From our archive: Here's how Rockettes swap costumes so fast
FROM OUR ARCHIVES: This 2021 story looks at the backstage choreography at the Christmas Spectacular Starring the Radio City Rockettes.
Every move The Rockettes make in the Radio City Christmas Spectacular is precise.
The foot is here, not there. The head is at this angle, not that one.
But for every eye-high kick and exacting turn there is another set of choreography no audience member ever sees. There’s a show behind the show at the Radio City Christmas Spectacular, backstage between musical numbers, during eight lightning-fast costume changes, the quickest of which lasts just 78 seconds.
That show is just as precise as the one on-stage — performed for no audience, far from the spotlight, in near dark — and it is nothing short of spectacular.
The clothes make the soldier
The 78-second quick change follows the Rockettes' most-iconic dance number, “Parade of the Wooden Soldiers,” which dates to the first Spectacular in 1933, when there was still radio in Radio City. They must transform from wooden soldiers to double-decker-bus-riding NYC tourists.
The 36 Rockette soldiers march and spin in lockstep, eventually lining up in front of a prop cannon that fires, sending them falling backward in painstaking slow motion.
Vincente Minnelli, the stage and film director who would later marry Judy Garland, designed the soldier costume in 1932, seven years before Garland’s breakout film, “The Wizard of Oz,” hit the screen.
Today’s version of the soldier costume — stiff, flared pants with suspenders, a buttoned red jacket with broad shoulders, a plumed hat, gloves and red-dot rosy cheeks — is as Minnelli drew it, but with some upgrades, said Donna Marmo, an assistant wardrobe supervisor who plays a key role in the show’s quickest change.
The pants are no longer stiffened with starch, Marmo said, but are made from foam-like material so stiff they can stand on their own. The Rockettes' red-dot cheeks are held on with double-sided tape, and the walls backstage are dotted with “emergency cheeks” to apply in a blink if one goes missing.
The clothes make the soldier and the routine, said Bailey Callahan, a Melbourne, Florida, native in her ninth season as a Rockette. These days, Callahan commutes from Mamaroneck, New York, to Grand Central Terminal, the Rockette of Metro-North railroad.
“The specific formations are so exact that the structure of the shoulder pads and the stiffness of the pants help to create those straight lines,” Callahan said. “We want this feeling of a metal rod going through all our shoulders so that we’re moving together as one unit.”
If one Rockette were to lose focus and tilt her head at a different angle, the illusion would be lost, said Kristen Grace Smith, from Malverne, New York, on Long Island, who is in her eighth season as a Rockette.
“The number itself is not hard, choreographically, but it's hard because we have to stay focused and make sure that all of our lines are straight,” Smith said, standing on the stage and turning to look out into the empty orchestra and up to the third mezzanine high above.
“If you look at the theater now, there's 6,000 seats, there's people all the way up there, there's people really close, and you can just tell if someone is off, even just by a little bit,” she said.
Smith attended her first Spectacular at age 3, when she might not have been big enough to keep the seat cushion from folding back up. The family made the trek from Long Island each year, as she built her dancing skills. She remembers being glued to the TV every November to see the Rockettes dance in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.
She auditioned three times before landing the coveted spot in this exclusive sorority.
As one of the “less tall” Rockettes — they range in height from 5-foot-6 to 5-foot-10½ — Smith stands at the front of the wooden soldiers parade and looks down the barrel of that prop cannon. She is the first to fall.
That fall, and the fall of the main curtain, triggers that quickest of quick changes.
Anatomy of a quick change
Here's how the change unfolds, in 78 seconds.
As soon as the curtain closes, with the music changing and the clock already ticking toward their entrance in the "New York at Christmas" number, each Rockette reaches forward to unzip the jacket and pants of the Rockette in front of her.
They then roll onto their sides — remember, those soldier pants are stiff — and follow their costume-change choreography to the letter.
They mastered each change over 10-day costume-change dry runs called "rack and shoe" rehearsals at the end of their six weeks rehearsing for this year's show.
For this change, Callahan and Smith team with Sydney Mesher, a second-year Rockette from Portland, Oregon, and the first to have a visible disability. (She was born without a left hand.)
Callahan is right behind Mesher when they fall as soldiers; Smith has to hustle from across the stage to catch up with them as they exit together, stage right.
"We waddle this way," Callahan said, making her move to demonstrate, on a day when there is no performance and they have The Great Stage to themselves.
They hand their plumed hats to a dresser, one of six on each side of the stage for this change — "It takes a village," Callahan said — and make their way to Marmo, waiting about 40 feet away at a rack of clothes with silvery shoes at the ready.
Over the next 75 seconds or so, Callahan, Smith and Mesher will do a different sort of dance in the near dark, as Marmo's hands fly.
In a flash, the soldier costumes go into a bin: pants, jacket, gloves, shoes and socks. The red cheek dots are removed.
