Dead Man Dancing

Eighteen

The Hippodrome – officially the France-Merrick Performing Arts Center – was a lovingly restored 1914 vaudeville theater and movie palace, the centerpiece of Baltimore’s west side renaissance. Occupying an entire city block on Eutaw between Baltimore and Fayette Streets, the Hipp, as the locals called it, bordered on the Inner Harbor just four blocks north of Camden Yards where the Orioles had just played another losing season.

In restoring the Baltimore landmark, the developers had linked it to two adjacent nineteenth-century bank buildings. Now spacious lobbies, lounges and restaurants afforded impressive views of the city including, to the south, Baltimore’s historic Bromo Seltzer tower modeled on the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence, Italy. Twelve letters advertising the famous antacid circled the clock’s face rather than numbers. When we joined the line, tickets in hand, the face of the clock read ‘L’ o’clock exactly.

I’d seen Prairie Home Companion at the Hippodrome the previous October, and been dazzled by the facility. Bathed in soft golds, browns and beiges, the interior spaces of the theater glowed; each fresco, cartouche and medallion – flowers, corn husks, gryphons – had been so painstakingly restored that it was impossible to tell where the old ended and the new began. I was looking forward to seeing it again.

For half an hour our little party shivered outside the theater, watching as the line snaked out behind us, growing steadily by groups of four, six, ten until by seven thirty it extended all the way down Baltimore Street and disappeared around the corner of Paca. I remembered reading that the Hippodrome could seat 2,220; the line could reach all the way down to the Inner Harbor by now.

After a bit, a pair of bruisers dressed in chinos, muscles challenging the seams of their neon green T-shirts bearing the stylized Shall We Dance? SWD logo, moved down the line inspecting tickets.

When asked, Chloe presented her ticket solemnly. For the most part, my granddaughter waited patiently, sucking periodically on a straw stuck into a bottle of strawberry Yoo-Hoo. ‘I wish I could sit in your wheelchair, Aunt Ruth,’ she said after the guard moved away.

‘Don’t be silly, Chloe, you’ll squish your aunt’s sore leg.’

‘Are they going to let us in soon?’ she wondered.

‘I certainly hope so.’

‘I have to go to the bathroom.’

‘It shouldn’t be long now.’ I could have used a chair or the bathroom myself, but the previous evening Hutch and Melanie had appropriated our camp stools. When we arrived at seven, we’d spied the pair hunkered down under the marquee with all the other shivering hopefuls. Over their heads, draped from one end of the marquee to the other was an enormous banner: Baltimore Welcomes Shall We Dance 2008! We’d given our team a thumb’s up sign before hurrying around the corner to take our places in the audience line.

At seven forty-five, leaving Chloe in Eva’s care, I decided to bop out front and check up on Hutch and Melanie.

I found Hutch dozing, his head leaning at an impossible, and most certainly uncomfortable angle against the wall. In contrast, Melanie seemed bright as a sparrow. ‘We’re fine, Hannah,’ Melanie chirped when I asked. She extended her right arm, pulled up the sleeve of her parka. Circling her wrist was a white plastic wristband like the kind you get when they admit you to the hospital. Instead of name, date of birth, doctor’s name and blood type, though, Melanie’s wristband said ‘22’. ‘Hutch is number twenty-one,’ she told me, her face flushed with excitement. ‘We could be in the first round!’

Curious about who had snagged spots one through twenty, I glanced up the line. Dancers one and two were no more than eighteen years old, sporting faux-hawk hairdos and dressed in baggy, saggy hip hop clothing. They guarded their number one slot at the plastic door of an elegant white tent with Palladian-style windows, the kind of tent one rents for wedding receptions and bar mitzvahs. Through the windows, rippled by the plastic, I could see other individuals working in their neon green shirtsleeves. Portable heaters in there, I bet. Lucky dogs.

Further down the line couples waited, some in costumes, some in street clothes, some in outfits so strange it could have gone either way. ‘Are they going to let you change?’ I asked Melanie, thinking of all the time and expense that would go down the drain if they couldn’t wear their costumes.

‘We’ll have the use of dressing rooms, don’t worry.’ She flapped her arms like a scarecrow and laughed. ‘Can you see me dancing a tango in this outfit? The Sta-Puf marshmallow girl meets the Michelin Man.’

