On Broadway: is opera edging Broadway in innovative new choreography?

Broadway musicals were breaking box-office records this summer, and theater observers were happily comparing the bonanza to the good old days. With "Sold Out" signs frequently posted at the newbies--The Light in the Piazza, Spamalot, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels and The Putnam County Spelling Bee-and older shows like Avenue Q, Mamma Mia! and Wicked still packing them in, tourists were grabbing tickets to old standbys like Phantom of the Opera.

What did these eight shows have in common, apart from their packed houses? Very little interest in dance. I've described in this space a certain kind of show--Light in the Piazza and Phantom are good examples--more akin to opera than to the kind of dance-driven musical theater pioneered by Jerome Robbins. But just as Broadway can sometimes seem to be aspiring to opera, opera is more and more doing Broadway. These days directors routinely shuttle back and forth between musicals and opera productions. Is it any wonder, then, that choreographers with Broadway experience are also now contributing their talents to opera productions in New York and across the country?

In the '30s, Balanchine very' famously threw up his hands in frustration after a short-lived attempt to co-exist with the Metropolitan Opera. But these days, opera houses eagerly hire the likes of postmodern choreographers Mark Dendy, Doug Varone and Scan Curran. While they're all happy to get a call from a Broadway producer--Dendy is working on the new Boubil-Shonberg musical, The Pirate Queen, for next season--they also agree that choreographing operas makes a lot more sense.

"The marriage of art forms is closer," explained Varone, who has worked at the Met and Opera Colorado. "For me, primarily trained as a dance maker, I have a greater simpatico towards the operatic form. It's easier for me to see the opera structurally as a dance, even if it's not being presented that way. Musical theater has a more stop-and-go structure. If it's a really fine musical, the production numbers will keep the story, moving forward; but for most, you've got to find a way and a reason to invest a really different part of your imagination. When I walk into a room and there are more actors than there are dancers, I know that I need to approach the room in a very different way."

Of course, at the opera, there are usually more singers than dancers. But there's a difference, said Dendy, who choreographed last season's big hit at the Met, the Julie Taymor production of Mozart's Magic Flute. Traditionally, dance sequences were added to operas--by sometimes reluctant composers--to provide stage time for an opera house's resident ballet company. "In musical theater," he said, "you have to make sure to cater the movement for people who tell you, 'We can't sing that note with our heads thrown back.' In opera, that's not the case, because the singing and the dancing are completely separate."

Dramatically, of course, that can present problems. But opera directors, aware of the kinds of seamless opera productions pioneered by Mark Morris and Trisha Brown, are more and more willing to integrate choreography throughout. Curran said that when he did Handel's Alcina at the New York City Opera, his dancers didn't just disappear after the dance sequences. They became part of the stage action; they moved scenic elements. "They got to be part of the whole opera," he said. "They were the magic of the piece."

Curran, whose choreography will be seen at the Met next month in a new production of Gounod's Romeo et Juliette, pointed out another benefit of working on Alcina: "I had 20 dancers! That's such a luxury!" For The Magic Flute, Dendy had 30. "I could never afford that, unless they were students," he said. "And the dancers were phenomenal." Dendy no longer has a company, but Curran and Varone use their own opera work to provide extra income for their dancers.

The opera house's non-profit culture can feel more congenial to choreographers than the commercial pressure of Broadway, they said. And Dendy cited the support provided by the Met's dance staff. "You only have to worry about creating," he said. The contrast with his first Broadway experience, Taboo, was telling: "Everybody on the Magic Flute team was working for and with each other. On Taboo, everybody was watching their backs."

Not all Broadway productions are as troubled as Taboo. But even smooth ones can require adjustments. "When I make dances, I build outlines of ideas and then find out what the details are," said Varone, who is choreographing the world premiere of Tobias Picker's An American Tragedy at the Met in December. "Artists who work in opera are willing to go along for that ride. In a theater assignment, you want to make sure that the detail is right before you take the next step forward."

The work they do in opera, they've found, can inform projects outside the opera house as well. Varone, who staged Gluck's Orphee et Eurydice for Opera Colorado, is at Lincoln Center this month collaborating with composer Ricky Ian Gordon on a new version of the Orpheus story. And Curran's new piece, set to Handel arias, wouldn't exist had not the City Opera invited him to do Alcina. "Until I was asked to choreograph an opera, I had never seen one," he said. "Now, I get opera. The rending of garments, the passion--I get it."

Sylviane Gold has written about theater for Newsday and The New York Times.