May 21, 2025 • 15 mins
Join HAMILTON Choreographer Andy Blankenbuehler in conversation with Des Moines Performing Arts President and CEO Jeff Chelesvig as he shares personal stories about what it took to get the choreography just right for this ground-breaking blockbuster. This three-time Tony Award-winning dance genius takes us back to where it all began.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to DMPA Conversations. I'm Jeff Chelswig, President and CEO
of Des Moines Performing Arts. This podcast is designed to
give you an insider's perspective of the fantastic performances headed
two hour stages direct from the creators themselves, with eleven
Tony Awards and a lot of name recognition, The popular
musical Hamilton returns to Des Moines as part of the
(00:26):
Willis Broadway series. Today, I welcome Hamilton's incredible Tony Award
winning choreographer, Andy Blankenbueller, who has been nominated for five
Tony Awards and has won three. He was awarded the
Tony Award for Best Choreography in twenty sixteen for Hamilton.
Here is my conversation with Andy blankenbueler. Andy, thank you
(01:02):
so much for joining me today. I want to start
at the beginning of Hamilton, and I'm assuming you got
a call from Linn min Wilm Miranda saying, Hey, I've
got this idea. Can you tell me about the first
time you heard about Hamilton?
Speaker 2 (01:14):
Yeah, I mean we had had a great time working
out in the heights and then we had just finished
he was writing this while we were making Bring It On.
I think he knew it would be a show eventually,
but I think in the beginning he didn't know what
it was going to be. I think he really wanted
to be a concept album. And they did a concert
at Lincoln Center and it was a tremendous night, like
ten songs, and I think it was that night that
(01:34):
producers and Lynn and Tommy you know, looked at it
and said, you know, this is going to be a show.
They went off on their own, they kept working, and
then a few months later they called me and Tommy
called me and said, we're definitely going to do this
as a show, and we want you to jump on
board with us. So I knew from the material it
was going to be tremendous, wonderful rollercoaster ride for us.
(01:54):
And so for the next year and a half, you know,
whenever there was readings or work through, had pop into
the room and hear how the first act was coming along,
hear the new songs from the second act, and then eventually,
you know, it was complete readings. And then about I
guess about a year and a half after that first invitation,
we did a workshop. The intention was to do a
(02:15):
workshop of the entire show on its feet, but it
took us six weeks to finish the first act, and
so we ended up doing a work through on our
feet of the first act and then a reading a
music stance with the second act. And it was an
unbelievable performance and it was kind of a historic day,
I think in New York City for the theater. And
(02:35):
when I saw the show that day, like I just
knew what we had in our laps, and I said
to my wife she was there, I was like clear
our schedule like for the next six months, like I
just have to concentrate. And we just dove in and
I think, you know, everybody was really in good form,
like we were at the top of our game, really
super inspired by each other and really super inspired by
Lynn's work, and it was just it was just this
(02:57):
like fast downhill ski route just flying and it was
a really exciting time.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
After that, the first public performances were at the Public
Theater off Broadway, right.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, So I finished the second act and
you know, several numbers in the show were only completed
a few days before previous started the public. I mean,
it was such a big show and Lynn continued to
write new material, like through the rehearsal process. So the
public was where we debuted, and I get interestingly like
there was another number that used to end the show,
a different duel, and Lynn rewrote it the week we
(03:31):
finished rehearsals, and so like I had total writer's block,
like I couldn't forgraph anymore. There were so much material,
And I said to Temmy, you know, when we get
to it, I can't finish it, like I don't have
any ideas left. And so when we get to it
in Tech in like a week from now, my ideas
by then, and I'll set the finale in Tech. And
then the next morning I got an idea on the
(03:52):
subway platform in bay Ridge, Brooklyn, and I coreographed the
number on the subway platform at a thirty in the
morning in the middle of the winter, took up way
into the city and went straight into rehearsal, and Tommy
was like, I thought you were going to do this
in Tech. I was, I got the idea, so like,
let's keep the ball, Let's keep the ball up in
the air and do while we can do it. And
we set the entire like last duel in forty five
(04:13):
minutes and it's always it's never changed since then.
Speaker 1 (04:16):
Oh my gosh, and so interesting that that Off Broadway
run was in the first part of twenty fifteen, so
ten years ago. But before that you were working on
this how many years prior to that?
