Over the past few months, I had the opportunity to work with a fabulous cast of students from Geneva High School choreographing their production of Into the Woods.  The cast consisted of 8th – 12th-grade students of various performing experience.

Last year, I choreographed West Side Story at GHS and this was a completely different experience.  For West Side Story, the school had received the rights to the original choreography.  I was handed the indecipherable Choreographer’s Manual on Day 1, decoded the movements, watched as many West Side Story productions with the original choreography as possible, and then taught the iconic movements to a group of high school students with very limited dance experience.  Rehearsals were brutal with the Jets, high school boys who didn’t know a plie from a chasse, but were determined to get their movements correct for the show.

For Into the Woods, the rehearsal and the choreographic process was completely different.

Like real woods, this show was ever growing, evolving every day in terms of staging movement.  When I first met with the director before auditions, she shared that there would be moving Trees and Sprites, a new addition to the musical.  I looked at her like she had three heads and responded with a very confused, “Huh?”.   I hadn’t ever pictured these extras additions to the musical, but she was confident they would be a hit!  We had a group of girls who were trained in dance at local dance studios, a few I had worked with before, that would be the perfect Sprites.  Because of the limited characters in the production, some students with non-speaking roles would be Trees.

Incorporating these two additions to the different scenes in this production was one of the most difficult processes I’ve gone through.  I couldn’t pre-plan choreography or staging before rehearsals because I did not know the blocking of the other actors on stage.  Setting the numbers the Trees/Sprites were in was a very stop-and-go process for myself and the cast, running a few moments of the scene, stopping, rewinding once I memorized the actors’ blocking, adding a Tree or a Sprite to a section, and restarting from the top.  Thankfully, the students in this cast were nothing short of professional no matter how long they’d been in the theater that day.

After 10 weeks of rehearsing, the show finally came together for a fantastic opening night.  The students had a new found energy in their performance, finally becoming one with their characters, and performing the best show I’ve seen them do!   The first act was full of so many hilarious one-liners and light-hearted, hopeful dialogue followed by a very emotional and heartbreaking second act.  It was such a fantastic experience working with these students for the last time.  They have grown so much as performers since working with them on West Side Story and it has been a privilege getting to know these students in their close-knit family within the Geneva High School Drama Club.

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