Becoming a Broadway star - Tommy Tune: excerpted from 'Footnotes'

Dance Magazine, Nov, 1997 by Tommy Tune

I wonder if the reason I've never really grown up--except physically--is because I learned to dance too soon, or because I was old before my time, so I've spent my life "youthening." I do remember going to Sheila Jones's third birthday party and Mom asking how it was. Four-year-old doubting Tommy answered skeptically: "Her said her was three, but her don't look three to me." Was little Sheila Jones trying to pull a fast one on me, lying about her age? What was I thinking in my four-year-old brain? What am I thinking in my fifty-seven-year-old brain? I have always lacked emotional maturity. "Oh, Tune, you're just an overgrown kid!" I've heard the likes of that on many occasions and taken it as a compliment. But is it? As I write this, this early Manhattan morning in Penthouse C, I find myself struggling through yet another doomed relationship. Why do I keep trying? It's all so seemingly futile. Grow up!

I always get so nervous at auditions, that terrible feeling of having to prove you have talent instead of merely sharing it by entertaining the folks. I used to think of the people out front at an audition as the enemy. Now that I'm out front a lot at auditions I have a completely different take on it. Auditionees, listen up! We out front want you to be brilliant. The sooner we get our talented cast the sooner the highly imperfect system called auditioning is finished and we can start rehearsals. The people out front are not the enemy; they are your biggest fans. "Please let them dazzle us," we're saying. "Let them be perfect." If you believe this, perhaps that could lessen the pressures of auditioning, pressures that make one put up walls of protection around one's own natural personality and gift. This pressure sometimes causes a distancing effect, sometimes creates a pushed, frantic quality that's not one's natural bent but sort of a manufactured gaiety to overcompensate for the discomfort and, yes, fear. Just know that we're on your side. As a director, I do my best to create a nourishing atmosphere for the "fragile plants to grow." I think other directors do likewise. Trust us, and do your best. Shine through.

Living is a constant process; there is no trick to it, just simply taking each moment at its fullest. There is no past, there is no future, there is only now. And right now, I'm sitting, I'm writing, I'm breathing, a plane is going over, the sun is shining, my dog, Ophie, is flopped out next to me on the sofa breathing easily, my fingers are clutching this pen with a purpose. I'm fervently seeking to communicate with you. And right now you're reading these words, you're breathing too, just like me, light is falling on the printed page. It's like that, and you add up all these observations as they occur and it's a life. It's all we have. It's all so completely simplistic, so frustratingly complex. This is not a dress rehearsal. This is the show.

I've written a book about Martha, but I have to wait for her to die to release it!" announced Agnes de Mille. It was a great afternoon. It was in her apartment downtown. We had lunch in her dining room. She had white enameled wrought iron garden furniture--glass tabletop and curlicue chairs with little cushions--I really didn't fit in them at all, but I'm used to that. Airplanes, taxis, cramped theater seats--I've learned to adapt. I'm a collapsible dancer. The silverware and china were totally mismatched, and there was a lone paper napkin stuck in a water glass. Her Jamaican housekeeper had done her best. Agnes sighed--this was after her stroke, so she was physically compromised--and said wistfully, "I used to set such a nice table." We ate; she talked; I asked as many questions as I could.