Speaker 2 (04:28):
Oh? It was really fast process. I mean people say
all the time that it was Hamilton difficult to make,
and I was like, not really, because Lynn's work was
so good, Like Lynn and Timey and outs, it doesn't
so much work, you know. When we did Heights, I
think I'm right about this. I think Lynn had twenty
eight cut songs. So there was twenty eight songs that
we worked on, like some were stage, some were not stage,
some were costumed. Like that's a lot of work that
(04:49):
then goes away. At Hamilton, there was only two songs
that were cut. Like. He was in such good form,
and so the making of it was quite quick. I
think it took me about a year to do. But
it wasn't like how do I make this moment work?
It was like, which of these ten good ideas should
I pick? Because the music and the material was just
so inspiring that tons of ideas were coming out of me,
(05:12):
and I think they were all could have been successful,
and it was really just an exciting time about saying,
which one of these cool ideas are we going to
go with? And luckily we were surrounded by great people
every step of the way. I mean obviously the cast,
but also the dancers that I had with me in
pre production. Everybody was just on the top of their
game and just loved the material.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
After you opened on Broadway, you were on a panel
at the Richard Rogers Theater with Anderson Cooper talking about
the show.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
Oh yeah, yeah, a bunch of.
Speaker 1 (05:40):
Us from the touring Broadway circuit, and you mentioned something
that I've never forgotten. The choreography in the show has
to do with Hamilton going in one direction if he
is and I'm going to screw this, so but maybe
you can fill in them.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
Yeah. Yeah. When I'm stating a show, I'm flattered that
you remember. And it was funny because Chris Jackson turns
to me and he's like, oh my god, I had
no idea we were doing that. But when I'm staging
a show, I tend to see sort of energy flow
in similar ways, and sometimes it's about the plot. Sometimes
it revolved around specific characters, like some shows to revolve
counterclockwise for me, and some shows sort of revolve clockwise
(06:18):
for me. And I realized that everything in the show
was revolving counterclockwise, and I quickly thought, you know, that's
Hamilton's inevitability, like the inevitability of things like I'm going
to turn this way and fall in love with this person.
I'm going to go this way and write a document
that's going to change the world. So the stage rotate,
the action rotates in counterclockwise fashion, but people on their
(06:39):
own access they rotate in a counterclockwise So if I'm
accepting a decision, I turn left. If I'm resisting a decision,
I turn right. And then in the show, the moments
are really working against fate, like working against the thing
that's supposed to work that goes the other way. So
like when Hamilton dies, when Philip dies, when people die,
they rotate stage left, the stage right, when Washington is resigning,
(07:04):
like all that action transfers the other way because it's
against what we want to happen. And then my favorite
moments in the show are when people are traveling the
wrong way but the turntable is working against them. So
like several times in the show, the turntable is rotating
the inevitable way, but Aaron Burr is walking against it
and going nowhere. And so that's like sort of my
(07:25):
little easter egg that happens like three or four times
in the show, where he's just plowing forward but he's
not going anywhere. Just great.
Speaker 1 (07:32):
I mean, did you have the turntable at the Public?
Was a turntable always part of it?
Speaker 2 (07:36):
Yeah, we had it at the Public, but you know,
we didn't have it at the workshop. We hadn't committed
to a turntable. And then the workshop was doing all
that revolving, Like I sort of instilled that choreographically before
I knew there was a turntable. And so then once
David Korn's the designer, saw the workshop, He's like, why
are we resisting a turntable, Let's just do a turntable.
And I've never I had never done a show on
(07:56):
a turntable, So it was a big experiment for me.
But I loved it, and David gave me a second model,
and so I had a model at my house that
would revolve, and so at night I'd listened to the
music and time it and make all the calculations about oh,
it takes the furniture twenty two seconds to revolve into
its correct place, and so it ended up like really
sort of appealing to sort of my mathematic craziness of
(08:18):
crunching those numbers. And it was very funny. We had
these rehearsals and the turntable down to the public and
the first time this big sequence happened and this one
girl rotated and finished right next to her chair and
she goes, oh, that was convenient. I was like, oh god,
that wasn't convenient. That took me like three hours to
figure out how to do that. And she was like, oh,
what a coincidence that was. I'm right next to my care.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
Oh wow. So we you and I met when you
came here to do a rehearsal for Bringing On the Musical, which, yeah,
we were part of the pre Broadway for that, which
was really exciting. And then since that time, you were
production of Joseph in the amazing technical Dream Code that
you directed in as well Hamilton and Katz. All of
(09:03):
those have played here on our stage. So how did
you transition to being a choreographer? How did that happen?
