New directions - how Broadway dancers Graciela Daniele and Scott Ellis have made the transition from performing to directing in the theater

Dance Magazine, May, 1994 by Robert Sandla

Joke making the rounds in Hollywood: Mother Theresa is accepting the Nobel Peace Prize. Reporters and news crews want to know: How does it feel to save the world? "Very nice," she responds. "But what I really want to do is direct."

She was a totally now, totally wow, go-go girl, bopping to the Bacharach beat of Promises, Promises, the 1968 musical that brought a glossy pop sound to Broadway. He played a lovesick hick in an early 1980s revival of 110 in the Shade, the barnyard fable of rain and redemption out west. Slinking through the sinuous bolero in Sondheim's 1971 Follies, she and a partner stopped the show - no mean feat considering they shared the stage with seminude showgirls in sky-high Marie Antoinette headdresses. He was one of a gang of rowdy, down-home guys in The Rink (1984), roller skating like the wind while hefting Chita Rivera and Liza Minnelli.

Graciela Daniele and Scott Ellis are two musical-theater triple threats who have made the transition from performer to director - make that successful director. In the last few years Daniele has directed and choreographed Once on This Island, Tango Apasionado, and March of the Falsettos/Falsettoland, among others. This spring, as director in residence at Lincoln Center Theater, she helmed Hello Again, an aching, ironic look at love in which romance passes from person to person and era to era. The show's composer and lyricist, Michael John LaChiusa, based his treatment on Arthur Schnitzler's turn-of-the-century play Reigen, perhaps better known in this country from the 1950 Max Ophuls film La Ronde. Ellis has two shows running on Broadway: a dexterous, charming revival of the 1963 musical She Loves Me and Picnic, William Inge's drama of sexual repression in America's heartland. Ellis was recently named director in residence at the Nederlander Organization - theater owners and producers - and associate director at Roundabout Theatre Company.

Daniele and Ellis offer a strong argument for the performer as director who, after all, knows musicals from the inside out. From Agnes de Mille to Gower Champion to Tommy Tune, apprenticeship is a theatrical tradition. Though they come from different show-business generations - Daniele, fifty-four, choreographed The Rink; Ellis, thirtysomething, danced in it - they represent the current generation of musical-theater directors. Their styles are very different. Thus far, Ellis has been the nice guy: his production of A Little Night Music at New York City Opera was emotionally opulent, deft, wry. It simmered with understatement. Daniele is not afraid to make audiences shiver. Her Tango Apasionado was a high-voltage jolt of searing dance-theater. When the much-revised show moved to Broadway as Dangerous Games the shock was gone. But what dancers!

"I love the humanity of theater," Daniele says. "Before I started Hello Again I thought, We need a turntable; we need this and that. When we began the workshop I started eliminating the stage-craft and I got down to a kind of minimalism. Coming from the choreographic world, my tendency is to work with space - space and the actor or dancer in it."

"The musicals I've been attracted to have revolved around story and character," says Ellis. "It's not like a Crazy for You, which suddenly explodes into dance and then returns to a scene. I love those shows and maybe will do one if I'm fortunate enough to continue. But I tend to be drawn to character and situation.

"I don't separate acting from singing and singing from dancing. I don't understand teaching |musical theater.' What are you supposed to do - make bigger faces? You approach a musical and a song just as you would a play."

Says Daniele, "Mr. Balanchine said that dancers are instruments, like a piano the choreographer plays. However, it was my experience in musical theater where I got to talk about what I was dancing. I allow my dancers to be like actors - to worry intellectually, emotionally about the parts they are playing. Of course, you don't do that if they're just kicking their legs in a line. But in the type of work that I do, the creative process is exactly like that of a play. The steps come last. Dance is another language of expression. Dancers can act and actors can dance and everybody can do it all."

Sure. But didn't she ever wory about steps when choreographing such shows as The Pirates of Penzance, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, The Most Happy Fella, and The Goodbye Girl? "Steps come from the vocabulary you have adopted for each project," she says. "I started dancing at seven in Buenos Aires; I danced at the Teatro Colon. I was a baby ballerina at fourteen. I studied with Matt Mattox, Martha Graham, and Merce Cunningham. I worked with Michael Bennett, Bob Fosse. I imagine I have a lot of steps. But they must be organic to the scene. I live the characters, I research the period, I listen to the author's intentions. The process always comes from the material."

Ellis does not choreograph but works closely with choreographers, most frequently Susan Strohman and Rob Marshall. He says, "Dance is a strong part of musicals. That's why the collaboration with a choreographer is so important. I envy directors who choreograph. I wish I could do it. I feel I'm a very good collaborator and I've been fortunate to work with two terrific people."