Choreographer Ani Taj Talks to LADC About  La Cage aux Folles Now at the Pasadena Playhouse

After winning last year’s Tony award for outstanding regional theater, Pasadena Playhouse and its artistic director Danny Feldman were not content to rest on their laurels. Feldman recruited Tony nominated Broadway veteran Sam Pinkerton to direct a new production of another Tony winner, the Broadway musical La Cage aux Folles, now running thru December 15.  Pinkerton in turn recruited frequent collaborator Ani Taj to choreograph, and the show’s original writer, Harvey Fierstein joined in for some pre-show events including a virtual class “Behind the Sequins.”

La Cage aux Folles began as a hit French play that spawned a 1978 French film version that proved a surprising popular success in America. The Golden Globe award for Best Foreign Film and three Oscar nominations were just some of the international awards for the film. Though set in a drag nightclub, neither the play nor movie was an actual musical. That task was shouldered in 1983 when the play was turned into a Broadway musical directed by Arthur Laurents, with a book by Fierstein, and music and lyrics by Jerry Herman. Despite concerns about a gay-themed musical at the onset of the AIDS epidemic, the show ran for four years on Broadway, the song “I Am What I Am,” became an anthem, and the show garnered several Tony nominations including a win for George Hearn as Albin.

 
The plot is pure comedic farce elevated by a deep heart centered on a middle-aged gay couple, George and Albin in France’s gay-friendly party town St. Tropez.  George operates a drag nightclub, La Cage aux Folles, with Albin, aka Zaza, as the star attraction. Together they raised George’s son who ignites the plot when he announces he is in love, wants to marry the girl who is on her way to visit with her parents, including her father, a politician bent on closing down drag clubs. To top it off, the son has represented Georges as a retired diplomat and for the length of the visit wants him to play that part, asking his father to eliminate the vestiges of his true identity including the flamboyant erotica that pervades the house and Albin who has been a mother to the son. Not surprisingly, the plan goes awry from the start with the action moving from their home to the nightclub where Zaza and the chorus of Cagelles reign.

There are shenanigans galore that build until the charade explodes. The politician realizes his daughter wants to marry into a gay family, only to get his comeuppance when the press shows up, and Georges plots an escape by disguising them as members of the Cagelles. The slapstick is balanced by the depth of the son’s love to ask his parents to be someone they are not and the depth of Georges and Albin’s love to be willing to deny who they are out of love for their son.

And the title? folle is French slang for a gay man, so La Cage aux Folles is a cage or birdcage of gay men, or more simply, a drag show.

 
Recently the show’s choreographer Ani Taj spoke with LA Dance Chronicle writer Ann Haskins about how she became involved with a show she had never seen, the intentional decision that the Cagelles would not be the Rockettes in drag, and how the show brought her back to the reasons she originally went into musical theater.

LADC:  How did you get involved with this production of La Cage aux Folles?

Taj: The director Sam Pinkerton and I have a long history together for the better part of the last two decades. I saw his production of Head Over Heels at the Pasadena Playhouse, so when Sam became involved with this show and asked if I would be a part of it, it was an easy yes. Returning to a big old classic musical was truly exciting, because we actually studied this kind of theater together when we were young. We’ve also done other configurations where we have made shows from scratch together that are dance driven. I actually performed for a show of his many years ago. So we have a very flexible format for collaboration.

LADC:  Is it your first time doing this show?

Taj:  It is my first time doing this show. And I’ll go on and venture to say it’s not only my first time doing it, it’s going to be my first time seeing a live production. I grew up in musical theater in New York City, but somehow I never saw La Cage, although I knew the music. I was on the fence thinking “Should I be going to try to see lots of versions, wherever I can see a live production?” I decided perhaps it was good to have a clean slate and see what emerges, because the music really tells you a lot about what to do. I chose to embrace the fact that I was given more of a blank canvas and space to imagine what to think, how it’s populated, and how it moves.

 
LADC: What were the conversations with the director about where choreography fit into the show?

Taj:  Sam has a lot of experience as a choreographer himself, so he really understands movement.  He also knows the way I make movement, that I want to start with music and dancers in a room. So early on, we wanted a movement workshop ahead of time, which Pasadena Playhouse graciously made possible for us. We gathered some people together to start discovering the movement language for the show.

Just to get more directly back to your question, Sam and I talked a lot about the club itself and what sorts of humans might inhabit the La Cage we were making. It’s worth saying from the start, we weren’t looking to cast seven to 12 identical bodies that dance the same way. That’s not what either of us is really interested in. When we bring ensembles of dancers and movers together, we’re most excited about the convergence of many different ways into movement and performance, and seeing what the individuals in the room bring to us. We were excited to build a club that had room for radical difference in ways of moving, presentation, and gender expression which is not the same as a chorus of drag queens.

