======
The December 11, 1964, issue of Life magazine featured an article titled The Rockettes Go On and On: World's Most Famous Kick, with illustrated with photographs taken by Arthur Rickerry.
Although by August 1963 Penny Johnson already "used to be a Rockette", the article is close enough in time to portray her life and work as a Rockette. Below are all the article's text, photographs and captions. Click on images to enlarge them.
======
The Rockettes
Spectacle of Their Dancing
How Five of Them Work and Live
In triple exposure taken at
New York City's Radio Music Hall,
the Rockettes display the precision
that has made them world famous.
=======
The place is the great state of New York's Radio City Music Hall. The moment is that epitome of precision, the high-kicking finale of the most famous dance routine in all entertainment, when the Rockettes advance upon the footlights like an infinity of mirror images. This month the 36-member team marks its 32nd year of four-times-a-day, seven-days-a-week performances. Though the girls themselves are anonymous, they have become a world landmark, a tourist "must" like the Statue of Liberty, and thus far nearly 200 million person have paid to see them. Twelve times a year the Music Hall completely restages its stage extravagana, with lavish new production numbers. The girls change too: over the years some 1,500 have performed with the team, each inevitably giving way to a younger replacement. But as an institution, the incomparable Rockettes, whose routines are shown on these pages, are a changeless feast for the eyes.
======
=====
The Fast Four-Minute Routine That Never Changes
=====
======
How Five Young Hopefuls
Found Glorious Anonymity
The more enterprising ones write letters asking how one goes about becoming a Rockette. They get police form replies listing the requirements: they must be high school graduates, between 5-feet 5-inches tall, have good figures and be excellent performers in tap, ballet, modern jazz dance and high kicks.
Auditions are held periodically as vacancies occur. At a recent one, 66 girls showed up and clicked through their paces in a Music Hall rehearsal room. The five talented and pretty winners are shown at right -- Karen Galvin, 18, of Milford; Mary Ann de Mare, 19, of Niles; Jane Simpson, 18, of Bangor, Maine; Susan Borin, 21, also of Niles, who did not know Mary Ann well at home but became a good friend after they were selected Rockettes; and Geraldine Ann Przyszewski, 21, of Erie (who changed her name to Gerry Presky so directors could pronounce it.)
Each more frightened than the other, they decided to join forces in a city that turned out to be even more perilous than they imagined. They paid $300 a month for a shabby two-room apartment in a run-down hotel -- an nobody told them they were being over-charged. They were snapped at by waitresses and cabbies and pushed and shoved about in a subway. But four times a day they changed into spangles and feathers and make-up and danced before 6,200 patrons who had paid to see them.
With big crepe roses in their hair the five newcomers wait backstage for the big number -- as anonymous Rockettes.
=====
Sitting in absorbed concentration at a reheasal, Jane (arms on knees) and Mary Ann take pointers from Markert. "I've never felt more frightened, awkward and alone," said Jane after her first session withthe director. But eventually she and her four fellow neophytes went through their first performance without a bobble.
======
Mary Ann winces in pain as she stetches during strenuous warm-up exercises with Sue prior to rehearsal. Even though they arrived as trained dancers in excellent condition, Markert's routines give them sore muscles.
-----
Learning the Drill
from Their Topkick
"Watch this, girls," commanded the spry little man as the leotard-clad dancers hung on every word. This was Russell Markert, the 65-year-old founder of the Rockettes and their only director for 32 years.
"Lean back as if you were saying, 'Halleluja!' Got it? You over there, put some blood in those arms. They look like weak fish. And you, the blonde, don't be afraid to stick out your butt and never mnd twisting the backside -- it throws you off. Don't you hear the beat? Here, I'll hum it for you!"
Markert is a brisk and stern taskmaster, first demonstrating a new routine to his girls, then letting them try it, then throwing up his arms in dismay and flinging himself into the group to dance with them.
Markert is a kindly man who clucks over his girls, and calls them "my dancing daughters," but he damands a discipline that would do credit to a drill squad of Marines. He strives constantly to make his36 girls perform as one. And if anybondy falters during a performance, even so slightly that the audience would never notice, he sinks into private pits of black despair.
Markert demonstrates the Rockette's "eye-high" kick, a trademark copied by dance lines the world over.
In a rehearsal lecture, Markert tells the new girls they must suppress their indivdual dancing styes and perform just like all the others.
Below, just like a general inspecting his troops, he passes along the line straightening feet.
=====
To be continued in Part 2.
No comments:
Post a Comment