If you’ve been staying up too late ooing and ahhing over the 2018 Olympics like I have, you are well-aware of the wardrobe malfunction that had the press in a frenzy. The exquisite French ice dancers, Gabriella Papadakis and Guillaume Cizeron, managed to win the silver medal in spite of Gabriella’s costume top coming undone at the very beginning of their short program. How did they manage not to come undone themselves? How did they finish skating in style and not let their twizzles completely fizzle?
They are total pros! And pros know the show must go on. They have to find a way to continue in spite of adversity. Even if it means risking embarrassment and exposure, so to speak.
As a professional performer, I know how challenging “costume hell” can be. During one evening entertaining on a Holland America Line cruise, I stepped on stage and the top snap of my dress immediately popped open during our Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers number, followed by my skirt coming unzipped during our Latin number, followed by the hook breaking on the neck of a different dress I wore for our big dance number! Talk about the triple-play of wardrobe malfunctions. I danced ever-so-cautiously, prayed my privates stayed private, and hoped for the best. Fortunately, I fared better than Papadakis and didn’t reveal any intimate body parts. But I came too close for comfort.
I endured my fair share of costume calamities over the years, but my worst wardrobe malfunction happened in 2000 when I was performing as a Rockette in the Radio City Christmas Spectacular at the Fox Theatre in Detroit. Read about it here in this excerpt from my book, Long Legs and Tall Tales: A Showgirl’s Wacky, Sexy Journey to the Playboy Mansion and the Radio City Rockettes:
Christmas in New York” was a real crowd pleaser, but it was also the Rockettes’ most grueling number in the show. It was a marathon of kicks so strenuous and brutal that my legs and abs got sore just thinking about it. This dance was so taxing that one night, one of our young new Rockettes, thinking she could get by on Coca-Cola and cigarettes alone, passed out in the wings before our encore and the paramedics had to come and revive her. This was no walk in Central Park. The number built up to the Rockettes’ spectacular entrance in which a yellow New York taxi cab drives on stage, the driver opens the door, and out steps a Rockette followed by another and another and another until the entire stage is filled with Rockettes. It was like that circus illusion where a big bunch of clowns somehow spill out of a teeny tiny car. The effect was superb.
We each then pranced our way over to our partner and did a few cutesy moves side by side. Unbeknownst to me, my partner and I had gotten a little too close for comfort and the buckles of our shoes had hooked together. Oblivious, we continued the choreography in which we jumped back to back in preparation for one of those famous Rockette eye-high kicks. The buckles were attached to the shoes by a short elastic band, so as I jumped away from my partner, the elastic band stretched, and stretched and STRETCHED, and when I went to kick my leg…. Remember shooting rubber bands as a kid? You make a gun with your hand, stretch the band around your fingers and let it fly?
When I kicked my leg, my shoe exploded off my foot like a rocket ship blasting into outer space. The Fox has extremely tall ceilings, so it was free to fly high. One hundred audience-member heads and two hundred eyeballs traced the path of the projectile as it made a colossal arch all the way over to the opposite side of the stage and landed with a thud somewhere in a galaxy far, far away.
This left me with a problem of cosmic proportions. I’d have to dance the remainder of the number (and remember, we were at the beginning of a very long and difficult number) wearing only one shoe. “What should I do?” The choreography kept moving along fast and furiously, so, even though I was somewhat in shock, I had to make a split-second decision about how I was going to fix this problem. Since I couldn’t see where my wayward shoe landed, retrieving it to place it back on my foot was not going to happen. Even if I quickly found it, it wasn’t a shoe I could easily slip back on, especially with a broken buckle. Running off stage was an alternative, but my exit would have drawn a lot of attention, as I dodged dancers on my way out. And my absence would have left my colleagues one woman short, messing up all the formations and spacing.
My best bet, I decided, was to keep right on dancing. Here’s the kicker: In order to make us look even more long and luscious, the Rockettes danced in high heels. Try simply walking in one high heel and one flat foot. Awkward. I had to dance on tiptoe with the bare foot in order to maintain fairly equal footing with the shod foot. Put yourself in my shoes (or “shoe”), for a moment, if you will. Embarrassing? Yeah. Distressing? You bet. Pretty? Not at all.
The audience continued to point and giggle, following me throughout the dance. To top that off, word spread like wild fire backstage that “Kristi lost her shoe!” Soon every cast and crew member possible flooded into the wings and joined in chuckling and watching to see how I was going to manage to finish the number. The day had been a disaster even before my shoe went airborne. And now all this to boot? I felt like I’d been kicked when I was already down.
As I waited for the other shoe to drop, however, I suddenly had an awareness: I had a choice in how I was going to respond. I could become even more upset and stressed out than I already was, or I could decide, “Shoe fly? Don’t bother me!” After all, it was downright hilarious. A huge grin spread across my face—a wider, and certainly wackier looking, smile than the Rockettes were legally allowed. Then I burst out laughing and didn’t stop until well after the number was over. That footwear “fiasco” didn’t break the camel’s back after all; it broke the ice. Everyone—audience, cast, and crew alike—relaxed, had a good laugh at my expense, and lightened up. We finished the show in true Christmas spirit.
Wanna handle wardrobe malfunctions like the pros?
- Follow the mantra, “The show must go on!” And give the best performance you can under the circumstances.
- Whenever possible, laugh it off and shrug it off with a “That’s showbiz!” attitude.
- Fix the malfunction and then let it go, so you can start the next performance with a fresh, positive attitude.
Anyone who stays in showbiz long enough experiences misfortunes on stage. Mishaps are part of the excitement of live theatre! I don’t know about you, but I love Papadakis and Cizeron even more for triumphing in spite of a tough situation.
Keep on (ice) dancin’!
Kristi
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