Speaker 2 (09:10):
Well, you know, I grew up dancing. I started dancing.
I was three, and I was a top ballet jazz
kind of dance studio kid, and I was fairly good
at it, but I didn't love it. And then in
theater I started doing musicals. Then I was like, Oh,
that's what I can use my dancing for. I can
use my dancing to tell a story in a show.
And so then I absolutely fell in love with the theater.
And my junior year in high school, I core crafted
(09:32):
Joseph in an Amazing Time, My Color Dream Code. That
was the first show I ever coreographed. When I was sixteen.
I think then I moved to New York City and
I never stopped choreographing. So even when I was performing
in Broadway shows at night, I was teaching at Broadway
Dance Center. I was going to dance studios all over
the country and teaching. I really loved teaching, and so
I knew I was going to become a choreographer, and
it was just a question of when. And I think
(09:54):
a couple of things happened. One there just weren't a
lot of dance jobs at the time. That sort of
for me as a Broadway answer, that felt I wanted
to be Gene Kelly, and there wasn't there wasn't There
weren't a lot of those jobs. I wanted to do
more storytelling in choreography, and that wasn't right in front
of me as a performer. So I think I sort
of pushed my choreography forward a little bit earlier than
(10:15):
I thought to start choreographing, and I did a couple
of really great shows that ended up not opening a
Broadway one of Van Lipa Want to Thank Wildhorns and
really cool stuff, and then got The Apple Tree at
City Center Encores and that ended up being my first
Broadway show, but In the Heights opened off Broadway a
month after that, so everybody really thinks In the Heights
(10:36):
was my first show, but Apple Tree was actually first,
and so I just always loved it. And my choreography
is very story related and very character specific, and so
I think it was an inevitability that I was going
to also start directing. And I like to do both.
I like to just choreograph, and I also like to
direct and choreograph. They're very different muscle. But directing is
(10:58):
an exhausting job, so much time and concentration, and a
big part of me likes to be the person who
just builds, and so as a choreographer, usually the show
comes to me pretty much complete and so I can
just make it, like just build the thing. But as
a director, it's like a five to ten year process
right to get it ready for rehearsals. So it's very
different hats that I wear.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
I think, do you have any heroes of choreography.
Speaker 2 (11:22):
I have a lot of heroes. I was always sort
of I never had like a mental relationship with somebody
I assisted or anything like that. So I've always admired
people from Afar. You know, as a kid in Cincinnati, Ohio,
I idolized Borish and a Cough and Garcory Hinds because
of White Knights. You know, they were mentors of mine.
I've since met both of them and got to know
(11:43):
Misha a little bit. Just fabulous and exciting. But then
as a young kid, you know, it's strange, but Jim Kelly,
cred Astare all those people were my idols. Michael Jackson
like they became my teachers and like the choreographer performers
that I wanted to be. And once I moved to
New York City, I've idolized people for different reasons. Also
(12:03):
like I love Susan Strowman, and she's such an inspiration
more than anything else of how to communicate and how
to create a working environment that brings the best of
everybody together. I love Stephen Hoggett. He's a great movement
choreographer who's very organic, has really cool stuff. Just last year.
You know, I'm not always the best audience member. Some
(12:25):
things I really like and some things I have my
arms crossed in front of it because I'm so competitive
and I wish I had the chance to do their shows.
But I sat down and I saw The Outsiders, which
I would have liked to have done, and I just
loved it. And I loved what those guys did and
the Outsiders, and so just recently I took them out
for dinner because I was like, I got to get
to know you guys, like you're the kind of stuff
(12:46):
I want to be doing, and they're looking to me like,
oh my god, you're the kind of thing I want
to be doing. So it's pretty crazy.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
Well, we have The Outsiders coming to Des Moines next season,
so we're very happy about that.
