Interview with Cate Caplan

The scene was right out of any dramatic Hollywood story. It was during the week that buckets of freezing water poured in greater Los Angeles, imitating rain.  On that Monday night, walking on the glistening pavements of Glendale towards a half-lit theatre, once inside, one had to think that anyone out in this weather had to be nuts.  After being ushered down dark aisles and half lit stairs to the depths of the “green rooms”, where actors, stage hands and other theatre personnel spoke in quiet concerned voices discussing the show that was about to take place that evening, from the midst of a group of people, emerged a petite, visibly energetic figure who quickly led us through the stage, back up the aisles and into the lobby where we sat down in what we thought would be a quiet corner to have a conversation.

Cate Caplan, choreographer for the reading of the musical Roberta, which would open in about an hour, was as cool and comfortable as the proverbial cucumber, as if she had done this a million times before.   She has.  Maybe not a million, but enough to make her one of the most called on choreographers, directors and coaches in the business, not letting a little thing like rain get in the way.  She doesn’t let distance interfere either, as we learned that the term bi-coastal is just another blip on her appointment book.  Cate is an admitted “theatre junkie” who goes to see a show at least three times a week, and in spite of a breakneck schedule, took time to talk with us about her career.  When we met, the West Coast Ensemble was presenting Floyd Collins which she choreographed, and where she is preparing to direct “The Carpetbagger’s Children”

We started by discussing that evening’s performance at the Alex.

CC       This is a semi-stage reading, so it’s not a fully choreographed show;  whoever they get to choreograph is asked to give a ‘taste’ of the show – we put it up in three days.  They have script in hand – and for some of the musical numbers they get rid of the scripts so they can sing it.  The company is the Musical Theatre Guild and they do lesser known musicals or old musicals – and some familiar ones, like this show which is from 1935.  They’ll do some streamlining, some editing.  Like this show originally is three and a half hours long, - it’s an operetta, so they’ll say – “OK – we don’t need this song to be that long – so we’ll do a little piece it, and so on..

RP       So how did you get involved with this group?

CC       I have a professional dance partner; we’re world champions in Adagio dancing, which is the aerial partnering. They were doing Grand Hotel, which is one of the few musicals that has an Adagio and when I found out they were doing it,  I came to them – “I’m here!  I’m in town!” because when I saw it in New York I knew that was something I wanted to do.  So I let them I was interested – they brought me in as a performer, but they let me do my own choreography for my step-out number and I let them know that I was interested in a more active role – at that time no directing opportunities had come up yet.

RP       Have you done other things at the West Coast Ensemble?

CC       No.  I’ve wanted to for awhile and Les Hansen, the artistic director has given me three or four plays to direct, but either the timing was off, or the play didn’t feel quite right.  But Richard Israel, who directed Floyd Collins is a member of MTG and he said – “we have to do something together” so while Les was trying to find me a script to direct, Richard said, “we have a limited budget, but I’d like to work with you on this piece” (Floyd Collins) and I wanted to work with him.  I’ve loved the work they do for years, and while waiting for something to direct I decided to do this one.  Then when we were in rehearsal, Les gave me “The Carpetbagger Children”, which we’re flip flop playing with Floyd – that’s the play I’m directing for them now.  We’re in rehearsals now and it’s going to play on the Floyd Collins set.

RP       And that opens when?

CC       It opens March 15th.  It will play Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, and the great thing is that the set is already built.  Generally you’re directing imagining what the set is going to be.   It’s a hard piece; in its original form its three very long monologues, and they’re like fifteen to twenty pages long.  It’s very static and when I saw this, I thought “why am I doing this?  I’m a movement person – “.  When I stage plays I stage the story in movement – the physicalization is very much a big part of my directing style so I thought, How am I going to bring this to life? – so I asked Les if I could have permission to sort of do something to the script that I did years ago – in a female theatre group.  At that time they brought me into the play and I asked ; Why are you doing this play – it’s not very good, and the said  - We can’t find good pieces for women So I had each of them write monologues.  Then I took the monologues and I broke them and folded them into each other and produced it a hair salon, with the blowers and the spritzers and the stations and we’d have snippets of conversation and we called it CHOICE CUTS  - set in a hair salon – one would talk about her boyfriend – another about something else – we just bounced it around, so I asked Les – Can I do that? 

