I’m the cool cat in royal blue hugging the waist of the greaser in the matching royal blue suit, a fake cigarette dangling from his lips. Oh, the romance of the 1950s. Hip-swiveling Elvis music. Poodle skirts. Drive-ins. Milkshakes. Weren’t the 50s far out, Daddy-O? While going retro was certainly a kick, in the future we’ll call right NOW “the good old days.” There’s so much to enjoy TODAY. THIS is the moment we’ve been waiting for. Let’s celebrate THESE good times. Come on!
Enjoy the next excerpt from
by Kristi Lynn Davis
While I missed living in Manhattan, because everything was so close and convenient, I loved being able to ride into town with Jenny. Every morning we would meet and walk past the Roy Rogers hamburger joint to the newsstand to pick up a cup of Earl Grey tea with milk and, every Wednesday, a copy of the newest Backstage. Then we’d continue the few blocks to the subway station to wait for the N or the R train into Manhattan, allowing about forty-five minutes for the ride into The City. We performed this routine about five days a week, because although The Works workshop was over, Mirmdance rehearsals were still in progress.
For the time being, we were rehearsing for free, with promise of rehearsal pay when the official funding came through. But one day, Miriam announced to me, “I want to make sure you can pay your rent, so I got you a job as a receptionist at Joy of Movement where I work.” She was trying her best to assure I didn’t bail out of Mirmdance, due to lack of funds. Joy of Movement was a high-stress, highly trafficked fitness club in a building across from Tower Records near East 4th Street and Broadway. I desperately needed the cash and also got free dance and aerobics classes. Madonna and a couple of the Village People were members, so it seemed like the place to be.
The job was high profile and I found myself attracting dates, but not good ones. First there was the massive Puerto Rican body builder on staff who asked if I wanted to go out for sushi sometime. “I don’t know, I’ve never had it,” I said, trying to weasel my way out of a date without offending Mr. Muscles. Taking matters into his own hands, he brought me a huge sampler tray of about twenty different kinds of sushi. I actually liked some of it. We never did date, but I felt safer with him and his big biceps on my side.
Next there was the fast talking lawyer from Long Island who, I swear under oath, addressed his mother as “Babe” when talking to her on the phone. He took me to drink kir royales at a trendy bar where giant tapestries hung from high ceilings and transvestites traipsed about. I can attest to the fact that I had never before sipped a kir royale, or witnessed a transvestite in person, or heard someone refer to his mother as “Babe.” To that disparaging designation, I duly objected. It was an eye-opening evening, but evidently he was too slick for me. Date adjourned.
Lastly, there was the self-absorbed soap opera star from Loving who couldn’t stop talking about himself and took me on the subway to get to our date. “Seriously? Slumming it on the subway? A soap opera star can’t afford a cab?” I couldn’t say I would have been heartbroken had his TV character gotten killed off the show in a freak accident that coincidentally snuffed out his previously unknown evil twin in the process. Perhaps it was best to postpone dating for the time being. Too much drama even for me.
I found little joy in working at Joy of Movement. The clientele were aggressive and demanding, even downright nasty, and I was terrified of taking the subway late at night by myself. I’d run down the dark, deserted street to the subway at Astor Place when I finished work at ten p.m., hoping no one was following me. At the subway, I didn’t feel much safer, as I was always one of only a couple people waiting to catch a train. There was nothing and no one to protect me if some villain viewed me as victim. I always glanced about nervously, scanning the deserted tunnel for lurking danger.
One day at work there was a skirmish between the Joy of Movement security guard and a man with a gun who was trying to get into the building. No doubt he was one of those insidious psycho-killers who plagued New York and scaled high rises surprising unsuspecting Midwesterners. That scare was enough to make me want to find another job ASAP.
Thankfully, Miriam’s funding finally came in: a whopping $5 an hour for rehearsal and $25 for each of our three performances. A strong hunch told me that the primary contributor was Miriam’s father. The IRS would officially classify me as living in poverty, but I could finally call myself a professional dancer! I was elated.
Even so, my $5 hourly rate was admittedly small potatoes, and Miriam wanted Jenny and me to stick with her through the shows. “I thought you two might need some extra cash, so I arranged an audition on Saturday for you with Celebration Magnifico. It’s a party entertainment company I choreograph for. Several of the other dancers already work for them. I’m sure you’ll get in, no problem,” Miriam declared. “You just have to dance at one party for free so they can check you out.” Miriam was the boss, and more money sounded good to both of us, so Jenny and I agreed to audition.
On Saturday, we made our way to the party location, a moderately nice banquet hall, where we’d be entertaining a large Jewish contingency at a bar mitzvah, my first ever. We found the back room where the other dancers were noisily chatting, putting on makeup, and searching through the myriad costumes strewn about the room. Jenny and I stood, wide-eyed and unsure, holding our bags filled with an assortment of dance accoutrements.
