Download The Rockettes an essay by Darryl Kent Clark

The Rockettes
by Darryl Kent Clark
At the mention of their name, the Radio City
Rockettes conjure up an image of an endless line of
identically clad, smiling young women singing,
dancing and, most importantly, kicking their way
through dance phrases performed in relentless
unison. They seem to be timeless and,
simultaneously, on their own time line, as they
were formed in an era when dancing in a chorus
and being a chorus member was predominantly
woman's work. It is very true that a group of male
dancers performing technically challenging
choreography provides a special thrill. But when
the general performance-goer thinks of precision
dancing that has been with us for more than a
decade or two, the mind goes straight to the
Rockettes.
As a group, the Rockettes were born in 1925 in St.
Louis, Missouri. They were the brainchild of a
dance director by the name of Russell Markert.
Markert found his way to the dance world like
many other men of his generation. Born in Jersey
City, N.J., in 1899, he first heard American-style
dance music played live at a beachside resort in his
home state. As a young child, he was immediately
aware of the strong relationship between dance
and music on an instinctive level, dancing around
the house at the sound of a familiar song, but he
would not be able to train formally until he was in
his early twenties. After receiving training in tap,
acrobatics, and ballet from a Brooklyn-based
teacher by the name of Thelma Entwhistle, Markert
began to formulate his ideas about dance
entertainment. These ideas were fueled by the
precision dance troupes of the late 19th century
that came out of Great Britain.
Of these troupes, the most famous were the Tiller
Girls, directed by their namesake John Tiller.
According to Richard Kislan, John Tiller was not a
dance director or a teacher even; he was a
manufacturer. He picked the girls early (they were
pre-teenaged mostly) to begin training in the
precision style that would make him world famous.
The actual development of technique and
choreography was left to his wife and her able
assistants. The Tiller Girls performed extensively
Copyright © 2012 Dance Heritage Coalition
throughout the world and returned to New York
City in 1922 at the invitation of famed showman
Florenz Ziegfeld, Jr. When Markert saw them, he
was inspired to form a troupe of dancing girls that
“would be taller and have longer legs and could do
really complicated tap routines and eye-high
kicks... ”(www.ibdb.com), and that would put the
Tiller troupe to shame. Once he formed his group,
he named them the Missouri Rockets and they
began their performance career. Their initial
performances are unrecorded; however, the
Markert girls were the featured dancers in the 1930
Universal Pictures extravaganza, The King of Jazz.
The King of Jazz was an attempt to ride the crest of
the wave created by the film musical genre. This
genre had received a huge shot in the arm when
the newly formed Academy of Motion Picture Arts
and Sciences bestowed its Best Picture award on
the 1929 film musical, The Broadway Melody.
Technological advances in synchronizing the moving
image with sound helped in creating a demand for
film musicals that every Hollywood studio rushed
to fill. Carl Laemmle, Universal's chief of production
contracted impresario John Murray Anderson and
renowned bandleader Paul Whiteman to create a
fanciful biography of the birth of jazz music.
Markert and his girls supplied background for the
many production numbers that comprised this
hybrid of elements drawn from the revue shows
that were so popular at the time. Though Markert
had performed on Broadway (with the Earl Carroll
Vanities) before becoming a dance director, he was
not seen in the film; his sixteen dancers embodied
his passion for symmetrically matched, technically
versatile dancers performing a variety of dance
styles. The resulting numbers in the film that show
the Markert Girls (they were not billed as the
Missouri Rockets in the film) at their best include
their marvelously thundering tap break-down to
the popular tune ”Happy Feet” (which was reprised
for the film’s final number, ”Song of the Dawn”),
their opening precision routine that introduced
them to the audience, and “My Bridal Veil,” in
which they carry a veil for singing bride Jeanette
Loff that is easily the size of a football field.
Markert's work on these numbers would eventually
1
serve as inspiration to another famed directorchoreographer named Tommy Tune. It is very
difficult not to see similarities between these
production numbers and Tune's award-winning The
Will Rogers Follies.