I laughed at the image, too. ‘Can I get you guys something to eat?’

‘No thanks. After they gave us the wristbands and collected our forms, they said only one of us had to be in line at all times. So, when the sun came up, Hutch hiked up to Lexington Market – I was absolutely drooling for a Pollock Johnny’s hot dog, all the way, you know, with chili, mustard and that secret stuff they put on it, but, darn it, the market doesn’t open until eight thirty. So I ate some of the chips we brought along.’

She delivered this information in one long, breathless sentence. I felt exhausted just listening. It reminded me of the difference in our ages. Melanie was younger than my daughter, Emily. She probably even knew the names of Brittany Spears’s babies.

My cell phone abruptly launched into ‘Anchors Aweigh’.

Paul. ‘Where are you, Hannah? They’re about to open the doors.’

‘Hold on, I’m coming!’ I gave Melanie a hug, waggled my fingers in the direction of the still napping Hutch, and sprinted to rejoin my family.

By the time I got around the corner, green-shirted SWD staff had already opened the box-office doors and admitted the first group of ten audience members, counting heads as each person went in. When it was our group’s turn, Eva pushed Ruth, and I held Chloe’s hand, with Paul bringing up the rear.

Inside the lobby, adjacent to The Hipp Café (closed, alas, the muffaletta panini is to die for) the organizers had set up a sophisticated security screening station, like at the airport. Before we could enter the theater, we had to pass through a metal detector, beyond which I could see other uniformed staff seated at long tables pawing through audience members’ bags. ‘Are we flying Southwest to Dallas, or coming to see a television show?’ I muttered to Paul as he joined me on the other side of the detector.

While a guard searched her wheelchair for explosive devices and her crutches for switchblade knives, Ruth hopped one-footed through the metal detector. Paul reached out for Ruth’s hand, tucked it under his arm to lend support. ‘Count your blessings, Hannah. If the doctors had needed to put pins in Ruth’s leg, we might never have gotten to see the show.’

‘Ha ha,’ Ruth said. She turned to the guard who had just given the seal of approval to her crutches. ‘Look, I can’t bear messing with that blasted wheelchair in the auditorium. I’m just fine with these,’ she said, adjusting the crutches under her arms. ‘Can you stow the chair someplace until the show is over?’

The guard pressed a button on his walkie-talkie, and a green-shirted staffer arrived almost at once to give Ruth a receipt and take charge of the wheelchair.

We turned over our bags for inspection – even Angelina Ballerina – and after they had been blessed, we were moved along like cattle to a section of the lobby that had been cordoned off with velvet ropes. Once some sort of critical mass was reached – Twenty-five? Thirty? – another SWD staffer unhooked a rope, gave us a come-along sign, and escorted our group into the theater.

‘Oh, wow!’ exclaimed Eva as we traipsed single-file down the aisle behind the staffer. Like me, Eva must have been stunned by the lavish, art deco beauty of the place. Balconies with curtained box seats were stacked to our right and to our left. Behind and above us rose an ornate, multi-layered balcony.

‘I’m glad we came early,’ Eva said as we filed into a row of old-fashioned, red velvet seats. ‘If I’d been in charge of the scheduling, we’d be back in row FF instead of up front in row K.’

Ruth settled into a seat at row’s end, her cast extending into the aisle like a turnstile. ‘Look at this,’ she said as she adjusted her leg. ‘The seat ends are wrought iron. What do they remind you of, Hannah?’

I leaned over for a closer look and smiled. It didn’t take much imagination to see what Ruth saw. ‘The legs on Grandmother’s old Singer sewing machine!’

Paul sat next to Ruth, then came Eva, Chloe and me. ‘Grandma, we have to move!’ cried Chloe just as we were shrugging out of our coats and settling in. ‘This seat already belongs to somebody. See?’ She rubbed a chubby index finger back and forth over a brass plaque attached to the wooden armrest.

‘We don’t have to move, Pumpkin. That’s the name of somebody who donated money to adopt your chair.’

‘My chair is adopted?’

‘Uh huh.’

‘That’s silly.’