Speaker 2 (12:56):
Yeah, cool stuff.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
Last thing I'd like to ask you, we have a
large arge High School Musical Theater Awards program. Here we
have about one hundred and eleven schools actually involved this year.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
Oh wow.
Speaker 1 (13:07):
Yeah, and so I'm always curious, what when you talk
with high school students, what do you tell them about
kind of getting into the business. What kind of advice
do you try to give them.
Speaker 2 (13:17):
I mean, it's so interesting. I teach a lot of
people at different levels. I used to teach little kids
a lot, and I think when I was teaching younger kids,
a big part of my responsibility was to try to
inspire their imagination, you know. With high school I remember
so specifically, like I was finding out who I was,
and yeah, I had to develop my skills. But part
of being a performer and an actor a dancer is
(13:40):
that you have to be a human and so humanity
is so important that interpersonal skills of how you communicate
with people, the way I walk down a hallway and
I can look at somebody who's shy, or I look
at somebody who's competitive and has their backup, like, you
have to learn from all those things. You have to
be so aware of all the life that's around you
so that you can then apply it. That's what young
(14:02):
people have to do right now. They have to live
their lives. I always say, you have to burn the
gas tags out. You have to try everything. You don't
have to be great at everything, you have to have
the bravery to step into it. And we're in an
exciting time because we're able to break a lot of
rules right now, and we've been breaking. Hamilton's a perfect example.
We've been breaking rules and in the breaking of rules,
(14:22):
we find better ways to tell stories. And that's going
to fall in the high school students. They're going to
break the next out of rules and we all need that.
Speaker 1 (14:30):
Andy, thank you so much, really appreciate you.
Speaker 2 (14:34):
I'm laughing passed to moral shot. Shot.
Speaker 1 (14:51):
Thank you so much for joining me for this special conversation.
We hope you enjoyed going behind the scenes of Hamilton.
Dwayne Performing Arts is committed to bringing world clai Last
performances to our stages. So much of what we do
would not be possible without the generosity of our donors
and the loyalty of our season ticket holders. Thank you
for your continued support. DMPA Conversations is produced by Andrew Downs.
(15:14):
For further conversations, visit DMPA dot org or wherever you
get your podcasts, Thank you for listening.
Welcome to DMPA Conversations. I'm Jeff Chelswig, President and CEO
of Des Moines Performing Arts. This podcast is designed to
give you an insider's perspective of the fantastic performances headed
two hour stages direct from the creators themselves, with eleven
Tony Awards and a lot of name recognition, The popular
musical Hamilton returns to Des Moines as part of the
(00:26):
Willis Broadway series. Today, I welcome Hamilton's incredible Tony Award
winning choreographer, Andy Blankenbueller, who has been nominated for five
Tony Awards and has won three. He was awarded the
Tony Award for Best Choreography in twenty sixteen for Hamilton.
Here is my conversation with Andy blankenbueler. Andy, thank you
(01:02):
so much for joining me today. I want to start
at the beginning of Hamilton, and I'm assuming you got
a call from Linn min Wilm Miranda saying, Hey, I've
got this idea. Can you tell me about the first
time you heard about Hamilton?
Speaker 2 (01:14):
Yeah, I mean we had had a great time working
out in the heights and then we had just finished
he was writing this while we were making Bring It On.
I think he knew it would be a show eventually,
but I think in the beginning he didn't know what
it was going to be. I think he really wanted
to be a concept album. And they did a concert
at Lincoln Center and it was a tremendous night, like
ten songs, and I think it was that night that
(01:34):
producers and Lynn and Tommy you know, looked at it
and said, you know, this is going to be a show.
They went off on their own, they kept working, and
then a few months later they called me and Tommy
called me and said, we're definitely going to do this
as a show, and we want you to jump on
board with us. So I knew from the material it
was going to be tremendous, wonderful rollercoaster ride for us.