Two years after the release of The King of Jazz,
Samuel Rothafael, known to all as “Roxy,” invited
Markert and the Missouri Rockets to perform at the
opening of his Radio City Music Hall. Rothafael
renamed the troupe of dancers, initially calling
them the Roxyettes. This would be shortened to
the Rockettes. Five years later, the Rockettes
represented the United States at a worldwide
dance company competition in Paris, France, and
captured the grand prize. And in 1938, the group
was also immortalized (for the first of many times)
in a Broadway musical. The Rodgers and Hart show
I Married An Angel featured a clever, humorous
number titled “At the Roxy Music Hall”; its climax
featured the performers Vivienne Segal and Audrey
Christie as the entire line of Rockettes, kicking their
way through the choreography of Rockettes
admirer George Balanchine.
Once the Rockettes were secure in their home at
Radio City as well as in American popular culture,
they began their famed four-shows-a-day
performance schedule. In order to meet the
demands of this schedule, the troupe began to
grow. By the mid-1960s, the troupe had doubled
from its original sixteen to thirty-four and its list of
alumna included Vera-Ellen, Lucile Bremer, Suzanne
Kaaren, Jane Sherman, and Joan McCracken.
Markert maintained a close relationship to the
Rockettes throughout this time. He continued to
oversee the audition and casting process and
continued to require that members of the troupe
be well-trained and versatile in the art of dance.
The Rockettes were also autonomous in their own
right. In 1967, they were led in a strike against the
American Guild of Variety Artists (AGVA) by
actress/dancer Penny Singleton (of the Blondie film
series of the 1930s and 1940s and The Jetsons) and
received improvements to their working conditions
as a result of their actions. The Rockettes also
began to diversify in the 1980s, accepting Asian
dancer Setsuko Maruhasi into the troupe in 1985
Copyright © 2012 Dance Heritage Coalition
and African-American dancer Jennifer Jones in 1988.
In addition to performances at Radio City during
the Christmas holiday season, the Rockettes can
also be seen at venues as varied as a presidential
inauguration, half-time at football games and in
other cities such as Chicago; Branson, Missouri; and
Toronto. So, while there is more than just one place
to be a Rockette, the standards set in place by
Russell Markert remain high to this day. Recently,
the troupe has found a way to train dancers to that
level that shares a common bond with John Tiller.
The Rockettes host a summer intensive in New York
for young, hopeful dancers. Female students as
young as fourteen can be placed in a rigorous
training program that features choreography and
repertory, and each class in the six-hour day is led
by former Rockette dancers and choreographers.
These intensives last a week and there are,
according to their official website, a total of seven
that culminate in a final showcase performance.
The odds of eventually going on the line at Radio
City are fair: the intensives have produced fortyseven dancers who have been placed on the
Rockettes line.
As the Rockettes move in perfect synchronicity
toward their ninetieth birthday, they show that the
dream of an American-born and based precision
dance troupe that Russell Markert had in 1925 was
definitely worth having. The legacy of performers
who have been a part of Markert's dream reaches
in to the worlds of film, musical theater and
concert dance and will continue to do so for quite
some time. Finally, the former Rockettes who share
their lived experiences through the intensives
ensure that audiences hungering for the clean,
precise combination of grace and athleticism will
never go unsatisfied, for they are teaching and
training the Rockettes of the future.
Darryl Kent Clark, BA, Columbia College, MFA,
SUNY College at Brockport, is a native of Grand
Rapids, Michigan. He debuted as a dancer in
Chicago in 1981, where he danced in the works of
many nationally known choreographers. His
2
interests as a performing artist expanded to include
work as a dancer with Princess Cruises, Vee
Corporation, film work with choreographers Otis
Sallid, Neisha Folkes and Quinnie Sacks and work as
an actor with First Folio Shakespeare Festival of Oak
Brook IL, Rochester, NY’s Geva Theater, Chicago’s
Marriott’s Lincolnshire Theater and Pegasus Players,
to name a few. Mr. Clark is also an emerging
choreographer, with favorable reviews of his works
in Dance Magazine and the recipient of fellowships
from the Illinois Arts Council and the Kurt Weill
Foundation for Music. He has also been of the
faculty of many dance studios in the USA and has
been a featured teacher of jazz, tap and modern
dance at many studios and universities in the USA
and the Netherlands. Mr. Clark is currently Assistant
Professor, Dance, at Missouri State University.
Copyright © 2012 Dance Heritage Coalition
3