These three Rockettes — like the 15 others on this side of the stage and the 18 others on stage left for each performance, up to four performances a day — now must get into their "New York at Christmas" costume: a sparkly dress, silver shoes, jacket, gloves, headpiece and earrings.
For Mesher, the order of changing is unchanging: dress, left earring, shoes, coat, right earring, headpiece.
For Smith, it's all different, but similarly repeatable, at every performance, up to 14 per Rockette per week.
"I put on my dress and then I bend down and do my left shoe and my right shoe. I stand up, I get zipped and hooked. And as that's happening, I put my earrings on. I do the same, left then right, and then I put my headpiece on. Once I'm all zipped, then I do my coat and button it over there before we go on stage. And that's where I do my gloves, as well."
The earrings, large sparkling clip-ons, are pre-set on the flap of the coat, easy to find in the near dark.
Because dresses require Marmo's help to zip and hook and she starts with Smith and Mesher, Callahan starts with her shoes, which have a small buckle, then her dress is on and zipped and she turns to her earrings, first her right, then her left, then her headpiece. She buttons her jacket and does her gloves in the wings as she prepares to enter.
Callahan said her dressing routine at work has informed her dressing routine at home.
"I think that has translated into my personal life," she said. "I get changed very quickly."
It's too dark for a mirror, so they are each other's mirrors.
"It's a friend check," Smith said. "Can you see my cheeks? Do I still have cheeks on? Is my hat OK?"
And just like that, 78 seconds is over and they are ready to make their entrance into "New York at Christmas," a number that has them hop on a double-decker sightseeing bus, on which there's a bin for them to put the jackets they take off during the number before performing another eye-high kickline.
756 Rockette costumes
Marmo is one of six dressers in each wing for this particular change, but the show has ensemble members — and a fellow by the name of Claus — who must be dressed, as well. There are 25 dressers working each Spectacular performance.
Each of this year's 84 Rockettes has nine costumes tailored specifically for her, including one that has the outfit, shoes and tights dyed to match each Rockette's skin tone.
That's 756 handmade costumes, just for the Rockettes, who have eight costume changes, in seemingly every available space backstage.
"There's really no relaxing time," Smith said. "We might be running downstairs to do a costume change and coming up on the elevator that brings us up to stage. There's never a time where you can sit and say, 'OK.' You can talk to your friend during your change, but you keep moving."
On Opening Night for the 2021 Spectacular, Callahan took to Instagram with an emotional post about returning to the stage after a year lost to the pandemic. She wrote, in part:
"Of all the things I get to do in this life, how lucky am I to be able to dance, to dance with friends, to dance on the Great Stage in NYC, to dance and help others create lasting memories with loved ones. I am so proud to be a Radio City Rockette. It’s been 2 years too long, but we’re finally home. Intermission is over. The Christmas Spectacular is back. Happy Opening Night friends."
A legacy of precision
They've worked their whole lifetimes for this, in dance studios from Oregon to Long Island to Florida, to take their place alongside their fellow cast members from 24 states, from Canada and Australia.
Mesher said her specialty is hip-hop, a skill she gets to dabble in when dressed in a Santa suit in "Here Comes Santa Claus."
"We're dressed in Santa suits, there are many Santas on stage, and we're holding bells," she said. "It's just fun and upbeat choreography. I say it's my hip-hop break. It's a little looser."
It's not lost on these Rockettes that they are part of a long line of women who've stood right here, worn these same designs, circled The Great Stage to the same tunes.
"If you think about all the Rockettes who've come before you, they performed this number in a routine that's almost virtually unchanged," Callahan said. "So when you're stepping out on stage, you're doing the exact precision choreography.
"But I'm also thinking about all the women that came before me who have worked so hard to achieve such iconic precision and what I can do to press that legacy forward," she said. "I have to do my utmost full commitment so I can inspire the next generation."
Exactly here. Precisely here.
Without change.
Going
Tickets to the Christmas Spectacular Starring the Radio City Rockettes start at $49 and can be purchased online at rockettes.com/christmas. Service charges apply to internet orders. Group sales, call 212-465-6080. Accessible seats at 888-609-7599.
Did you know?
There are two casts of 42 Rockettes each. One cast does the morning shows and one cast does the evening shows.
36 Rockettes are on stage in each number. There are six stand-by "swing" Rockettes, in case of injury or personal day.
Each cast has one day off per week, so the other cast would do all the shows that day.
The cast of 150 includes the Rockettes, Santa Claus, ice skaters and an ensemble of actors, singers and dancers.
More than 500 pairs of shoes and 1,000 costumes are worn per show.
In the tap numbers “Rag Dolls” and “The 12 Days of Christmas,” the Rockettes' tap shoes have microphones built into them.
Reach Peter D. Kramer at pkramer@gannett.com or on Twitter at @PeterKramer. Read his latest stories. Local reporting like Pete's only works if subscribers support it, which you can do at www.lohud.com/subscribe.
This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: How Rockettes change costumes so fast in Radio City Christmas show
