More than eye contact

Contact

At the Benedum Center for the Performing Arts

March 25…

Contact

At the Benedum Center for the Performing Arts

March 25 through 30

(412) 456-6666

A lady in yellow swivels her hips across the stage staring at the men who crowd around her, finally resting on a bar stool where she crosses her legs with grace and lights a cigarette. She doesn’t stay long, though, for her movement is inevitable. Making contact with the other dancers is irresistible.

Highly acclaimed Broadway hit and Tony Award winning Best Musical “Contact” comes to Pittsburgh this week. The musical consists of three sensual stories told entirely through the dance movement of magnetic characters on pursuit of intimacy and love.

Directed and choreographed by Susan Stroman and written by John Weidman, the combination of these two talented Broadway contributors makes a bold mark onstage.

The three stories are diverse in content. First, “Swinging” raises the curtain as a playful vignette, which is danced against a Rodgers and Hart song played by Stephane Grappelli.

Second, “Did You Move” tells a story of a wistful abused housewife who drifts into daydreams in which she erupts into romantic classical ballet. She fantasizes to the recorded classics of Tchaikovsky and Bizet. Third and last is “Contact,” where a man attempts to kill himself but is interrupted by his subconscious, which creates a fantasy-filled dream of half-remembered experiences that save his life.

“All three pieces have to do with contact,” said Stroman, “the ability to connect. And all three pieces are about fantasies.”

The cast consists of 24 dance actors who captivate and seduce the audience while performing to music by Dean Martin, Squirrel Nut Zippers, Robert Palmer, Tchaikovsky and Bizet. While there’s no singing in this musical, it is far from unmusical and unmoving.

The lack of a live score was a concern for reviewers from Newsweek and The New York Times; but surprisingly enough, the jukebox effect and the storytelling through a background of familiar recorded music create a new wave musical affect. The music is familiar and the audience’s attention is focused on the actors, or in this case, the highly animated dancers such as the mysterious woman in the yellow dress, Pittsburgh native Colleen Dunn.

Her bold curvaceous body, cherry red lips and striking blond hair are accents to her suave movements. She is a temptress throughout the show, her iconic image impossible to miss as it floats across the stage in a shimmering dress and woos the men in an after-hours swing club set in downtown Manhattan.

The vision for the musical came in a summer evening at a club in Manhattan’s meatpacking district. By day, this district was the heart of the Big Apple’s wholesale meat business. By night, the district was transformed into an area pulsing with nightlife, its people bar hopping to after-hours clubs.

There was one club in particular that was a swing club by night that had a majestic scene – a background of black-clad dancers and a beautiful woman acknowledging her next partner, dressed in yellow. Stroman said, “She’d step forward, choose someone to dance with and then she’d disappear. I became obsessed watching her. I thought, ‘this girl is going to change someone’s life – tonight.'”

Months later, Stroman received a call from Lincoln Center Theater Artistic Director Andre Bishop inviting her to develop a new work at the theater. She drew on the image of the club scene for inspiration. Stroman said she was lucky to find Weidman who has a contemporary wit, writes and loves to dance, a hard combination to find in the Broadway world.

Both Stroman and Weidman agreed on the concept. Weidman said, “The notion that this woman was using dance both to make contact, and at the same time to limit and control how far that contact would go, seemed remarkable to me.”

And to think that a single day can change the rest of one’s life or that theater has a way of moving their audience into acting on their dreams. Or in this particular musical, making contact and being moved – that is what the theatrical experience is about.