So within the story, when there’s a natural pause, instead of continuing on, pass it to somebody else and I’m letting them move around on stage – more abstract – more poetic – more fluid – so now it’s kind of like these lives are woven together.  None of the stories are linear.  There’s really no action.  Nothing happens in the play, its just a portrait of these three sisters, so in that respect you hear the same story told from three different points of view, so I’m just breaking it up and letting it move around and using the space (for Floyd) and sort of painting the mood of their piece of the story.

RP       Floyd Collins is a story about a guy stuck in a cave – how do you bring action to something like that?  There was a lot of movement at times – how did you approach that?

CC       Originally when Richard approached me – he said there’s one number in it that I really need your help on.  So I asked if it was being reviewed – and he said yes, so I told him that if my name was on it as choreographer, everything that’s moving can be conceived as choreography so let me be a part of the process .  So I staged it like a scene and add punctuation musically, that makes it more dance-like.  The Carnival scene needed to be more stylized – almost nightmarish so we talked about it, because Floyd is very much story driven and you can’t just say – Oh here’s the dance number.  One of my pet peeves with musicals is that the music stops – and now here’s the dance number!   I always try to look for an organic way to have the movement to come out of the acting.

RP       Visiting your web site, I can tell from your videos that you’re a classically trained dancer.

CC       Ballet dancer – I studied with the Washington School of Ballet.  Then I danced with the Metropolitan Ballet – I was the principal dancer.  I did a season with the North Carolina Dance Theater - a season with Ballet West in Salt Lake City.  And then I went to New York and was with the American Dance Machine which was the best of all original musicals and either the original choreographer or someone from the original show would come in and reconstruct the numbers.  Lee Theodore was from the original West Side Story was the artistic director and she loved my classical training.  Her classes were structured to do the singing gestures – what kind of clothes they wore – and she would explore things like ‘What are the singing gestures of the twenties – what are the singing gestures of the thirties?  What are they wearing – are they wearing zoot suits –are they wearing tight skirts?  It was about the acting – the physical theatre – the movement.  It was great training!  Now, a lot of my choreography assignments are with modern dancers.  I have fun looking at the actor’s natural movements and shaping what they do instead of saying here’s the step.  I watch people fool around.  I see what their natural moves are the first time they’re singing it – the first time they’re reading it, and then it’ll jump out at me which way to go with it, trying to make it as natural as possible and not break the acting.

At this point Cate asked me if was a dancer – so having been exposed I had to admit that I took some dance classes years ago – not to be a dancer, but because for years I worked as a professional photographer specializing in photography of dance companies and dance schools.  In my travels throughout the country, shooting pictures of ballet, jazz, Hawaiian, tap and every other dance imaginable I had the opportunity to see some great dance and some not so good, but it was always fun.

CC       Sometimes it’ll be harder to work with a group because they don’t have the training, - but often spontaneous kooky fun stuff come out of them – since they are uninhibited in a way, where a trained dancer is more restricted.  Even within the show, which has a Fashion Show built into the story, there’s a couple of trained dancers and a couple of non-dancers; (they needed voices) it’s always challenging – frustrating at times – but ultimately you want to create a balance between the look of the show – the period the costumes but what’s great about this group is that everybody in the company brings some Broadway or national tour background – even in the chorus, and they all take turns playing different roles.  They kind of do it as a work-out because it’s done so quickly.

RP       So this is just a one night presentation here at the Alex?

CC       Here at the Alex it’s just tonight, but for this show we have three venues – some of the shows have two venues – some have one.  This particular show is getting three slots.

RP       This seems like a lot of work for a one night show.

