Dance and Sing like Michael Jackson

In Chicago with Cactus Theatre and later in Tucson with Tucson Art Theatre, we used to do rehearsals just before opening that we sometimes called "singing rehearsals." When most actors or companies would be putting the final mechanical touches on things like blocking and pacing and all that, we were cutting loose! And I mean cutting loose! With the craziest and wildest kind of rehearsals of singing and dancing our way through the action. We did these for several reasons that I'll get into later. What I want to mention though is that we were sometimes given images, ideas or people to refer to as we sang and danced. On more than one occasion I was given Michael Jackson. "Do all your part like Michael Jackson singing." Ok, what the hell. And several minutes into it inevitably I would find myself ripping through it - the best I could - intense, dramatic, hands with flair, distinct, spinning, slapping, all that. The reheasals among other things freed us up physically and sometime emotionally, helped us to break our habits, find new rhythms, have a hell of a lot of fun, etc.

More recently I had been working to prepare an original play with an extremely talented performer, an opera singer and actress and wonderful person. We did not get to far in the work but one of the sections was to have an autobiographical piece about herself. Where when she was young, she always wanted to dance with one particular boy at the dances when the song "Dancing Machine" came on. In real life she never did. He was the great dancer and she was the wallflower at that time. I was to play the dancer doing the Michael Jackson moves to that song. Well, I practiced in my small kitchen at the time for like two weeks. I even invited my nephew over to give me some pointers and show me some additional moves.

At the Stanislavsky and Theatre talks I did a while back (not the most recent ones) I had that CD playing with Dancing Machine and I kept telling Esther that when she introduced me to turn on that song and I would come out dancing - lol. Never did it though for real. But I still want to.