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

Dance Magazine, Nov, 1997 by Tommy Tune

"Twenty years without a complimentary review from The New York Times has almost killed me." She spoke of her early struggles and her early successes; here was the woman who had changed the form of the American musical forever. There's Oklahoma! (Agnes de Mille), West Side Story (Jerome Robbins), and A Chorus Line (Michael Bennett). Notice the order--I'm with the pioneer. Since she came from the East, I wondered how she was able to capture the great expanse of the West in her choreography.

"Well, you must remember, my husband was a Texan." Then adding with a kittenish, lopsided grin, "and almost as tall as you."

We spoke of painting and music. I told her the story of when I was a chorus boy on Broadway making $90 a week, how I would pass by this gallery in my neighborhood and had fallen for this painting in the window. Realistically depicted in oil was a near-broken-down wooden ship, sails ripped and blowing in the wind, against a blue sky, sitting--kerplunk--in a field of golden wheat. What an image--this great ship plowing ahead and not advancing one iota. Finally I got the nerve to go in and price it, suspecting that any art was out of my range. The owner said, "Sorry, it's sold. Agnes de Mille bought it. She said it reminded her of herself."

Agnes said, "Oh, yes, I remember that painting--it was done by one of my ex-dancers, Margaret Taylor. You'd like each other. I'll make another lunch so you can meet."

Later in the afternoon she remembered that after her stroke, as her husband was lifting her into bed, she whispered, "I apologize for ruining your life." He responded, "Nonsense, Aggie, you've made me a better man."

She was back in her bed now, using a faded pink terrycloth towel to blot the spittle from the corner of her mouth that drooped since the stroke. "It's time for you to go now."

But wait, I thought, I've got so much more to ask you. Panicked that this might be my one and only chance, I begged for one more question. "You're such a good writer. How do you do that? How do you write?"

"Ah, well, now, that's hard," she said sternly. And that was it! She's right. She pulled out a small photograph of herself as a young woman and signed it to me and I was out--out on the sidewalk as the sun was setting. Here was the park she'd walked the perimeter of for a whole day and night while she conceived Rodeo. I walked the perimeter, right then and there; I had to, following in Aggie's footsteps.

A couple of weeks later I got a note from her inviting me to tea to meet the artist. "And you can bring that girl you kept on talking about (during lunch I had spoken about my current dancing partner, Annie Reinking) if you want." I couldn't, I had to go on tour with Annie in Bye Bye Birdie. I never saw Agnes de Mille again.

I've always likened putting on shows to cooking, perhaps because my father and mother both used the kitchen superbly--Mom was a baker and Dad a cooker. Both my sister and I grew up without fear of the kitchen, and some of my favorite hours on this planet have been spent gathering ingredients and preparing meals for people I love. Jane Curtin says, "The family that sautes together stays together." Cooking with my real or surrogate family is a primary source of entertainment for me.