‘Do you have your notebook?’ I asked, trying to distract my granddaughter from what was likely to be a discussion of every adopted child among her classmates and every pet we’d ever adopted from the SPCA. We’d taken Chloe out of school for the day on the condition she write a report on her experience. ‘Look up, Chloe,’ I said, and pointed toward the stage. ‘Way, way, up.’

Above the stage was a classical mural – goddesses, muses and nymphs cavorting, or at the very least lounging about an Italian walled garden. The central figure bore a striking resemblance to Jackie O, if the former first lady had gone in for diaphanous robes rather than Oleg Cassini. ‘Write a story about that picture,’ I suggested.

‘OK.’ Chloe hauled out her notebook and a pencil and set to work.

The section of seats immediately in front of us nearest the stage seemed to have been reserved, and now I saw why. A boom camera sailed back and forth over the first several rows, like a grazing Brontosaurus. On the other side of the stage in front of the proscenium arch, a black-clad Steadicam operator appeared to be testing his equipment.

More quickly than I would have thought possible considering the security measures in place, the rows behind us became occupied. Soon, people began filling the balcony, too. The noise level steadily increased. The rustling of paper, the shedding of coats, the scuffling of shoes, the crackling of candy wrappers. Kids talking, parents hushing. Shouts of greeting. Coughing, sneezing. Even people breathing, multiplied by two thousand, contributed to the noise.

Just when I thought I’d be called upon to take Chloe to the restroom again, more for entertainment’s sake than out of necessity, a man bounded down the aisle and up a short flight of steps to the stage, his green shirt bright as a traffic light as he paced in front of the Hippodrome’s purple, gold-fringed curtain.

Some guys should never wear jeans, and this fellow was one of them. He was dressed in the same green SWD T-shirt as the rest of the crew, but he’d tucked it into his jeans and cinched it in with a belt riding several miles south of wherever a normal waistline might be. Clapped to his head was a serious pair of headphones with a wireless microphone attached to one side on a flexible stalk.

‘Who is that guy?’ Paul asked.

I shrugged. ‘Some sort of technician?’

‘Ladies and gentlemen, good morning!’

A few scattered ‘good mornings’ drifted stage-ward from the audience, including an enthusiastic one from Chloe, who had been well trained by Mrs Gottschalk, her third grade teacher.

On the stage, the guy cupped a hand over one ear. ‘I can’t hear you! Let’s make some noise back there!’

‘Good morning!’ the audience roared.

‘That’s much better.’ He took several steps forward. ‘Welcome to our first casting call for Shall We Dance?’ He raised both arms over his head and clapped his hands, which we took as a sign that we should do the same.

So we did.

As the applause died down, the guy continued, ‘My name is Dave Carson, and I’m the stage director for this production. I’m the boss. I tell everybody what to do. I tell you what to do.’ Up went the arms, and everyone clapped like crazy. Meanwhile, his T-shirt crept out from under his belt, revealing three inches of white, very hairy belly.

Dramatically shielding her eyes, Ruth said, ‘Tell me they’re not going to put that on TV.’

‘Vomit girl was.’

‘Oh, right. I forgot. This is family television.’

‘Do you mind?’ hissed the woman on my right.

Dave Carson apparently didn’t notice any cool breeze caressing his midsection, so he forged on. ‘A funny thing happened on my way to Baltimore today.’

Paul moaned. ‘Lord, he thinks he’s a comedian, too.’

‘Shhhh.’ The woman on my right was annoyed again.

‘I walked into a bar down on Howard Street, and I sat next to this guy with a dog lying at his feet. And I said to the guy, Does your dog bite?…’

‘Oh, no, not a bar joke.’ I reached over and put my hands over Chloe’s ears.

‘Grandma, I know this joke,’ Chloe whispered.

Thinking kids are growing up too darn fast these days, I removed my hands from her ears. ‘You do?’

‘Uh huh. It’s not his dog.’

Up on the stage Dave said, ‘I thought you said your dog didn’t bite! And the guy says, Hey, it ain’t my dog.’

‘See?’ Chloe scoffed as all around us the audience erupted in laughter. I should have put a hand over Chloe’s mouth instead of her ears.

Encouraged, Dave pulled out another one. ‘Say, did you hear the one about the circus owner who walked into a bar?’ He paused, waiting for a response.

‘No!’ shouted someone directly behind me.

