The Show
Excerpts from PMA Theatre Guild's The Addams Family featuring choreography by Rebecca Santone
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"When You're An Addams" is the opening number of the show. The members of the Addams clan raise their ancestors from the dead and dance to celebrate their reunion. I featured more advanced dancers in this number by giving special sections of choreography to highlight the dance ensemble. Additionally, students used improvisation and made their own decisions about what movements to do during various dance breaks (such as when the two students jump and the students react to the movements by gasping and running towards them). The dance captains also played a big role in rehearsing this number both when I was present at rehearsal and when I was absent. This is the biggest dance number in the show, as all but three cast members participated in it and there was a large variety of skill and experience levels in this group.
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"The Moon and Me" is the character Uncle Fester's solo in which he professes his love to the moon. The moon is personified by a ballet soloist, who enchants Uncle Fester throughout the number. The student cast in the role has years of dance experience, but had not taken a ballet class or performed ballet in about three years. For this number, I worked on both improving her ballet technique as well as working on her performance quality. For the partnering work between the two students, I reinforced rehearsal agreements about consent when coming into contact with each other, especially during lifts.
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"Tango de Amor" is a traditional tango between husband and wife Morticia and Gomez Addams. The number also features members of the ensemble doing the same choreography. For this dance, I choreographed a developmental progression by having the first step be the most basic tango step. By learning this step first, students had the chance to both get the foot work down as well as get comfortable dancing with a partner. Agreements about consent were also reinforced and dialogue was given to students to help the students stick to these agreements. As the dance goes on, the steps get more a little more advanced to follow the developmental progression (the second step adds in a facing change at the end of the basic tango step etc.).
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