(01:54):
And so for the next year and a half, you know,
whenever there was readings or work through, had pop into
the room and hear how the first act was coming along,
hear the new songs from the second act, and then eventually,
you know, it was complete readings. And then about I
guess about a year and a half after that first invitation,
we did a workshop. The intention was to do a
(02:15):
workshop of the entire show on its feet, but it
took us six weeks to finish the first act, and
so we ended up doing a work through on our
feet of the first act and then a reading a
music stance with the second act. And it was an
unbelievable performance and it was kind of a historic day,
I think in New York City for the theater. And
(02:35):
when I saw the show that day, like I just
knew what we had in our laps, and I said
to my wife she was there, I was like clear
our schedule like for the next six months, like I
just have to concentrate. And we just dove in and
I think, you know, everybody was really in good form,
like we were at the top of our game, really
super inspired by each other and really super inspired by
Lynn's work, and it was just it was just this
(02:57):
like fast downhill ski route just flying and it was
a really exciting time.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
After that, the first public performances were at the Public
Theater off Broadway, right.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, So I finished the second act and
you know, several numbers in the show were only completed
a few days before previous started the public. I mean,
it was such a big show and Lynn continued to
write new material, like through the rehearsal process. So the
public was where we debuted, and I get interestingly like
there was another number that used to end the show,
a different duel, and Lynn rewrote it the week we
(03:31):
finished rehearsals, and so like I had total writer's block,
like I couldn't forgraph anymore. There were so much material,
And I said to Temmy, you know, when we get
to it, I can't finish it, like I don't have
any ideas left. And so when we get to it
in Tech in like a week from now, my ideas
by then, and I'll set the finale in Tech. And
then the next morning I got an idea on the
(03:52):
subway platform in bay Ridge, Brooklyn, and I coreographed the
number on the subway platform at a thirty in the
morning in the middle of the winter, took up way
into the city and went straight into rehearsal, and Tommy
was like, I thought you were going to do this
in Tech. I was, I got the idea, so like,
let's keep the ball, Let's keep the ball up in
the air and do while we can do it. And
we set the entire like last duel in forty five
(04:13):
minutes and it's always it's never changed since then.
Speaker 1 (04:16):
Oh my gosh, and so interesting that that Off Broadway
run was in the first part of twenty fifteen, so
ten years ago. But before that you were working on
this how many years prior to that?
Speaker 2 (04:28):
Oh? It was really fast process. I mean people say
all the time that it was Hamilton difficult to make,
and I was like, not really, because Lynn's work was
so good, Like Lynn and Timey and outs, it doesn't
so much work, you know. When we did Heights, I
think I'm right about this. I think Lynn had twenty
eight cut songs. So there was twenty eight songs that
we worked on, like some were stage, some were not stage,
some were costumed. Like that's a lot of work that
(04:49):
then goes away. At Hamilton, there was only two songs
that were cut. Like. He was in such good form,
and so the making of it was quite quick. I
think it took me about a year to do. But
it wasn't like how do I make this moment work?
It was like, which of these ten good ideas should
I pick? Because the music and the material was just
so inspiring that tons of ideas were coming out of me,
(05:12):
and I think they were all could have been successful,
and it was really just an exciting time about saying,
which one of these cool ideas are we going to
go with? And luckily we were surrounded by great people
every step of the way. I mean obviously the cast,
but also the dancers that I had with me in
pre production. Everybody was just on the top of their
game and just loved the material.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
After you opened on Broadway, you were on a panel
at the Richard Rogers Theater with Anderson Cooper talking about
the show.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
Oh yeah, yeah, a bunch of.
Speaker 1 (05:40):
Us from the touring Broadway circuit, and you mentioned something
that I've never forgotten. The choreography in the show has
to do with Hamilton going in one direction if he
is and I'm going to screw this, so but maybe
you can fill in them.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
Yeah. Yeah. When I'm stating a show, I'm flattered that
you remember. And it was funny because Chris Jackson turns
to me and he's like, oh my god, I had
no idea we were doing that. But when I'm staging
a show, I tend to see sort of energy flow
in similar ways, and sometimes it's about the plot. Sometimes
it revolved around specific characters, like some shows to revolve
counterclockwise for me, and some shows sort of revolve clockwise
(06:18):
for me. And I realized that everything in the show
was revolving counterclockwise, and I quickly thought, you know, that's
Hamilton's inevitability, like the inevitability of things like I'm going
to turn this way and fall in love with this person.