CC       It is – But they do it like a work out.  A lot of these actors are working all the time, and if they’re free they do it. One of the actors, Kevin will be doing one of the leads next week because someone can’t do it, so tonight he’s here just to watch and study the blocking and next week he’ll go for it.  It’s kind of exciting – like being shot out of a canon!

RP       So you began taking dance classes when you were a little kid?

CC       I was five years old.  I thought I wanted to be a classical dancer.  I trained for that, then I got into a ballet company and then I got up to being principal dancer in a regional company to fourth year corps de ballet in a large company and they offered me third year corps de ballet – but I didn’t want to be there for four years.   I wanted to do musical theatre, so I went to New York and I got Broadway musicals mixed in with my voice study now I do waltz, fox trot, tango, bolero, merengue , salsa  - ballroom dance/

RP       Ballroom?  You remember the old neighborhood dance studios like Fred Astaire Dance or Arthur Murray Dance studio where they taught ballroom dance?

CC       Yes.  I use a lot of ballroom stuff in my work and it affects my choreography and patterns.  I listen to music differently now.  When I hear it I say to myself – this is a bolero – this is a tango – whatever.  It gives me context right away.  Even if I don’t do the actual figures, it gives me insight into the dance.  Especially in musical theatre where there are always a couple of seduction numbers – sort of Cyd Charise – ish.  That’s fun for me, but the major factor is the script of course.

RP       Do you have a favorite choreographer – or an important influence in your dance or in your study?

 

CC       In my study?  I’d say more the ballroom – but the classical training underneath everything.

RP       What about a person?

CC       I’ve had so many great teachers!  I studied with Mary Day at the Washington School of Ballet but when I came to New York, I studied with Maggie Black – David Howard.

RP       Do you have any idols like Margo Fontaine or like that?

CC       Actually the man who trained me in my adagio.  Francois Szony, a Hungarian dancer, used to dance with his sister on the Ed Sullivan Show.  He was a pioneer in the art of Adagio dance – one of the first people ever to do it.  He trained me and when I danced with the American Dance Machine, Lee Theodore saw that I was petite and felt that this would be something I would be good at (Adagio).  She hooked me up with Francois, and he trained me and then she created a show for us in New York that we took to the Ford Theatre.  The show was called the Steps of Time and we also did it on PBS TV and that became my special skill.   That sort of separated me from everybody with my Adagio abilities – and now, you saw in my website (www.catecaplin.com) that I have several awards for that.  That’s just my special thing, partnering in the aerial stuff.  I would say Lee Theodore for booking me with Francois, and with Lee I was learning all the “West Side Story” stuff in class because she was in the original, so when Jerome Robbins did the revival I had learned all this choreography – I came to the audition acting like I was learning it and I wound up getting the revival of it – and then I did the International Tour.  Jerome Robbins directed – Leonard Bernstein conducted, so that was like a major high in my career.

RP       Lee Thompson had a major role in your career then.

CC       Yes.  She ran the American Dance machine and she’s a living archive of American musical theatre.  Because of her I got my equity card – I got my professional name from her, because my full name is Catherine but she’s the one who said – ‘You should change it to Cate’ and then I got introduced to Jerome Robbins, and then I worked with him and Leonard Bernstein and she was the one who got me into the Adagio dance.  There’s a million people all around that come into the business, but that’s been my extra thing.  Many people come to me to learn partnering – I coach competitive dancers.

RP       What’s in the future for you as you see it?

CC       Well, as you know, I’m directing Carpetbagger’s Children at the West Coast Ensemble.  There’s a few corporate industrials coming up – actually four.

RP       Corporate Industrials?  What is that?

CC       We’re doing a Cultural Affairs program in San Diego – an adagio of Andrew Lloyd Webber – to the Music of the Night.  Then I’m going to Minneapolis next week to do an industrial for Raddison Cruise Lines.  They want to have an adagio aerial thing and after that, my play will go up.  We do a lot of private parties and special events.

RP       When you say doing an adagio to The Music of The Night – do you mean starting from scratch?  Blocking all the movement?

