For the first time in the six-decade Broadway history of Gypsy, Jerome Robbins’s original dances are nowhere to be found. Gone are the strobe-lit transitions that aged News Boys into Farm Boys and the multilayered strip routine that transformed Louise into Gypsy Rose Lee. The new choreography, crafted by Tony nominee Camille A. Brown, is radically different, not only from Robbins’s iconic steps, but Brown’s own signature style.
Gypsy marks Brown’s first time choreographing an all-around Broadway classic (though her resume does include Porgy & Bess at the Met). Her approach to the show, under the eye of director George C. Wolfe, is rooted in liberation: liberating the characters from their circumstances and the show itself from the ghosts of the past. In discussing her process, Brown shared her insights into the fresh and emotional steps she’s created and their connection to her upcoming dance piece, I Am.
I want to dive into several of Gypsy‘s “iconic” moments and hear how you built these new interpretations. Instead of the strobe lights aging June’s dancers, the young, Black Farm Boys are replaced with adult, white male News Boys, which floored me.
Thank you so much. In past productions, they start as young kids and then get older. In this production, we are completely swapping out people. In my brain, I was thinking of a circus act, with Rose [Audra McDonald] as the ringmaster. She is orchestrating this transformation, or transfer. It was important for us to make sure we saw the News Boys and the Farm Boys side by side in the same costume. It was important for us to get the replacing, and when, and how...READ MORE