Word: siretta
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Osmond receives solid, but never overpowering support, from a superb chorus. They all nimbly dance their way through Dan Siretta's inventive choreography. Siretta does not recreate the dances of the period, but rather their style, which makes it easier for a modern audience to appreciate them. Cohan's score offers delights other than the songs which went on to become American institutions. He could write not only belt-em-outs, but gentle ballads like "Life's a Funny Proposition," done subtlely and straightforwardly by Osmond, and wonderful comic creations such as "Captain of a Ten Day Boat" a parody...
...course, the plot is not the point. The savory core of this musical is song and dance. The tuneful seductiveness of the score, especially Thinking of You, Any Little Thing, Up in the Clouds, is not to be found in Evita, Barnum or 42nd Street. Choreographer Dan Siretta sculptures stage space with stylized forms, and his Dancing the Devil Away is a New York prairie fire kindled with tap shoes. The show is not for worrywarts who want to cure the world's ills with a $25 donation...
Perhaps the major difference between then and now is choreography. Then there was none; today theatergoers would be dismayed by the static foot thumping of the first productions. "Dancers could not do then what we do now," says Dan Siretta, the company's choreographer. "We're doing something old, but we're also doing something new." For the second of Johnny Jones'show stoppers, Yankee Doodle Boy, Siretta used clog dancing, a style that was common in 1904 and looks a bit like flamenco dancing, with feet and legs moving up and down in one spot...