On Broadway: throwing his weight around: former Paul Taylor dancer Andrew Asnes tries out gymnastics in Tom Stoppard's Jumpers

Dance Magazine, July, 2004 by Sylviane Gold

He's danced in Aureole, Esplanade, and Arden Court. Between 1989 and 2000, Paul Taylor made more than a dozen roles on him. He's performed his own choreography at the Guggenheim Museum. So what is Andrew Asnes doing in a baggy, yellow tracksuit, surrounded by seven other guys in baggy yellow tracksuits, performing drill-team gymnastics? Asnes' answer is simple: "I'm on Broadway in a Tom Stoppard play. That's protocol."

Well, yeah, it is protocol. It isn't often that a world-class playwright writes "a not especially talented troupe of gymnasts" into an absurdist inquiry into the existence of God and then names the play for them. But that's precisely what happened with Jumpers, and why a world class dancer like Asnes finds himself on Broadway in a play rather than a musical.

The casting call asked for "college professors--amateur gymnastics required." The characters are members of the philosophy department of an unnamed British university, and they are the physical manifestations of the mental somersaults required to prove--or, for that matter, disprove--theoretical propositions of the simplest kind. Last year David Leveaux's National Theatre revival of the 1972 play became a hit in London. Now it's a hit again on Broadway.

The Jumpers are an assorted lot--tall, short, older, younger. Asnes, 39, is the only one with an extensive concert dance background. That's no accident. When he auditioned men for the Jumpers slots, choreographer Aidan Treays says he saw plenty of incredible athletes. They didn't interest him. "A lot of guys looked too much like dancers. I wanted guys who were a bit quirky, who had an interesting quality. After all," he says, "they are English philosopher-acrobats. They are eccentrics."

Asnes, a former member of the Paul Taylor Company, remembers his audition and how inadequate he felt after watching his competition. "I don't flip," he says. "I did my forward handspring and I did cartwheels. But by the time I'd seen some thirty other guys, I said, 'What am I doing here?'"

But he landed the job and they didn't. Asnes, who has clearly done some thinking about the tricky segue from concert dance to other kinds of performing, explains why: "These are supposed to be college professors who do this as a hobby. I don't always look like a dancer--I was able to just be me. You also have to listen really carefully to get jobs. It's not always going to be about 'Look at how fabulous I am.'"

Treays agrees. As he worked with his original London jumpers, he found the variety of ages, body types, and movement skills "seemed to be saying something. When you have somebody who's clearly an amateur doing something very physical and taking it very seriously--that's where the comedy lies."

For Asnes, who left concert dance because "it hurts too much now to do it at the level I want to do it," the Jumpers' moves are not exactly a challenge. "I do perform some tricks," he says. "I throw a guy in the air; two of us balance another guy. It's exciting, and it can be dangerous. But to approach the show as just a dancer is inappropriate. We really are individual characters; emotionally, it requires a different approach."

It's an approach he welcomes, since he's hoping for more acting work. But getting it can be difficult. "To go from never auditioning for eleven years to competing with people who've been doing this their whole life can be crippling," he says. But Asnes has developed a positive view of auditions: "It may be the only opportunity you have that week to perform. Then it's fun."

Sylviane Gold has written about theater for The Wall Street Journal, Newsday, and The New York Times.