing their thing.”

Producer Routh calls Taylor-Corbett “a wonderful collaborator. In this company, every single person is a principal. There are no chorus people, and Lynne has a wonderful eye for talent. She drove us and the casting people crazy about getting the absolute best people, but she was trying to put together an evening where each of the individuals stood out and had a star’s moment.”

Taylor-Corbett’s inspiration, she explains, came from the spirit of swing in the ‘30s and ‘40s. “In all the books I read on swing, one thing really stuck with me: They made it up as they went. If they went to the ballet the night before, they would imitate a ballet step and that would become swing. Everybody was trying to fuse really disparate talents, and I thought that’s what I want to capture.

“Making it neat and sanitized and laying it out in little patches like a typical revue show would, I felt, sink it. So I just kept trying to scramble it up. I’d have notebooks, go out to breakfast in the morning and keep asking myself, ‘How do I make this just not predictable?’ ”

Enter Jerry Zaks. The veteran director, who had worked with Routh and his partners on “Smokey Joe’s Cafe,” says the producers solicited his opinion after he’d seen the first workshop for “Swing!”

“I gave them some feedback,” he says, “and they asked about my involving myself in a more formal way.”

Zaks, who is billed as production supervisor, says he was most helpful about when he thought the show would be ready for Broadway, but he also talked with Taylor-Corbett about structure and pacing. Complimenting her work with the cast and material, he says, “I don’t think people understand how hard it is to put together a revue. When you don’t have a conventional story to tell, how you order the material, vary and edit it is critically important. And that’s what we used the workshops and previews for.”

Taylor-Corbett seems genuinely appreciative of Zaks’ consulting, saying, “People were flying around onstage and off. Having a consummate pro like Jerry to chat with [helped] me be objective about my own work.”

Preparing for Los Angeles, the first stop on a national tour, Taylor-Corbett had to look at the show again, particularly because most of the original cast members around whom she shaped the show are still in the Broadway version. Conceding that “Swing!” is very much driven by the original performers and their talents, she says, they have still tried to tailor this new production to its performers.

As she describes the various specialties and backgrounds of her Ahmanson cast, Taylor-Corbett enthuses about their talents much as she enthused about her Broadway stars earlier in the conversation. “I have a young woman from Venezuela, Marielys Molina, I’m thrilled about. She’d only been in this country nine months at most. And we found a remarkable young man from South Africa, Warren Adams, who will dance with her. And we’ve added a number for Charlie Marcus, a fantastic new cast member who I couldn’t have in the show and not feature.”

Marcus “is a great tap dancer and has this ‘40s flair, so she created a number around what he has to offer,” says Scott Fowler, an associate choreographer and performer at the Ahmanson as well as on Broadway. “Some choreographers have a very set vision in their mind and want you to do the exact steps they come up with, but she really lets you find your way into her choreography. That’s why I love working with her so much.”

While “Swing!” obviously profits from and contributes to the resurgence of swing dance in recent years, it also reflects greater interest in dance everywhere from music videos and Gap ads to Broadway. The 1999 Tony winner for best musical was “Fosse,” while the 2000 Tony went to another dance show, “Contact.”

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For Taylor-Corbett, 53, who was born and raised in Denver, the renewed interest in dance is something she’s spent a lifetime building toward. She started taking dance lessons at 5, tagging along when her mother, a Juilliard-trained pianist, would play piano for dance classes. She thought the teens on TV’s “American Bandstand” were “golden kids, so hip and with it,” and she headed off to New York to study at the School of the American Ballet at 17.

While there, she watched the masters as an usher at Lincoln Center’s New York State Theatre. “People ask what was your greatest influence, and I always say looking down at the architecture of the Balanchine and Robbins works,” she says. “Because it was an aerial view, you could understand how the dances were built, and I learned a great deal about moving people around the stage.”

In the late ‘60s, she danced with Alvin Ailey’s troupe when it toured Africa and Europe. Later, she worked for choreographer Michael Bennett in “Promises, Promises,” then was called in to audition for Cassie, the part in “A Chorus Line” originated on Broadway by Donna McKechnie. While Taylor-Corbett had already decided by the mid-’70s to become a choreographer, she filled in occasionally when Bennett needed a Cassie on Broadway or on tour.

But unlike many of her Broadway colleagues, Taylor-Corbett has long choreographed for such classical dance companies as ABT, the New York City Ballet, Pacific Northwest Ballet and others. Along the way, as she raised her son Shaun, now an adult, she also choreographed TV commercials, industrial shows and music videos, leading the New York Post’s Clive Barnes to call “Swing!” “a major breakthrough” for her.

Taylor-Corbett would certainly agree. “I do a lot of commissioned work, and I came to realize that I brought my knowledge of how to start from nothing to this project,” she says. “I’ve sometimes chosen subject matter that was offbeat because I didn’t have to do it in a commercial arena. You develop a sort of courage that’s unfettered where there aren’t millions of dollars involved.”

The choreographer also defends her frequent choice of more lighthearted fare, commenting that shows such as “Swing!” are often underrated. “What always astounds me is that joy is perceived as being less important than being provocative,” she says. “But I think if you can convey joy, you’re in as high a league. It’s hard to get people to release themselves, forget who they are for a few minutes and go with you. I also do serious work, and I enjoy moving people. But I think you are also moved when you’re joyful.”

She will premiere her take on Carl Orff’s popular “Carmina Burana”--set on Wall Street--this April at the Carolina Ballet. She has an ongoing five-year association with the Raleigh, N.C.-based company, and notes she is also building less formal relationships with such theaters as the Cleveland Playhouse and Princeton’s McCarter Theatre, plus working with several writers to develop ideas.

“I usually rush from project to project, and I’ve never been in a position before to spend time on that kind of development,” says Taylor-Corbett. “I’ve wanted to do more directing, and it is now happening. People are approaching me with projects. It’s all sort of coming together in terms of both my opportunity and what I’ve worked so hard for all these years. I’m having more fun now than I ever had.”

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* “Swing!” Wednesday-Jan. 14. Ahmanson Theatre, 135 N. Grand Ave., downtown Los Angeles. Previews today at 2 and 8 p.m., and Tuesday at 8 p.m. Regular performances, Tuesday-Saturday, 8 p.m.; Saturday and Sunday, 2 p.m. Additional performances Sundays Dec. 3, 17 and 31 at 7:30 p.m., Thursdays Dec. 7, 21, Jan. 4 and Jan. 11 at 2 p.m. Tickets: $32.50-$70. Information: (213) 628-2772.