I'm going to go this way and write a document
that's going to change the world. So the stage rotate,
the action rotates in counterclockwise fashion, but people on their
(06:39):
own access they rotate in a counterclockwise So if I'm
accepting a decision, I turn left. If I'm resisting a decision,
I turn right. And then in the show, the moments
are really working against fate, like working against the thing
that's supposed to work that goes the other way. So
like when Hamilton dies, when Philip dies, when people die,
they rotate stage left, the stage right, when Washington is resigning,
(07:04):
like all that action transfers the other way because it's
against what we want to happen. And then my favorite
moments in the show are when people are traveling the
wrong way but the turntable is working against them. So
like several times in the show, the turntable is rotating
the inevitable way, but Aaron Burr is walking against it
and going nowhere. And so that's like sort of my
(07:25):
little easter egg that happens like three or four times
in the show, where he's just plowing forward but he's
not going anywhere. Just great.
Speaker 1 (07:32):
I mean, did you have the turntable at the Public?
Was a turntable always part of it?
Speaker 2 (07:36):
Yeah, we had it at the Public, but you know,
we didn't have it at the workshop. We hadn't committed
to a turntable. And then the workshop was doing all
that revolving, Like I sort of instilled that choreographically before
I knew there was a turntable. And so then once
David Korn's the designer, saw the workshop, He's like, why
are we resisting a turntable, Let's just do a turntable.
And I've never I had never done a show on
(07:56):
a turntable, So it was a big experiment for me.
But I loved it, and David gave me a second model,
and so I had a model at my house that
would revolve, and so at night I'd listened to the
music and time it and make all the calculations about oh,
it takes the furniture twenty two seconds to revolve into
its correct place, and so it ended up like really
sort of appealing to sort of my mathematic craziness of
(08:18):
crunching those numbers. And it was very funny. We had
these rehearsals and the turntable down to the public and
the first time this big sequence happened and this one
girl rotated and finished right next to her chair and
she goes, oh, that was convenient. I was like, oh god,
that wasn't convenient. That took me like three hours to
figure out how to do that. And she was like, oh,
what a coincidence that was. I'm right next to my care.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
Oh wow. So we you and I met when you
came here to do a rehearsal for Bringing On the Musical, which, yeah,
we were part of the pre Broadway for that, which
was really exciting. And then since that time, you were
production of Joseph in the amazing technical Dream Code that
you directed in as well Hamilton and Katz. All of
(09:03):
those have played here on our stage. So how did
you transition to being a choreographer? How did that happen?
Speaker 2 (09:10):
Well, you know, I grew up dancing. I started dancing.
I was three, and I was a top ballet jazz
kind of dance studio kid, and I was fairly good
at it, but I didn't love it. And then in
theater I started doing musicals. Then I was like, Oh,
that's what I can use my dancing for. I can
use my dancing to tell a story in a show.
And so then I absolutely fell in love with the theater.
And my junior year in high school, I core crafted
(09:32):
Joseph in an Amazing Time, My Color Dream Code. That
was the first show I ever coreographed. When I was sixteen.
I think then I moved to New York City and
I never stopped choreographing. So even when I was performing
in Broadway shows at night, I was teaching at Broadway
Dance Center. I was going to dance studios all over
the country and teaching. I really loved teaching, and so
I knew I was going to become a choreographer, and
it was just a question of when. And I think
(09:54):
a couple of things happened. One there just weren't a
lot of dance jobs at the time. That sort of
for me as a Broadway answer, that felt I wanted
to be Gene Kelly, and there wasn't there wasn't There
weren't a lot of those jobs. I wanted to do
more storytelling in choreography, and that wasn't right in front
of me as a performer. So I think I sort
of pushed my choreography forward a little bit earlier than
(10:15):
I thought to start choreographing, and I did a couple
of really great shows that ended up not opening a
Broadway one of Van Lipa Want to Thank Wildhorns and
really cool stuff, and then got The Apple Tree at
City Center Encores and that ended up being my first
Broadway show, but In the Heights opened off Broadway a
month after that, so everybody really thinks In the Heights
(10:36):
was my first show, but Apple Tree was actually first,
and so I just always loved it. And my choreography
is very story related and very character specific, and so
I think it was an inevitability that I was going
to also start directing. And I like to do both.
