It was one other wonderful season for dance on Broadway, and final evening’s 2024 Tony Awards telecast served up loads of eye-popping motion from Ariana DeBose, internet hosting for the third yr, and—largely—from the musical nominees. Sure, it’s at all times an honor simply to be nominated. However the soiled little secret of all awards, in any subject, is that a few of the time, a few of the nominees are there solely as a result of a slot must be stuffed. Not the case with this yr’s musicals.
In nearly another yr, every one of many 2024 nominees for Greatest Musical—Hell’s Kitchen, with Camille A. Brown’s vibrant, street-smart dances to Alicia Keys’ hit songs; Illinoise, with its poignant and pointed through-danced story by Justin Peck; The Outsiders, with the coiled vitality of the Rick and Jeff Kuperman choreography; Suffs, with Mayte Natalio’s easy however brilliantly efficient motion for her solid of nondancers; and Water for Elephants, with its explosive acrobatics and refined evocations of circus animals by Jesse Robb and Shana Carroll—might have legitimately copped the Greatest Choreography Tony. And that’s to not point out two of the Greatest Revival entries: Lorin Latarro’s spiky strikes for the revival of The Who’s Tommy, and Julia Cheng’s outré tackle Cabaret on the Package Kat Membership.
Tony viewers had been handled to a beneficiant sampling of dance from all these reveals. However most didn’t get to see who took house the choreography prize, as a result of, as in earlier years, it was awarded in the course of the first hour, on The Tony Awards: Act One—out there solely on CBS’s streaming service, Paramount+, or on-line on the free Pluto TV web site.
It was nice to see Justin Peck accepting his second Tony (the primary was in 2018, for Carousel) again on the stage of Lincoln Heart’s Koch Theater, house first to his dancing after which to his choreography for New York Metropolis Ballet. It was a reminder of how a lot nourishment right now’s Broadway musicals get from different fields of dance. This yr’s Tony-nominated choreographers—Brown, the Kupermans, Peck, Robb and Carroll, and Annie-B Parson, who rearranged her surging choreography for the downtown hit Right here Lies Love when it briefly reopened on Broadway—got here with expertise not simply in ballet however in modern live performance dance, circus arts, and martial arts, all transferring Broadway musicals in new instructions.
For the outdated methods, there was the Tonys’ conventional In Memoriam part, accompanied by a mournful rendition of “What I Did for Love,” from A Refrain Line, sung by Nicole Scherzinger (her Olivier-winning efficiency in Sundown Boulevard arrives on Broadway this fall). Fortunately, the Tony producers ignored the dreadful precedent set by this yr’s Oscars broadcast, which featured 20 dancers sweeping throughout the stage as photographs and illegible names flashed on overhead screens—concurrently insulting each the departed and the dance, neither of which was allowed to truly register. In contrast, the heartfelt tributes to the late, lamented Chita Rivera—from Brian Stokes Mitchell, Bebe Neuwirth, and Audra McDonald—included dance snippets that distilled the essence of her most memorable roles. And when DeBose arrived in a lilac costume to steer the corporate of dancers in “America,” from West Aspect Story, you needed to want that the snippets had been longer.
It’s potential that the phase was truncated when the printed added a quantity from Stereophonic to the present. David Adjmi’s play a couple of 70s rock band recording an album earned a report 13 nominations—aided by the truth that most performs don’t compete in classes like Greatest Orchestrations and Greatest Rating. When one of many present’s 5 Tonys went to Adjmi for Greatest Play, he closed his acceptance speech with a comment that absolutely resonated with an viewers stuffed with artwork makers. Calling for presidency funding of the humanities, he stated, “It’s the hallmark of a civilized society.” Marvel if any candidates had been watching.