‘Tell us, Dave!’ somebody else yelled from the balcony.

Dave shuffled his feet in an aw-shucks sort of way, then forged on with an old chestnut about a tap-dancing duck. I zoned out and watched Jackie O take shape under Chloe’s pencil, looking a little like Minnie Mouse, but without the ears.

I snapped back to attention when Dave screamed into his microphone, ‘Your duck is a rip off!’ and spent another agonizing minute waiting for the punch line. ‘So, asks the duck’s former owner, did you remember to light the fire under the pot?’

I managed a modest titter at that, but the rest of the audience roared so loudly you’d think it was the funniest joke they’d ever heard.

‘Well, I don’t think we’ll have to light any fires under the feet of the contestants here today, do you folks?’

Nooooh!

Dave made a time-out sign, cutting the audience off in mid-cheer. ‘As you probably know, over the next few months, we will be conducting talent searches in New York, Chicago, Kansas City, Dallas and Los Angeles, so if you have friends in any of those cities, tell them to put on their dancing shoes and come on out! Email ’em. Text ’em. Call ’em on your cell.

‘And speaking of cell phones… do you have a cell phone? Of course you have a cell phone. Everyone has a cell phone. My goldfish has a cell phone. Well, get them out now.’ Dave waited for the deafening noise of everyone scrambling in his or her purse, bag or pocket to die down before continuing. ‘Now, find the off button and push it. Done? OK? Now put those phones away. You won’t need them any more today. OK, so you wanna know how it works?’

Oh, yes! Tell us, Dave. Tells us how it works!

‘What we’re going to do here today, and in those other cities I mentioned just now, is pick a total of sixty-five couples to compete in the finals in New York City. When they get to the Big Apple, they’ll be told which six dances they will have to perform, and they’ll be given just five weeks to prepare before the competition begins. One of the couples you see here today could very well be our next Shall We Dance? champions!’

Oh, yes! How cool is that!

‘So, are we ready?’

The audience was so ready, hooting and hollering, that if Dave didn’t get on with it, they were likely to storm the stage.

‘But, first,’ he shouted over the din of the restive crowd, ‘first, you’ll meet our three esteemed judges.’ His arms shot skyward, followed by renewed clapping and hooting.

‘They’ll sit up here,’ Dave Carson said, turning to his left and indicating with a sweep of his arm the curtain, which was slowly rising to reveal a starkly furnished stage. Wide and enormously deep, the Hippodrome stage could easily accommodate the most ambitious of Broadway shows, even those that required full-size helicopters to touch down in the center of it.

Now, however, it was furnished with a single, long conference-style table and three chairs, with their backs to us. Three microphones, one for each judge, sat on the table, and between the table and the back of the stage, was a standing microphone.

Eva leaned over and whispered, ‘The judges will be facing away from us?’

‘They face the contestants who’ll be dancing back there, I suppose, behind the standing microphone.’

‘Once we begin,’ Dave continued, ‘the contestants will be called out one couple at a time. Steve Owens here -’ Dave gestured to the sound man on stage right – ‘will cue up the music. Let’s put our hands together now for Steve!’

Yay! Yay for Steve!

‘Each couple will have ninety seconds to show the judges what they’ve got.’ Dave leaned toward us, the audience. ‘Ready?’

‘Ready!’ we all screamed, even me.

‘Now, to meet the judges. First, all the way from Melbourne, Australia where he just finished filming Paradise Bay, Neville Grant!’

Neville appeared, gleaming white hair slicked straight back, bowing to acknowledge the thunderous applause. He was dressed entirely in black, including his shoes. The man was painfully thin, desperately in need of emergency ravioli.

Dave pumped Neville’s bony hand. ‘When will Paradise Bay be released in the United States, Nev?’

‘Next year, Dave, and it’s starring two of Australia’s greatest exports, Mel Gibson and Nicole Kidman.’

The audience went insane with joy, while Neville, alternately waving and bowing, loped long-legged across the stage and eased into his chair.

‘Next,’ Dave continued, ‘we have the beautiful and talented Samantha Purdy!’

The crowd went bonkers.

‘Samantha’s a former Miss America who wowed us in Atlantic City with her dazzling clog dancing. Come on out, Sa-man-tha!’