I like to just choreograph, and I also like to
direct and choreograph. They're very different muscle. But directing is
(10:58):
an exhausting job, so much time and concentration, and a
big part of me likes to be the person who
just builds, and so as a choreographer, usually the show
comes to me pretty much complete and so I can
just make it, like just build the thing. But as
a director, it's like a five to ten year process
right to get it ready for rehearsals. So it's very
different hats that I wear.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
I think, do you have any heroes of choreography.
Speaker 2 (11:22):
I have a lot of heroes. I was always sort
of I never had like a mental relationship with somebody
I assisted or anything like that. So I've always admired
people from Afar. You know, as a kid in Cincinnati, Ohio,
I idolized Borish and a Cough and Garcory Hinds because
of White Knights. You know, they were mentors of mine.
I've since met both of them and got to know
(11:43):
Misha a little bit. Just fabulous and exciting. But then
as a young kid, you know, it's strange, but Jim Kelly,
cred Astare all those people were my idols. Michael Jackson
like they became my teachers and like the choreographer performers
that I wanted to be. And once I moved to
New York City, I've idolized people for different reasons. Also
(12:03):
like I love Susan Strowman, and she's such an inspiration
more than anything else of how to communicate and how
to create a working environment that brings the best of
everybody together. I love Stephen Hoggett. He's a great movement
choreographer who's very organic, has really cool stuff. Just last year.
You know, I'm not always the best audience member. Some
(12:25):
things I really like and some things I have my
arms crossed in front of it because I'm so competitive
and I wish I had the chance to do their shows.
But I sat down and I saw The Outsiders, which
I would have liked to have done, and I just
loved it. And I loved what those guys did and
the Outsiders, and so just recently I took them out
for dinner because I was like, I got to get
to know you guys, like you're the kind of stuff
(12:46):
I want to be doing, and they're looking to me like,
oh my god, you're the kind of thing I want
to be doing. So it's pretty crazy.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
Well, we have The Outsiders coming to Des Moines next season,
so we're very happy about that.
Speaker 2 (12:56):
Yeah, cool stuff.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
Last thing I'd like to ask you, we have a
large arge High School Musical Theater Awards program. Here we
have about one hundred and eleven schools actually involved this year.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
Oh wow.
Speaker 1 (13:07):
Yeah, and so I'm always curious, what when you talk
with high school students, what do you tell them about
kind of getting into the business. What kind of advice
do you try to give them.
Speaker 2 (13:17):
I mean, it's so interesting. I teach a lot of
people at different levels. I used to teach little kids
a lot, and I think when I was teaching younger kids,
a big part of my responsibility was to try to
inspire their imagination, you know. With high school I remember
so specifically, like I was finding out who I was,
and yeah, I had to develop my skills. But part
of being a performer and an actor a dancer is
(13:40):
that you have to be a human and so humanity
is so important that interpersonal skills of how you communicate
with people, the way I walk down a hallway and
I can look at somebody who's shy, or I look
at somebody who's competitive and has their backup, like, you
have to learn from all those things. You have to
be so aware of all the life that's around you
so that you can then apply it. That's what young
(14:02):
people have to do right now. They have to live
their lives. I always say, you have to burn the
gas tags out. You have to try everything. You don't
have to be great at everything, you have to have
the bravery to step into it. And we're in an
exciting time because we're able to break a lot of
rules right now, and we've been breaking. Hamilton's a perfect example.
We've been breaking rules and in the breaking of rules,
(14:22):
we find better ways to tell stories. And that's going
to fall in the high school students. They're going to
break the next out of rules and we all need that.
Speaker 1 (14:30):
Andy, thank you so much, really appreciate you.
Speaker 2 (14:34):
I'm laughing passed to moral shot. Shot.
Speaker 1 (14:51):
Thank you so much for joining me for this special conversation.
We hope you enjoyed going behind the scenes of Hamilton.
Dwayne Performing Arts is committed to bringing world clai Last
performances to our stages. So much of what we do
would not be possible without the generosity of our donors
and the loyalty of our season ticket holders. Thank you
for your continued support. DMPA Conversations is produced by Andrew Downs.
(15:14):
For further conversations, visit DMPA dot org or wherever you
get your podcasts, Thank you for listening.
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