Dance Puppet, Dance!

Last Thursday in rehearsal for the Great Puppet Musical (yes, I know I’m woefully late with this post, I’m very sorry), we worked on dancing.

We at The Un-Scripted Theater Company have, over the years of doing Let It Snow, developed a “dance vocabulary”. This is a series of basic steps (the jazz square, the Fred Astaire, the Charleston, the grapevine… to name a few). The idea being that, if everyone in the cast knows certain basic steps, you can break them out in the show, and people can follow. Audiences go nuts over any improvised group dance numbers that look halfway choreographed.

And actually, it’s better if they look halfway choreographed. Not that this is ever a danger, but if they look too polished, mistakes look like mistakes in the choreography. If it looks improvised, the audience forgives the mistakes and is awed by the successes.

Dancing as a puppet is a whole new challenge, however. The most interesting thing about dancing with puppets is that watching someone with a puppet dancing, whatever they’re doing with their legs becomes what the puppet’s doing with their legs even though the puppets don’t have legs. In other words, as an audience member watching a puppeteer dance with a puppet, it’s easy to suspend your disbelief and make the leap connecting the puppeteer’s legs with the puppet.

Am I explaining that right? I can’t tell if that’s clear, but come to the show and you’ll see what I mean.

The really hard part about dancing with puppets is the arm movements. We’re working the puppet’s arms with one hand. It’s really hard to maneuver independent arm movements with one hand. I suspect that we may find we get more impressive results when another puppeteer joins in to work the arms allowing for more independent movement.