Bob Fosse redux.

This is the year that choreographer-director Bob Fosse, who died in 1987, is having his choreography reconstructed (separately) by two of his closest associates, Gwen Verdon and Ann Reinking. During a two-week workshop in Toronto this summer, Verdon and twenty-six dancers chosen by her worked on a project to develop a musical around and using some of Fosse's choreography. Meanwhile, Reinking, who followed in Verdon's and Liza Minnelli's footsteps in Chicago, has polished up Fosse's dances for its Broadway revival.

Bright new musicals do not, alas, dominate the Broadway lineup this fall. With Andrew Lloyd Webber's Whistle Down the Wind whistling in the wings, it leaves only two major revivals, Once Upon a Mattress, with Sarah Jessica Parker, and Chicago, to hopefully ring bells. As we noted here, the current version of this Fred Ebb and John Kander musical grew out of last spring's ebullient Encores! series at City Center [August, page 50]. Now with its leading cast virtually intact from that successful venture, Chicago is slated to open next month at the Richard Rodgers Theatre, where it was originally presented in 1975.

Reinking has the responsibility not only of restaging Fosse's distinctive choreography, but also of performing the lead role of chorus girl Roxie Hart, a flamboyant character who kills her boyfriend and parlays the crime into becoming a media superstar. Bebe Neuwirth is Velma Kelly, Hart's fellow convict and publicity-seeker. Joel Grey and James Naughton also star, along with the classical countertenor David Sabella, here cast as a drag-queen columnist.

Reinking, discussing her recent activities in what she calls her "feast mode" (in the feast-or-famine business of theater), emphasizes, "I've always wanted to pass along the American musical tradition." This year more than ever, she's fulfilling that desire, most literally in her Musical Theatre Project of Tampa's summer arts program, now in its sixth year under the auspices of the University of South Florida and the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center. "It's become totally rewarding and fulfilling," she says. "I love teaching, and there's abundant talent out there waiting to be encouraged." Some seventy students selected from numerous auditions held around the country converge on Tampa for a three-week total immersion course in Broadway arts. "They've got to be able to sing, dance, and act," Reinking continues, "and be prepared to be very professional. We start at eight in the morning and go till ten at night, working toward a show at the end of it all at one of the Performing Arts Center theaters."

Faculty members include Gregory Hines, Patricia Birch, the ballroom team of Pierre Dulaine and Yvonne Marceau, Vanessa Williams, voice coach Seth Riggs, and director Peter Hunt. Tommy Tune, Gene Saks, Ron Piretti, and Savion Glover have all taught there in the past.

"Each year, as our reputation grows, things get better and better," says Reinking. "We have a lot of innercity kids, many attracted through scholarships. There's so much talent in the high school- and college-age range--not just performers but also other creative people. Now I'm thinking it would be wonderful to do a show--something totally original, not just an end-of-term revue--and tour it during school breaks, and maybe hold a small weekend arts festival in Tampa.

These are all dreams, but the kids could be ready for it. They come up to me with things they've put together, and if they're good, I always put them in our performance at the end of each project."

Right now most of Reinking's time is taken up with Chicago, for which she's already had joyous write-ups. "They [Reinking, Neuwirth, and Grey] wear their roles like leotards," wrote Ben Brantley in The New York limes about the City Center concert version. "However," says Reinking, "prior to Encores! I hadn't danced or sung in four years, so I had to quickly start taking singing lessons and going to class--which I do on my own because I hate being in class in front of other people when you're supposed to be wonderful!" She has also choreographed the revival of Applause, starring Stefanie (Hart to Hart) Powers as Margot (All About Eve) Channing. Applause, the Betty Comden-Adolph Green-Charles Strouse musical first seen in 1970, is headed for Broadway in the spring. Says Reinking, "It's been great working again with director Gene Saks and Tommy Tune. We've been involved together in several shows." But no original ones lately. "Broadway has become a little like opera," Reinking says. "We just do the great ones over and over with different interpretations, different directing, and different stars."

For Applause, now in its pre-Broadway tour, former Ballet Hispanico company members Lynne Morrissey and Marc Calamia were selected for dancing roles. As it turns out, even if they'd stayed with Tina Ramirez's company they would still have had a chance to work with Reinking. She's choreographing a ballet for Ballet Hispanico, which she had promised before Chicago came up. Explains Ramirez, "It's a full company piece, something contemporary but with heart--something upbeat to close the evening with."

Meanwhile, there's no need to completely despair that there are few original musicals these days. Penciled in for the spring season are Ragtime, choreographed by Graciela Daniele, and farther down the road, The Royal Family of Broadway, based on George F. Kaufman and Edna Ferber's play, to be directed by Tune.

Revivals, some on tour and others destined for Broadway, include Annie, choreographed by Peter Gennaro; Cabaret, choreographed by Matthew Bourne; and Leonard Bernstein's Candide, again directed by Harold Prince, which is pretty much of an opera, itself.