The most beautiful legs on Broadway are 100 years old. It is the Rockettes, the precision dance body icon of the American show. They arrive on time every November and throughout the Christmas period, until January, with their Radio City Christmas Spectacular, at the Rockfeller Center in New York, enchanting millions of people. It is not Christmas in the Big Apple without their show: with legs moving in perfect harmony, they create a synchronized beauty show.
Their history, however, began about 1,600 km from New York, St Louis, Missouri, when in 1925 choreographer Russell Markert founded the ‘Missouri Rockets’. It was inspired by the Tiller Girls, a UK precision dance group created in the late 19th century. Markert saw their show on Broadway, particularly engaged in the Ziegfeld Follies (show based on the Folies Bergère in Paris) and from there decided to give life to his version of American dancers.
The Missouri Rockets, consisting of 16 dancers, began performing in St Louis in 1925 and did not escape the attention of the impresario Samuel Lionel ‘Roxy’ Rothafel who brought them to New York for his Roxy Theatre. Here they became the Roxyettes and only in December 1932, when they arrived at Radio City Music Hall they took the current name, Radio City Rockettes. Today the number of Rockettes ranges from 80 to 84 with two casts from 36 dancers to each show. Their height ranges from about 1,70 cm to 1,80 cm and until 1985 were only white, Setsuko Maruhashi, of Japanese origins, was the first of different ethnicity to be engaged, while the first color was Jennifer Jones, selected in 1987, the first disabled dancer (without the left hand, ndr), Sydney Mesher, was engaged only in 2019.
Among the most common curiosities concerning the Rockettes, they must be able to dance the tap, modern dance, jazz and ballet and in a day can do up to 650 kicks, with an average show of 160. The dancers take care of hair and make-up for performances and usually wear an intense red lipstick. It takes a lot of costumes and shoes, over a thousand, and to be always ready it takes 350 washing machines a week. If you wonder why all the audience can feel every step of the choreographies of tap, it is because their shoes are microphonate. The most famous routines are, ‘Parade of the Living Soldiers’ and ‘The Living Nativity’, which has remained unchanged since the beginning.
The Rockettes also performed at the Super Bowl in 1988, and since 1957 they are present at Macy’s Parade on Thanksgiving. They took part in two presidential oaths, one particularly controversial in 2016 when Donald Trump was elected for the first time as president. On that occasion, several Rockettes, as a protest, decided not to participate. In 2020, due to Covid 19, for the first time in history, Radio City Christmas Spectacular was canceled. She resumed the following year but in the peak of the season she was again canceled because many dancers were positive to the virus.
Article The most famous dance body in the world, the Rockettes, celebrates a century of activity proviene da IlNewyorkese.