Sam is very image driven. So we had a lot of images of backstage environment; the queer history in New York and San Francisco and LA. We wanted the feel of the kind of club that you walk into and really invites you to be yourself, whatever that is.

Then we also talked about the way the show moves outside of the club. There are dance sequences that are onstage in the club and directed to the audience in the club, but other dance sequences occur outside of the club and emerge from the character’s emotions and lyrics.

 
LADC:  How many dancers are there?

Taj:  There are seven Cagelles, the dancers in the club, and then, of course, the the principals in the cast at different points in the story. Also, there are moments where other people who work in the club spontaneously swing into numbers.  We thought a lot about the kind of scrappy nature of a lot of drag clubs and underground venues, where people have to pull things together and really operate as a team. So occasionally we have eight or ten on stage.

LADC:  Some productions have the club dancers in heels and in other productions, the dancers are in drag, and others a mix of drag and females decked out as drag. So what direction did you take?

Taj:  That’s an interesting question, because somewhere along the line, I turned to Sam and asked “Do we really want everybody to be in heels or everyone in character shoes?” We kind of just looked at each other and shook our heads, “no.” Our idea was to render a vision of the world that encompasses possibilities, rather than just one way of being beautiful or fabulous, or self realized.  The discussion of what exactly is on their feet was a long process. Expression, self expression, and dance expression are so informed and enhanced by what a person is wearing. We wanted to create circumstances and conditions that allowed people to put an authentic version of themselves on display, to be able to dance, and feel free.

 
LADC: Looking at the casts’ backgrounds, most of the leads are very, very talented, but lean more towards singing and acting. They may move, but in general, their bios don’t list being trained dancers. How did you approach that?

Taj: As a choreographer, my duty is to look at the the specific people we have in the room and see what can be their specific handprint movement-wise, rather than try to wedge them into something. And I think that’s true at the end of the show, when the principle characters are concealed as show people. I was also important for us to have fun with what they specifically can offer, because there is a lot of humor in the whole show, but especially in that situation. There’s an opportunity to be quite goofy with the way they participate in becoming part of nightclub number. It’s a very comedically strong cast. And I think comedy and dance play really well together.

It’s fun to be working with actors who are very proficient at physical gags, even if they’re not kicking their head like the Cagelles. The leads, Cheyenne Jackson and Kevin Cahoon, are really great movers and definitely dance. It’s actually helpful if the political family we were talking about are stiff and don’t fit in. There’s a way to play into that. Ryan J. Haddad who plays the politician, is a phenomenal actor and singer. He also moves with a walker. We had fun exploring how to create movement for the cast that works with his movement across the stage, and they interact with the Cagelles, who are like a zany bunch already.

 
LADC:  Beyond this show, you also have your own dance-centered work with the Dance Cartel. Is choreographing for that different from choreographing a show where you have a director setting an overall parameter on things?

Taj: Yes. With the Dance Cartel, so much of what we do does not involve a proscensium theater. Instead, there’s a disruption of the usual relationship between performer and spectator because we’re most often performing on the same dance floor as the crowd. So the spatial rules of Dance Cartel performances are quite different from a traditional musical or musical comedy.  Coming out of musical theater school, quite frankly, there was some disillusionment.  Oftentimes the ingredients in musical theater were being put together in ways that seemed very stale, very restrictive, and very didactic about what was allowed to be on stage. It just felt boring. Dance Cartel was a place and people asking how could we put together some of these same ingredients that we love so much about classic musical theater and remix them in a way that feels responsive to some of our generation’s impulses. This show has that same feeling. For me, I love the silliness of musical theater. Let’s face it, people in musical comedies are dancing and wiggling and singing on stage, often without much reason. And there’s an absurdity to that. But as with La Cage, there’s also so much heart and so much truth and authenticity in the really good writing. And I think those are factors in this show that has a connection point to what made me study theater and do my Dance Cartel work in the first place. With this show, I’ve kind of woven my way back on a windy road.

La Cage aux Folles at the Pasadena Playhouse, 39 S. El Molino Ave., Pasadena; Tues., Wed., Fri., 8 pm, Thurs., 7 pm, Sat. 2 & 8 pm, Sun., 2 pm, (Sun., Nov. 24, Dec. 8 & Dec. 15, 7 pm), $44-$157. For tickets and related invents go to La Cage aux Folles – Pasadena Playhouse

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Featured image: La Cage aux Folles  “Les Cagelles” – Rhoyle Ivy King, Kay Bebe Queue, Ellen Soraya Nikbakht, Cody Brunelle-Potter, Paul Vogt, Salina EsTitties, and Suni Jade Reed – photo by Jeff Lorch

Written by Ann Haskins for LA Dance Chronicle