‘A Chorus Line’ comes to Tigard

By Barbara Sherman

The Times, Jul 29, 2010 (1 Reader comment)

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Amy Beth Frankel, the choreographer for The Broadway Rose Theatre Company’s upcoming production of “A Chorus Line,” knew before rehearsals even started every step and position on the stage for each of the dancers for all the dance numbers.

When rehearsals started July 7, she carried around a thick three-ring binder filled with pages showing the positions of each of the dancers movement by movement as they change positions around the stage for each number.

The notebook’s pages, divided into sections for each song, are copies of the original Broadway show’s choreography.

“I spent hundreds of hours and taught myself ‘A Chorus Line’ three months ago before we started rehearsing,” Frankel said. “It took me a month to learn the show, and then I reviewed it a week before we started.”

For some shows, Frankel creates her own original choreography, but for others, like “A Chorus Line” and Broadway Rose’s “The King and I,” which Frankel also choreographed, the dancing stays true to the creator.

“People will know this is Michael Bennett’s choreography,” Frankel said of the Tony-winning director, actor, writer and choreographer who created the original dance numbers for “A Chorus Line.”

Frankel, who has choreographed other Broadway Rose shows in addition to ones produced around the metro area, also acts and sings.

She has appeared in several Broadway Rose shows – as Jolene in “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels,” as Kathy Seldon in “Singin’ in the Rain” and as Peggy Sawyer in “42nd Street” – plus other metro theater companies’ productions. Her roles as Jolene and Peggy Sawyer won her Drammy Awards.

Frankel was literally born to dance. Born and raised in Michigan, “by the time I could stand but before I could walk, I was bouncing even if someone was just clapping,” Frankel said. “It was obvious to my mom that I should go to dance school.”

Luckily, when Frankel was 2½, a dance studio opened nearby although it only accepted children 3½ and older. However, Frankel snared an audition and got in, noting, “They said I was the most focused kid in the class.”

That dance school focused on tap and jazz, and at age 7, Frankel started ballet, “which is the basis for lots of kinds of dance,” she said.

At age 9, her family moved to Japan for three years because of her dad’s job, and Frankel kept taking dance classes, riding public transportation between separate schools that each taught only one form of dance.

“I became fluent in Japanese and found that the teachers there are stricter than here,” she said. “The teacher would carry a bamboo stick and hit your knees if they were not straight.”

Back home in Michigan, Frankel’s family moved back into their own house, which ironically had been rented to a Japanese family. In high school, she kept up on her dancing and started choir but didn’t try acting. “I didn’t do the high school musicals,” she said.

Fate had to give Frankel a nudge to get her on her predestined path: During the summer between her junior and senior year in high school, a group of actors originally from Michigan but then living and working in New York came back to put on a production and invited local people to audition for the ensemble.

Frankel got cast in the show and as the summer went on, “one by one, they pulled me aside to ask where I was going to continue my training in drama in college,” she said. “I was a really good student and had thought maybe I’d go into medicine, and suddenly and completely I changed my mind.”

Frankel applied to New York University’s Tisch School of Arts and flew to New York to audition to get into the school.

“More than 1,000 applied, and they accepted 60, including me,” she said. “Suddenly I was doing musical theater. Dancing was my forte, but I started concentrating on acting and singing. A lot of the other students had agents and had already been on Broadway.

“We weren’t allowed to audition for anything for the first year. I got familiar with New York, and it became my home very quickly.”

Frankel earned her bachelor of fine arts degree and also did regional theater, sometimes working as the assistant choreographer or dance captain. “I got lots of experience under my belt,” she said.

One favorite place she worked was Hershey Park in Pennsylvania, which was known for its top-quality productions. “So many of the people I danced with there are now on Broadway,” Frankel said.

She became a choreographer at Hershey Park and then earned a spot in the national tour of the revival of “42nd Street,” which took Frankel on the road around the country.

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