Broadway Media has partnered with Tony Award–winning choreographers to allow their Broadway choreography to be licensed by schools, amateur groups, and theatres. Originally launched by Jerry Mitchell and Paul Canaan as The Original Production, the project will now join the Broadway Media catalogue as Choreography Guides.
The platform includes a full suite of digital videos, often featuring the choreographer breaking down the steps to the choreography and staging and the intentions behind them, along with tips and tricks for simplifying and adapting the moves for different situations. The offering is already available for such shows as Legally Blonde, Kinky Boots, Hairspray, The Addams Family, All Shook Up, and Beauty and the Beast, among others, available in partnership with theatrical licensors Music Theatre International and Theatrical Rights Worldwide.
READ: Jerry Mitchell on Why Video is the Best Way to Document and Preserve Choreography
“It is abundantly clear to me that this new resource provides a long-awaited solution for Broadway choreographers and an opportunity to increase production value for theatre makers everywhere,” says Broadway Media President Quentin Sanford. “We built Broadway Media to break down barriers to the performing arts, and it’s in this spirit that we launch Choreography Guides.”
Mitchell and Canaan will continue working on the project under its new name and home at Broadway Media.
These Choreography Guides are just the latest in Mitchell's long history of preserving and re-creating classic choreography. Mitchell assisted Jerome Robbins on his 1989 retrospective Jerome Robbins' Broadway, and he went on to re-create Robbins' choreography in the 2003 Broadway revival of Gypsy. He has also worked with the choreography of Michael Bennett, staging "Turkey Lurkey Time" (from Promises, Promises) for the 2003 film Camp and dances from Follies for Paper Mill Playhouse's 1998 revival production.
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See Jerry Mitchell teach the first part of Hairspray's "Nicest Kids in Town" in the Choreography Guides clip below: