Caleb Grochalski

Tap Project
Ms. Angeline Savage
4/28/2014
Susan Stroman: A study of choreography
Part 1: Life
Susan P. Stroman, was born in Wilmington, Delaware, and as a child was very drawn to music
and dance. Her father, Charles Stroman, would always play the piano and sing showtunes with her all
through out her childhood. Eventually, she began to take tap, jazz, and ballet classes under James
Jamieson at the Academy of Dance in Wilmington. Very influenced by Fred Astaire, she always had a
longing to be a choreographer and when she announced to her parents that she wanted to be a
choreographer, they replied You can, when you can spell it! Along with dance, she had a great
passion for music, and she took private piano, voice, and guitar lessons along with dance. After her
graduation from the University of Delaware, she proceeded to make her move into professional theatre.
Part 2: Career
Stroman, or Stro to her colleagues, is mostly known for her extensive choreography and
direction credits, but iafter performing in many shows in New York, she work on the broadway revue
Musical Chairs where she served as the assistant director, choreographer, and dance captain. After
doing several smaller choreography jobs, she and her friend Scott Ellis began collaboration on an off
broadway revival of Flora, the Red Mence. After the sucessof Flora she began to work for larger name
companies such as the New York City Opera where she choreographed shows such as A Little Night
Music, and Don Giovanni. Stroman went to co-conceive and choreograph the Kander and Ebb revue
And the World Goes 'Round in 1991 which landed her an Outer Critics Circle Award for choreography.
After that major success, of And the World Goes 'Round, she caught the eye of major producer and
director Harold Prince who landed her a job working with director (and future husband) Mike Ockrent

on Crazy for You which ended up being a major success and earning Stro her first Tony Award for best
coreography. She then went on to direct, and choreograph many major musicals, some of her most well
known material is the Contact, The Producers, Young Frankenstein, The Music Man (2000 revival),
The Scottsboro Boys, Big Fish, and most recently Bullets Over Broadway.
Part 3: Style
Stroman, herself has said A major ammount of research goes into each show that I do; the
decades, the geographical area, for example in Show Boat in that time period people in the north
danced very differently than the people in the south. And also, Show Boat goes through 27 years or
more of different dance styles that have to be put in for historical reasons, partly because it is an epic
show. Something like Crazy for You which takes place in the 30s, people on the west dance very
different than people from the east, it's making sure that I immerse myself in the time period and the
location, so I get accurate staging and choreography.1 Well how do you know the way that they
danced, if you havent been to said locations and in said time periods, you migh't ask. I read up on the
sociological times, and there actually is research on dance and history books of dance, but it seems to
just come out of me naturally. I mean I have danced all my life, and dome many types of dance, but I
also learned many different styles. I studied ballet, tap, jazz, and ballroom and I can just seemingly put
them all together and find something that works for the character.2 Her styles depict from show to
show. Stroman has always been obsessed with tall glamorous showgirls, so her shows usually have a
glorious tap number with tall girls in dazzling costumes. As someone who admires this woman so
much, and even had the privelege to see Bullets Over Broadway while it was in previews, it was
extremely wonderful to unserstand how she comes up with choreography. In the same interview from
the quotations she talks about the fact that the music is very linked to the empotion and tone of a dance
for example, if you wanted to have a chase or a fast comic number, you would have and up beat 2/2
1 Quotation from an video interview with Stroman for the New York City Public Library in association with the American
Theatre Wing
2 Quotation from an video interview with Stroman for the New York City Public Library in association with the American
Theatre Wing

time signature, but if you wanted to romanticise a dance, you would put it in . I thought that was
extremely interesting as a dancer, because it makes me think to listen to the music that I am dancing to,
to get an emotion for WHY I am doing this dance and to how it should feel and the emotions it needs.

Now delving into some of her major works and the choreographic styles she used for them. The
three that I will use are Contact, Big Fish.
Part 3a: Choreographic styles used in Contact
Contact was a complete original idea by Stroman, mostly choreography and pre- recorded
music. The idea was to make a dance play all driven by three situations in which three people's lives are
affected by the contact that they make with another person or group of people. Three different, distinct
time periods happen in three different pieces. 1. Swinging, 2. Did you move? And 3. The Girl in the
Yellow Dress. In Swinging a very classical, ballet type feel and classical symphonic music fills the
stage and most of the movement between a mideval couple takes place mostly on a moving swing.
During Did You Move? A couple arrives in a busy high class resturant. The wife is a cheery, bubbly
person and the husband is a total pesimist and angry, abusive spouse who spends most of the time
offstage. The interesting thing for this piece is that there is a smooth jazz piece only done by the wife,
but it takes place in her head only after her husband says Don't f***ing move. And during The Girl
in the Yellow Dress, a businessman goes into a lower manhattan swing club contemplating life and
death, encounters a beautiful woman in a yellow dress and has to get the courage to take control of his
life and make contact with her. This specific high paced ballroom, swing, jazz piece was revolutionary
for all dance theatre to come because it opened doors to a new slew of theatrical works.
Part 3b: Choreographic styles used in Big Fish
Big Fish based on the movie of the same name was a 2013 broadway musical extravaganza
about a traveling salesman father and the stories he tells to his son when he is with him. Stroman
weaves amazing dances throughout a heartfelt love story and many fantasies. The show takes place in

Alabama and they mostly danced in some form of clogging. Some of the types of clogging include
flatfooting, the alabama stomp, country western clogging, and traditional 40's and 50's tap using many
pullbacks, shuffles, cramp rolls, and flaps. As part of my presentation, there is a short video of the
company of Big Fish and Stroman talking and demonstrating the different choreographic styles of this
particular show.

Part 4: Conclusion
Susan Stroman has had an extremely successful career and still continues to make wonderful
dances today. She was so revolutionary to the theatrical and dance world. Though her styles vary from
project to project, she stays very fresh with her dances. She is such an inspiration to me as an aspiring
director/ choreographer, and I hope that others can appreciate the way she creates theatrical works.