For as far back as she can remember, Stroman
had been preparing for a career in musicals. "I have a strong
visualization of music," she says, "so even as a child,
when I heard music I imagined hordes of people dancing through
my head. I do that to this day. Music is not relaxing to me.
Whatever tune I hear, I imagine it completely staged, with people
singing and dancing. So my choice," she adds, laughing,
"was either to become a choreographer or go insane."
Karen Ziemba in Contact, the Musical
Photo: Paul Kolnik
Music and dance have been central to Stroman's life since
her childhood in Wilmington, Delaware. "My father is a wonderful
piano player," she says, "and our house was filled
with music. I took piano and guitar and dance. I started dancing
school when I was about five years old, one of those schools
that gave ballet, tap, jazz, and baton. I got totally obsessive,
and later went to the Academy of Dance in Wilmington."
She choreographed community theater and college shows before
heading to New York in 1977, a year after graduating from the
University of Delaware. "I came to New York as a song-and-dance
gal," she says, "even though I never wanted to pursue
acting. But I knew I couldn't go to New York and take over."
She landed parts in a few shows, and in 1980 got work as assistant
director, assistant choreographer, and dance captain on the long-forgotten
Musical Chairs. But it was an important show for Stroman,
who became friends with Scott Ellis, a member of the cast who
also had aspirations to work on the other side of the footlights.
A few years later they approached the songwriting team of John
Kander and Fred Ebb, asking for and receiving permission to stage
an off-Broadway revival of Flora, the Red Menace at the
tiny Vineyard Theater, with Ellis directing and Stroman choreographing.
"You
have to take chances, in this business and in life," says
the down-to-earth Stroman, who, by all accounts, is not only
respected, but adored by her colleagues. "I think we made
about $50.00 for that production, but it became a cult hit. And
it had a domino effect for me. Hal Prince saw the show, so I
got to choreograph his production of Don Giovanni at New
York City Opera. And I became good friends with Kander and Ebb,
and worked with them and Scott on And the World Goes 'Round
and Steel Pier."
And the World Goes 'Round (1991), conceived by Ellis,
Stroman and writer David Thompson (who had written a new book
for the 1987 revival of Flora), was a much acclaimed off-Broadway
revue featuring the songs of Kander and Ebb. But Stroman's career
really took off a year later, when she choreographed her first
Broadway show, Crazy for You. Very loosely based on the
1930 Gershwin musical Girl Crazy, the show was a huge
success, with Frank Rich rhapsodizing in The New York Times,
"Short of George Balanchine's Who Cares?. . . I have
not seen a more imaginative choreographic response to the Gershwins
onstage."
Most memorable were the exuberant and clever production numbers:
the leading man dancing atop a Rolls Royce ("I Can't Be
Bothered Now"); chorus girls transforming themselves with
pieces of rope into human bass fiddles ("Slap that Bass");
and, especially, "I Got Rhythm," in which pick axes,
plungers, hammers, mining pans, and just about anything that
wasn't nailed down contributed to a rousing first-act finale.
The imaginative use of props has become a signature of Stroman's
work. In Steel Pier, chorines danced on the wings of an
airplane. In The Producers, pigeons, file cabinets, walkers,
and balls and chains insert themselves into the choreography.
"Working with props seems so natural to me," she says.
"It's an extension of the character. In Crazy for You,
at the end of Act I the people try to show the lead character
how he's brought rhythm to the town. And they show him by doing
things familiar to them. They have mining pans and pick axes
and things that would be very natural for them to bang upon.
In Show Boat, a lot of the choreography had handkerchiefs
in it, because the women of that period always carried handkerchiefs.
Again, it's the idea of making the choreography believable."
One of the most extraordinary sequences in Hal Prince's exquisite
1995 production of Show Boat was a second-act montage,
in which the passing of two decades was exhilaratingly rendered
solely through music, dance, and costumes. " I collaborated
closely with [costume designer] Florence Klotz," says Stroman,
"because fashion and dance really went hand in hand. When
women wore long skirts with bustles, they could hardly move.
When fashion changed, they were able to dance with great abandon.
The two of us had to come up with styles that would clearly indicate
the year we were in and help show how people carried themselves,
and walked, and danced."
