Gotta Dance!

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Gotta Dance! is a hugely entertaining revue of choreography in the American musical recreating iconic moments from 17 Broadway shows including four that started life as MGM musicals starring Gene Kelly and later ended up as stage shows. Appearing under the auspices of The York Theatre, this is the work of the reconstituted American Dance Machine which existed from 1976 – 1987, and has been reestablished in 2012 by Nikki Feirt Atkins as American Dance Machine for the 21st Century. Atkins who conceived this show is also co-director along with choreographer Randy Skinner. American Dance Machine’s mission is to be a living archive of Broadway dance recreated by its original choreographers and/or dancers. All of the performers in Gotta Dance! are given a chance to show what they do best whether it is tap dancing, ballet, modern dance or swing.

Using 14 dancers from both Broadway and the ballet world, Gotta Dance! recreates the iconic work of Jerome Robbins, Bob Fosse, Billy Wilson, Michael Bennett and Bob Avian from the golden age as well as current choreographers like Susan Stroman, Christopher Wheeldon and Joey McKneely, along with Skinner who is the only one to create a new number to a song from Smokey Joe’s Café. Most of the scenes are in chronological order but not all. The show opens with two Gene Kelly numbers (“Broadway Rhythm” choreographed by Skinner and “Broadway Melody” from “Singin’ in the Rain” to the original Kelly/Stanley Donen dances) with Jess LeProtto channeling Kelly and Paloma Garcia-Lee as his Cyd Charisse (complete with the original green dress recreated by designer David C. Woolard.)

Next Jessica Lee Goldyn takes on the role made famous by Gwen Verdon and Shirley MacLaine and the fast paced choreography of Fosse in Cy Coleman’s Sweet Charity to “I’m a Brass Band” with all of the men pantomiming instruments. Later Goldyn stops the show in the second act with her take on Bennett and Avian’s choreography for “The Music and the Mirror” from A Chorus Line, restaged by original dancer Donna McKechnie.

Another show stopping number is Afra Hines as the Woman in Yellow (wearing William Ivey Long’s recreation of the original dress) in Stroman’s Contact in which Barton Cowperthwaite and Drew Minard (as equally sensational as Hines) compete for a stranger in a club in this large ensemble number. This is followed by two numbers from Lieber and Stoller’s Smokey Joe Café, “Love Potion #9” to new choreography by Skinner and McKneely’s original dances to “Teach Me How to Shimmy” in which Goldyn again stops the show as the fast twirling dancer.

LeProtto again channels Kelly as Don Lockwood in the specialty number “Moses Supposes” aka “Tongue Twisters” from Singin’ in the Rain in which Brandon Burks plays the Donald O’Connor role as Cosmo Brown. This is followed by a quintessential Fosse number from Pippin (“Manson Trio”) in which Taylor Stanley, Afra Hines and Georgina Pazcoguin dance with top hats and canes. The first act ends with “Cool” from Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story in which the entire company dances to Robbins’ choreography restaged by former New York City Ballet and American Ballet Theatre star Robert La Fosse. Stephen Sondheim’s trenchant lyrics come across loud and clear.

The second act opens with something quite different: the swing dancing to “Sing, Sing, Sing” from the late Lynne Taylor-Corbett led by Samantha Siegel and Anthony Cannarella. Three black dancers (Kendall Leshanti, Brandon Burks and Taylor Stanley) stop the show with their “Sweet Georgia Brown” from Bubbling Brown Sugar to the original 1976 choreography by Wilson.

La Fosse who staged Robbins’ soft shoe number “All I Need Is the Girl” from Gypsy in the first act with LeProtto as Tulsa and Deanna Doyle as Louise, returns with Robbins’ “Mr. Monotony” from Jerome Robbins’ Broadway. This undeservedly forgotten song was written by Irving Berlin for Judy Garland to sing in Easter Parade but considered too risqué it was cut from the film but turned up years later in the MGM compilation film That’s Entertainment III. Here it is danced by Hines, Pazcoguin, Cowperthwaite and Stanley to its sinuous melody. This is followed by a more well-known Berlin ballad, “I Love a Piano” used in Irving Berlin’s White Christmas. Skinner recreated his own choreography from the 2008 production for Doyle, Burks, Hines, LeProtto, Siegel and Minard.

Wheeldon’s first Tony Award-winning choreography to Gershwin’s “An American in Paris” Pas de Deux, originally danced on Broadway by Robert Fairchild and Leanne Cope is here danced by Pazcoguin from the New York City Ballet soloist and Cowperthwaite who danced the role on the first national tour. Not surprisingly the evening ends with that rousing finale to A Chorus Line: Marvin Hamlisch’s “One” danced by the entire company in tights, top hats and canes.

Gotta Dance! has something for everyone, either your favorite Broadway dance number or your favorite song. It may introduce you to some stage show you may have missed (hint: Contact has never been filmed!) The clever projection design by Brian C. Staton offers titles, dates and choreographers for each number as well as creating a different ambiance and setting for each. Some of Marlene Olson Hamm’s costumes are low key and unobtrusive, others like the shows performed are loud and brassy. All 17 numbers are brilliantly lit by legendary designer Ken Billington who might well have performed the same function for some of the original shows.

Gotta Dance! (through December 28, 2025)

The York Theatre & American Dance Machine

Theatre at St. Jean’s, 150 E. 76th Street, in Manhattan

For tickets, call 862-235-0938 or visit http://www.yorktheatre.org

Running time: 95 minutes without an intermission