Dancing on 42nd Street

This past weekend I made my annual pilgrimage back to my hometown to see the high school musical that my best friend's mom (from high school) choreographs.  This year they performed 42nd Street.  It's an old-school musical (it won the Tony in 1980 and again in 2001 for the revival) that is about behind the scenes of the production of a Broadway musical.  It's full of chorus-line girls and all the typical Broadway characters like the arrogant producer, the famous but not all that talented diva, and the starry-eyed chorus girl from a small town.  It actually has a number of really well known songs.  Most people have heard of We're in the Money and The Lullaby of Broadway even if they don't know where the songs originally came from.

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I'm not as huge of a fan of old-school musicals, but I have to say that these kids did a killer job on the dancing.  I've never seen so much dancing in a high school musical before and it was almost all tap dancing.  Most of these kids had never had any dance exposure before, and tap dancing is one of the most difficult genres of dance to just randomly pick up, so Cathy did a phenomonal job with them.  I was seriously so impressed with their dancing.  Even the guys did a great job tap dancing. 

Just a funny little side note on how far removed from the high school scene I am:  The director and choreographer of my high school musicals were married, and during my senior year the choreographer was pregnant.  They had a little girl.  It was that little girl who, as a Junior in high school, was the lead in 42nd Street this weekend.  Time certainly flies by quickly.