CC       It’s an advance, and they just gave us the music and they want us to choreograph the piece.  It’s sort of a dream dance sequence of the vocals – they have live singers and we’ll work with them.  It’s just sort of contrived for this event.

RP       Do you also create the costuming?  For example – would you ever say that this particular dance piece requires this certain type of costume?

CC       I have a bunch of costumes I use for these special events.  If they’re no appropriate the producers will get something for me – but we always keep in mind the movement and the adagio.  I generally use my own costumes because I have everything made for me.  I have a woman who does this for me.  She’s seen my work – she know what I do;.  I roll up and down, and drop and toss and so I want things that float – I don’t something that catches on something else, so I have her make stuff for me.

RP       Your partner in the video seems to move you freely – he’s a pretty strong guy I bet, although you seem like you barely weigh 100 pounds.

CC       I weight a little over 100, but it does require strength, and it’s more leveraging and balancing.  Being sensitive and moving as one.  One of the things that separates the adagio partnering from modern day musical theatre is that people dance side by side, but they’re not really connecting – really using each other, so there’s a real art to that and not many people do it.  It’s a real independent world now – so when I coach people I show them the little things but they don’t realize what it really takes to do it right.  They say ‘you make it look so easy’ I would say, ‘That’s the ART part’.  What it takes it to really listen to your partner – to really actually lead your partner.  Today there’s so much fake dancing together.  They’re not really leading them through stuff.

RP       So today, there are not that many dancers – at one time you had names like Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, Bob Fossee – do you know any major name dancers now?

CC       Big time – No.  That really separate the dancers – maybe.  I did a class with Madonna in New York – and Bebe Newark, who was one of the Shark girls in West Side Story – Jane Krakowski and coached her for the film “Dance with Me” here in LA.  I worked with her every day – six to eight hours, because she played a competitive ballroom dancer in the movie.  David Hyde Pearce – I coached him for a play here at the Geffen – we worked for nine months.  He was playing a former Broadway dancer who became a ballroom teacher – so I taught him everything from musical theatre to jazz – ballroom – how to lead – tango – waltz - everything.  We worked nine months, and then recently I coached him for Spamelot – which will open in New York.  It’s now in Chicago at the Schubert.  I showed him all types of steps and took him through boot camp – dance boot camp.

RP       You are sort of a unique person in your talent.  Are there many others who do what you do?

CC       I hope not!  The ballroom thing seems to come into play a lot and since I love to direct I try to make the dancing theatrical story telling. Even with my own choreography with my partner – we always have beautiful dances but I always try to have some kind of encounter, or cat and mouse or the end of a relationship or seduction or some kind of theatrical thrust so it’s not just about two steps

RP       There’s some type of story involved in the dance

CC       Yes- like when I won the US Open last year.  The piece that I did was two people in an elevator – an encounter where they touch the button at the same time and then this fantasy happens – pushing through the doors and the whole dance happens.  We set it up all miming and when the dance is over we both sort of wake up and go back into the world of the elevator.  There were just sound effects and we’re back in, put our suits back on and go our separate ways.

RP       Tell me about the things you’ve won.

CC       I won that contest held in San Jose to have this world of the dance – I won six gold medals in world championship and I won three other world titles and I’ve won five US Open titles and thirty four regional or international championships. 

RP       So when is your star coming up on Hollywood Boulevard?

C       I wish!  They should have like a Dance Hall of Fame – I think I’d like that.

RP       So your future plans are to continue directing?

CC       I love directing!  That’s really my first love.  I’m keep putting my foot in the door with a lot of theatres as a choreographer.  I have a summer job that I’ve done for the past six summers directing and choreographing and there’s an equity theatre in Virginia where I’ve done six seasons for them.  I directed Sylvia – Le Café  - others

RP       That’s a lot of travel back and forth

CC       Well I go where the work is.  I go to whatever comes up.  I plant seeds and I try to go to as much theatre as I can.  I’m a theatre junkie so I probably go three to five times a week, depending if I’m rehearsal.  I study it – see what the theatres are hiring – what their bar is – what they’re expecting from a choreographer to see what I like – what  I don’t like and then I can go in and tell them .  ’I can do this job’.  You know just doing my homework.