The beautiful and talented Samantha appeared from stage left, grinning hugely, did a quick double-toe-step, rock step, and waved to the audience. She wore a bright red sweater and slim, black jeans. Samantha’s trademark waist-length auburn hair (she’d been a L’Oreal spokesmodel since 2001, and definitely worth it) was tied in a ponytail. She’d drawn the ponytail through the opening at the back of a Chicago Cubs baseball cap that was sitting on her head at a jaunty angle.

Dave grabbed Samantha’s impeccably manicured hand and said, ‘I understand you’ll be joining the US touring company of Riverdance this fall, is that right?’

Samantha giggled. ‘That’s absolutely right, Dave. I’m so excited to be working with Marty Dowds and Maria Buffini and all the other talented individuals on the Riverdance team.’ She took a deep breath. ‘And I’m so excited to be here today, and to have this incredible opportunity to be part of discovering some astonishing new talent!’

Even from where we sat, it looked as if Samantha was capable of rattling on forever in a god-bless-all-the-poor-little-children-of-the-world sort of way, and Dave must have sensed it, too, because he raised Samantha’s arm as if declaring her dah winnah in a boxing match and said, ‘Let’s hear it for Samantha Purdy!’

‘Cead Mile Failte!’ cried Samantha. ‘Slan go foill!’ And she took her seat.

‘What the heck was that?’ Eva asked.

‘Gaelic?’ I suggested. ‘In honor of Riverdance? They’re Irish.’

‘Shhhh,’ said the sourpuss to my right.

‘And last but certainly not least, Mr Jonathan Job, who with his partner Izabelle Kucharski, won the silver medal for ice dancing at the 2006 Winter Olympic Games. Jonathan, come on out!’

I am a major fan of ice dancing (Torvill and Dean are gods!) so I instantly recognized the handsome man emerging from stage right. Job was tall, muscular, and broad-shouldered – had to be to hoist Izabelle, a sturdy Polish lass, and sling her around the ice rink like he had done to win the silver. Job flowed, rather than walked, on to the stage.

‘Welcome to Shall We Dance?, Jonathan.’

‘My pleasure.’

‘So, what’s next for you?’

‘I’m doing the choreography for Harry Potter on Ice, Dave. We’ll be opening in New York City on November 1st, then touring the United States and Europe. We’ll be in Baltimore next Thanksgiving weekend, in fact.’

‘Did you hear that folks? Harry Potter on Ice is coming to Baltimore!’

The audience was delirious with joy.

‘And how about your partner, the lovely Izabelle. What’s she up to?’

Jonathan combed his fingers through his curly, sandy locks, looking uncharacteristically shy. ‘Izzy’s touring with Potter on Ice, too. And I suppose it’s only a matter of time before Entertainment Tonight spills the beans, so I might as well announce it right now, Izabelle and I were married on New Year’s Eve!’

The audience erupted in a frenzy of congratulatory delight.

‘Well, congratulations, Jonathan. We wish you and Izabelle all the best. Now, if the judges will take their seats. Let’s get on with it. Your job is to decide which of these talented contestants goes on to the finals in New York City this April.’

As Jonathan glided toward his place behind the table, Dave approached the edge of the stage and spoke directly to us, the audience. We were such good friends by now. ‘The auditions will start in just a few minutes, ladies and gentlemen, but first, a special treat! To get everyone into the Shall We Dance? spirit, and to demonstrate how it’s done by the pros, Shall We Dance? has arranged for some amazing dancers to perform for you. First, from right here in Baltimore, Merry-land are Ron and Janet Benrey dancing…the waltz!’

We sat enthralled while Ron and Janet, elaborately costumed as colonial Americans complete with powdered wigs, performed a gorgeous, perfectly coordinated Viennese waltz to the tune of the ‘Love Theme from Romeo and Juliet’.

After their final bow and curtsy, Ruth muttered, ‘Wait a minute. The waltz wasn’t invented until the 1800s, am I right?’

Ruth was, but the woman on my right was glaring at us again, so I simply nodded and tried to ignore them both.

‘So why aren’t George and Martha Washington dancing a minuet, for Christ’s sake?’

‘Ruth!’ I hissed.

