Voice of Dance

SUSAN STROMAN: MAKING CONTACT

'Susan Stroman had just given a talk about the musical Contact earlier this year, when a woman approached her as she came off the stage. "She fell into my arms crying," says Stroman, who conceived, co-authored, choreographed, and directed the Tony Award-winning dance triptych. "She told me that she had been living the same awful life as the wife in the second short story, and when she saw that character daydream her life away, she couldn't take it anymore. She left her husband of 14 years, and she's never been happier."

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That emotional encounter reaffirmed one of Stroman's core convictions: that art in general and dance in particular can change people's lives. "I believe that absolutely," she says. It is a theme that recurs in much of her work. In Contact and Steel Pier, dance is a lifeline, a way of connecting to another person. In Crazy for You, the wealthy, stage-struck hero puts on a show that saves a theater, revitalizes a town, and helps him win the girl -- who fell in love with him the first time they danced. In The Music Man, fast-talking con man Harold Hill brings music -- or the promise of music -- to River City, Iowa, magically altering the lives of all its citizens. The transformative power of art is even evident in The Producers, which has little on its mind other than to hilariously entertain audiences (at which it succeeds brilliantly). But Leo Bloom's cheerless life is enriched and energized when he gives up his dreary accounting job and lives out his dream of becoming a Broadway producer.

Stroman nurtured her own lifelong passion for the performing arts, and developed a prodigious talent that has made her the most successful director/choreographer of her generation, the heir -- or, more pointedly, heiress -- apparent to such creative forces as Jerome Robbins, Bob Fosse, Gower Champion, Michael Bennett, and Tommy Tune. Her work is wondrously imaginative and theatrical, but never at the expense of the material. Whether she has yokels dancing on corrugated tin and mining pans, as she did in Crazy for You, or little old ladies dancing with their walkers, as she does in The Producers, there is a motive for everything she does. For Stroman, content always dictates form. "What's important to me is that the choreography is believable," she says. "It doesn't have to be real, but it has to be believable. It's a question of extending song and dance from characters, or from a particular situation. That's more interesting to me than imposing my style or a style on a show.

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Oklahoma!, which Stroman choreographed in London in 1998, will open on Broadway in March, the first time the show will be presented there without Agnes de Mille's original choreography. "I don't think I would have done an American production of the show," she says. "I did it because it was the Royal National Theatre and Trevor Nunn was directing. I knew Trevor would see the piece in a different way. And in fact it's a much grittier Oklahoma!. Americans fantasize about the Wild West, but the British see the pioneer town as rough and tough."

Since choreographing her first Broadway show, Crazy for You (1992), Stroman has been nominated for ten Tony Awards and won five: four for choreography (Crazy for You; Show Boat, 1995; Contact, 2000; and The Producers, 2001), and one for direction (The Producers). She has also received two Olivier Awards, London's equivalent of the Tony, for her choreography of Crazy for You and Oklahoma!. Her Broadway success led to commissions from New York City Ballet and the Martha Graham Dance Company, and she was one of the choreographers of the movie Center Stage. She also has an invitation from American Ballet Theatre to choreograph a full-length piece, something she anticipates happening "way down the road," when she can find time in her schedule. The self-described workaholic is committed to musical theater, and it's more than likely that in 2002 she will have five shows running simultaneously on Broadway: Contact, The Music Man, The Producers, Oklahoma!, and Thou Shalt Not, the latter a collaboration with Harry Connick Jr., based on Emile Zola's dark novel Therese Raquin.

• Read Allan Ulrich's review of Contact, the Musical.
• Look at images of Contact in our Image Gallery.
• The official website of Contact, the Musical.