RP       Any comment on the young people of today?  Are they coming up as well as the previous generation of dancers?

CC       In the dance community I feel like there’s a fast food mentality.  There’s more MTV video and the whole music video world is different.  I don’t see the commitment to the long term investment in shows – like building shows.  When I first came to LA I noticed that a lot of LA people who do theatre do it to get a series or to showcase themselves, whereas people in New York do theatre for the sake of theatre. So I think that there’s no commitment.  People want to jump to the top – to be with the stars they want to star in their TV shows, so in that respect that seems different to me.  A lot of the dancers become successful quickly, maybe from a music video, without the training like some of the choreographers who choreograph for some pop singers or a hot happening band may never have taken a dance lesson in their life.  But they coach some band that’s hot and suddenly they’re a choreographer.   There’s a big schism between that and doing regional theatre where one is always learning – always figuring what works -  what doesn’t and a lot of experimenting to try to make it work.  But I think that a lot of the trendier choreographers may never have been put in that environment.  They do something for a movie and all you really need to see is a foot – then it cuts to something else.  Can you really sustain a whole piece?  It’s an entirely different type of challenge.

RP       Do you see it getting better or worse?

CC       I hope it doesn’t get worse!  I’d like to see more movie musicals of that era that I love – the Golden Age of Hollywood.  I don’t know if that will ever come back.  If I had the control, I would love to bring it back for myself.  One of my dreams is to direct and choreograph a feature film – to capture the dance on film – to find the right script to do that and to resurrect that tradition.  Do the full dance on camera – but that takes rehearsal that they don’t do anymore.  I think there used to be studio members that would go into rehearsal mode and takes the time to do it and now everything is fast . . . they don’t have the time.

RP       And also the talent . . . ?

CC       Yeah.  They don’t seem to nurture the corral of their talent base.  I did some choreography for a soap opera and I was surprised because they hired me to coach the couple and they let me work with them a few weeks and then they actually shot the whole dance in its entirety.  I was really surprised.  Then they hired my partner and I to be the on-camera tango teachers and actors – but I so love that they shot the whole dance – not just shot a hand or a foot – that was an exception.

RP       You don’t see that too often anymore?

CC       No. And when I choreographed for Frazier the TV show – a lot of times the choreography was that they were doing dialog on the dance floor – but one of the last episodes they had me do an MGM fantasy, with show-girls and the big fans and the walls breaking away and the whole Fred – Ginger thing. But generally choreography is a very, very limited thing.  They call it choreography – they pay you well but you just do little tidbits and then they give you five minutes to do it.

RP       So the actors wouldn’t know what to do if you didn’t tell them?

CC       Right!  They don’t want to take a long time to build the dance that will make a difference – where they actually rehearse the steps – work on the time and then shoot it.  They tell you- ‘You got five minutes to do a tango’.  So you start coming up with more stock things.  Even though you want it to be special, because it’s a little thing, they may not want to take the time to develop it.

We chit chat a little more lamenting the loss of quality and commitment to the arts in general and Cate reminds me that her show, “The Carpetbagger’s Children” will open March 15 at the West Coast Ensemble.  Throughout the interview Cate has been punctuating her words with quick but elegantly placed hand movements, as if her fingers were doing a ballet of their own; an adagio, if you will, where gestures partner with words to create a picture or an image that will explain or describe her ideas.

Cate has been an important player in many productions in Los Angeles, and in addition to the accolades mentioned she’s named in this website in Travis Michael Holder’s TicketHolder awards as a runner up in Best Choreography for her work in Grand Hotel.  There is little doubt that Cate Caplan will achieve her goals.  Besides the drive and commitment, she is amply gifted with the one attribute that will always be at a premium in any endeavor – talent.  It won’t be long before her talent makes her name a household word.

 

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