Meanwhile, on stage, the auditions had begun. We had no idea what time Hutch and Melanie would perform, only that we had to sit through ten other contestant couples before we got to them. We watched a hip hop routine, a country western line dance for two, a pas-de-deux from Swan Lake – ‘competent’ (according to Jonathan), ‘straight out of high school’ (Neville) but ‘boring, boring, boring’ (Samantha) – and a couple dressed as characters from the Phantom of the Opera who leaped, pranced and stumbled their way though a waltz largely because she kept tripping on the trailing hem of her dress and he couldn’t see very well through the eyehole of his mask.

Ruth frowned. ‘Is that what Dave meant when he said that contestants should stand out?’

Unbelievably, by a two to one margin (Samantha being the lone dissenter), the judges decided to put the Phantom and Christine through to the finals.

‘What a crock,’ Ruth growled from the end of the row.

It was hard for me to believe, too, but I said, ‘They’ve got to have somebody to make fun of, Ruth. Better Christine and her Phantom than Hutch and Melanie.’

I turned away from my sister when Dave reappeared on stage, flapping his arms like a wounded goose. ‘Everybody up! On your feet! Arms in the air! Touch your toes!’

For a large man, Dave was surprisingly graceful as he danced on tiptoe, jiggling his arms to demonstrate how easily one could avoid the risk of deep vein thrombosis. ‘Shake out those kinks!’ he instructed as Steve slotted ‘Rock Around the Clock’ into his CD drive.

My kinks were quickly dispatched, so I sat down and amused myself by watching everyone shake, rattle and roll all around me.

‘And now,’ Dave continued, ‘before we meet our next group of contestants it’s time to bring out some more of our pros. Here they are, all the way from Annapolis, Maryland, dancing the paso doble, let’s hear it for Jay and Kay Giannotti!’

I nudged Paul with my elbow. ‘This is going to be great!’ And all of us clapped like crazy.

Steve cued up the Giannotti’s CD and the music began, a sultry malagueña with Spanish guitar and castanets.

Clothed in iridescent black, his shirt slit to the waist and wearing what looked like an ivory tusk on a chain around his neck, Jay backed out of the wings, heels tapping like a flamenco dancer, his shoulders arched and wide, his chest high, his head thrown slightly back. Next came Kay, following, her eyes locked on his, her white-blonde hair slicked back and held high with a Spanish comb. As she progressed, twirling her ruffled skirt like a matador’s cape, Jay backed away, puffing his lips as if mouthing ‘olé’.

‘Is Miss Kay the bull?’ Chloe asked, almost picking up on the symbolism of the dance.

‘No, she’s the cape,’ I said. ‘Just watch.’

Suddenly Jay turned his back on his partner, tap, tap, tapping in place while Kay approached stealthily from behind. She pasted her body against his, wrapped her arms around his chest, fingers splayed. As the music grew in intensity, Jay peeled Kay’s hand from his chest, and spun her away. She dropped to the floor, her legs sliding into a graceful split, while Jay continued his increasingly frantic tapping, dragging Kay around by her arm, as if he were mopping the floor with her body.

Jay released Kay’s hand, turned away, as if in scorn.

Kay collapsed in despair, her cheek resting against the floorboards, but only for a moment. In one fluid movement she leapt to her feet, arched her back, raised her arms toward the ceiling and pumped them up and down, as if picking apples.

Jay turned, as if he’d only just noticed his partner. She stopped picking apples, locked eyes on him and started to run. He spread his arms and caught her, she draped herself around his neck, nestled her head under his chin.

Unexpectedly, Jay’s knees buckled, and he staggered sideways. I gasped. Who would have thought Kay was so heavy? As I watched in astonishment, Jay’s arms dropped to his sides, Kay along with them, dumping her in an unceremonious heap on the floor, like a colorful bundle of laundry. Jay clutched his chest, staggered backwards, then collapsed.

The music played on.

First we heard an ‘ooooo’, the intake of thousands of breaths.

The music stopped abruptly.

Then silence.

By that time, Kay had crawled over to Jay where he lay on the floor. As we watched in horror, scarcely daring to breathe, she put her cheek to his face, then laid her head on his chest.

Dave hustled over from the wings, his ragged breathing amplified a hundredfold by the mike, the judges were on their feet, and Kay was screaming, ‘Somebody call 9-1-1. My husband’s having a heart attack!’