Celebration Magnifico was an interactive audience-participation group, which meant we’d have to coerce people to dance with us. It was owned by Bart and Danny, swanky, Jewish, forty-something brothers from Long Island (pronounced “Lon Guy Lind”). They started out with a mobile t-shirt-making cart for bar mitzvahs and added a few guys dressed in costumes such as a gorilla or Richard Nixon. Now they had this impressive party entertainment company and fancied themselves Broadway producers.
Kristi Lynn Davis (right) & friend in Starlight Express costumes, 1987
For our opening set, we dressed as train cars for Starlight Express, the famous Broadway roller-skating show. I was the dining car; my costume consisted of a silver table, complete with dishes and lamp, fastened around my waist over a red, black, and silver spandex bodysuit. “These costumes are pretty cool,” I remarked to Jenny, who didn’t appear quite as enthused about playing a choo-choo.
Once everyone was dressed, Bart assembled all the train cars for our grand entrance. “Listen up, people! I want everyone to chug in to the ballroom to the beat of the music. Adam, show them how we chug.” Adam (from Mirmdance) did a robotic train move. “Right! Exactly like that. Then form two lines. Watch Bobby, the D.J., for the signal, and then face each other and freeze in a pose while the bar mitzvah boy enters the room. Got it?”
He pointed at Jenny and me and continued, “You two just follow whatever the other dancers are doing.” He seemed nervous about making sure everything was going to go right. I was nervous, too, and certainly didn’t want to be the cause of a train wreck.
We did as instructed and “Wow!” It was surprisingly dramatic, especially when the lights dimmed and a machine spit puffs of smoke in a field of flashing strobe lights. The crowd cheered as little Mr. Schwarzbein did a Rocky Balboa-esque victory lap between the trains, fists pumping in the air. The party started off in Grand Central Station style.
Oh, but that was just the beginning. With the help of the D.J., we fired up the crowd by teaching them simple dance moves to popular, high-energy songs such as “Shout,” “YMCA,” and “Money, Money.” We formed conga lines and party trains to “Locomotion,” led the limbo, and demonstrated the hand jive, the twist, and the electric slide. All activities were used strategically to keep people boogieing on the dance floor. Jenny and I never knew what was coming next, but we kept smiling and improvising until we caught on. When we weren’t leading the songs with preplanned moves, we were supposed to be dancing with the patrons. Basically, it was our job to be the life of the party. And if, God forbid, the party was dying, it was up to us to pick it up and nurse it back to health.
Celebration Magnifico kept the entertainment value high by offering five different dance sets per party, the themes for which were chosen by the party givers. Theme choices ranged from musicals or movies such as Grease, Phantom of the Opera, Starlight Express and A Chorus Line to general categories like “The Fifties,” (see featured picture up top) “Conga,” “New York, New York,” “American Band Stand,” “Fantasy,” “Hip-Hop” or whatever one could imagine. For each set, we changed into different, elaborate costumes corresponding to the chosen theme and often performed a partially improvised/pseudo-choreographed dance number to begin the set. Between the dancing and the quick costume-changes, it was a frenzy of activity on and off the dance floor. Given that one of our themes that day was Dirty Dancing, the 1987 film starring Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey, a good portion of the afternoon found us dirty dancing (a G-rated version, anyway) with prepubescent thirteen-year-olds in yarmulkes (who kept pushing for the R-rated version).
I was truly in loco-motion, dancing like a crazy woman and having a blast. This beat sitting in an office staring at the clock any day. People really get paid for this? Yes, and paid well by dance standards. Jenny and I got the job and a promise of $100 each for parties in the New York City vicinity and $200 plus $25.00 per diem for parties where we had to fly somewhere and stay overnight. I didn’t even know what per diem was, but I felt like I’d hit the jackpot.
“Now I have to take you to Stage 1 for cheap stage makeup!” Jenny insisted. This store was showgirl heaven, and I bought all kinds of tacky, colorful shimmery eye-shadow, eye pencils, and glitter gel. My face looked like a craft store gone bad, but it was a perfect complement to the outlandish Celebration Magnifico costumes. The downside to getting the gig was that we were required to provide a white unitard (a stretchy bodysuit that covers one from nearly neck to toes), black unitard, black character shoes, beige character shoes, flat jazz shoes, black trunks (a bikini-bottom-like undergarment), and white trunks. It was an enormous initial investment for a starving artist but, hopefully, Celebration Magnifico would help pay the bills, and at least I’d be dancing, even if a touch dirty.
Why wait for your dreams to come true to be on cloud 9? The crazy thing is, getting really happy RIGHT NOW actually helps you skedaddle outta Nowheresville. You hip to that? Thanks for reading. Later, gator.
Twist on,
Kristi
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