Your step-by-step guide to dancing like you’re in Washington Heights.
Step 1: Join the club
You hear a beat pulsing behind the salsa club door. It grows louder, carried on waves of sound piling on sound: trumpets squealing, salsa claves clacking, peals of laughter, clinking glasses, scraping bar stools, high heels tapping, feet stamping, and hands clapping.
Each beat is calling you to join the dance: a brilliant vista of community, bodies whirling around a crowded room in a carousel of sweaty solidarity, and a chatty stream of neighbours and friends bustling in and out like the glittering tails of conga lines.
You’re watching ‘The Club’, a showstopping scene from Lin-Manuel Miranda’s effervescent musical In The Heights.
Here, movement is the lifeblood of the community – its purpose, its soul-voice, and the marker of its triumphs and griefs.
“Dance,” says choreographer Amy Campbell, “is such a universal language. We use it to celebrate, we use it to process, we use it to heal. I want the audience to feel like dance is happening here in the community with us.”
At heart, In The Heights is a story about movement – the movement of immigration, the desperate uphill struggle for a better life, the thundering rollick of New York subways, the passing of dreams and burdens from one generation to the next.
Step 2: Meet your dancers
Associate Choreographer Tash Marconi recalls a day she and Campbell spent exploring Washington Heights, the New York neighbourhood where the musical is set. “Looking through the main street, as soon as you got out of the subway…there was energy.”
Staying true to Washington Height’s vibrancy, they cast dancers who move with hot-blooded individuality.
“I needed dancers who were super confident and individual because we're representing a whole community... I was looking for individuals who can hold their own.”
In contrast to musicals like Moulin Rouge or Chicago, with their uniform masses of dancing girls, In The Heights celebrates difference and the gritty unevenness of real life.
This need for individuality – dancers possessing a certain X-factor – prompted Campbell to hold auditions by invitation-only. “The dancers are extraordinary,” she enthuses. “I could have cast this show four times over.”
“Each member of the ensemble has their own movement style,” adds Marconi. “You’ve got some roles that are more grounded and agile. They’re the person that’s flipping and tricking and more dynamic. And then you’ve got one playing into the more typically womanly, sensual essence. And then others…one’s a little bit more salsa, one’s a little bit more street style. When I look at the ensemble, I’m like ‘Oh gosh, we all can dance as an ensemble, but we’re so unique and different.’”
Marconi is adamant that sincere and exciting Latinx dancing must come from the soul.
“It’s not structural, like ballet. There’s also an element of heart and passion. When we were casting, that’s what we really looked for. Who are these people that are unique, that are radiant, that are magical, that have that spark, where you can see the joy of dance.”
“We have to recreate that sense of community in how the personalities show up on stage. The story is: we all live on this block. We all know each other. You probably went to high school with me. This person passing you in the bodega, their sister is dating your brother…. All those things are important because it’s not just about going through the motions – you’re bringing a character, a real human, to life on stage.”
The kind of dancer capable of achieving this, Marconi says, is ultimately one animated by love: they move, she says, in a way that shows “they love the people around them.”
Step 3: Relish the Cultural Melting Pot
In The Heights is a remarkable feast of different dance genres – street styles, tricking, acro, jazz, and a medley of Latinx styles including Bachata, a sensual form of social dancing originating in the Dominican Republic, and the ever-popular Salsa, known for its energetic playfulness.
“The best thing about this show is the music and the musical influences that Lin-Manuel Miranda uses to tell the story,” says Campbell. “That really allows the choreography to have lots of different influences.”
Marconi did extensive research on Cuban movement, compiling her own catalogue of footwork, shoulder styling, and foundational moves. It was necessary “to help understand where it comes from culturally, and what sort of voices are correct for that style of dance.”
She even hit the streets to do field research, becoming a regular at La Descarga, a vibrant Cuban nightclub in Los Angeles.
“If you’re dancing there, someone would just grab you on the dance floor and suddenly you’d find yourself in a full partnering moment. Moments like that, of seeing ‘Oh this is real, this is how it happens, this is the grit inside the club!”
Step 4: Watch for the new
With Campbell’s choreography, you’ll never see the same movement twice.
“The score is so brilliant,” says Campbell. “…it doesn’t feel like the same song over and over. So it doesn’t require the same steps over and over. My mantra for choreographing is I never like to see steps on stage that I've seen before. So I try to reinvent. My job is to push the limits.”
Campbell purposely avoided unison dancing, instead creating an outpouring of movement where each dancers flies through an ever-evolving repertoire of individual expression.
“Each track is individually choreographed. You get this layering effect so that when you're watching a scenescape, it feels more like a film come to life.”
She used this technique especially in ‘The Club’, emphasising unexpected, dynamic partner dancing where the ensemble burst into a joyous explosion of spins and gravity-defying lifts.
“With each different partnering, you’ll never see the same lift or sequence of movement twice. Every individual artist who swaps or goes to a different partner absorbs their partner's style. So [the movement] is forever being fused and collaborated with.”
“And the lifts are awesome. They're what you want to see on stage: that power and passion.”
Step 5: Cherish your family and friends
For Marconi, In The Heights is close to her heart and to her loved ones. Her parents, she explains, are like the characters in the show, migrating from Uruguay to Sydney aged 21 with no English, full of determination and hope for a better life.
“I feel very excited to be a part of a show that really celebrates Latinx culture, a culture I’ve grown up in my whole life. To see that brought to life through music, through the storytelling – the life and the struggle of what it is to be an immigrant.”
The ensemble also come from a variety of cultural backgrounds, with the majority hailing from Latinx and Hispanic heritages.
Marconi’s performance is dedicated to her late grandmother, in an experience parallel to the show’s story arc for Claudia, the adopted Abuela (or ‘grandmother’) of In The Heights.
“It shows how much abuelas do for us and care about us: the dreams they have for us,” says Marconi. “My mum bawled her eyes out.”
Step 6: Keep your dreams, keep the faith
Marconi’s first time seeing In The Heights was an epiphany. “It was actually the original Broadway production. I was 18 and it was my first time in New York City. I sat four rows from the front in absolute awe.
Sitting in that Broadway audience, the teenage Marconi decided “I have to be a part of this.” It was the first time that I had seen street styles and commercial dance mixed with Latin culture: everything that I'm passionate about on a stage! It was so groundbreaking ….so inspiring to see.”
She had a key lyric, ‘Paciencia y Fe’ (‘Patience and Faith’) tattooed on her ribcage. And like the show’s characters, she held onto her sueñitos (Spanish for ‘dreams’).
Years later, about to walk into an audition for a New York production of In The Heights, Marconi received a text from Campbell. Was she free, Campbell asked, to be part of the creative team for the Sydney Opera House production?
“It was the craziest and most magical timing,” Marconi laughs. “I’m still silently shook.”
Campbell has weaved In The Heights’s inspiring message of hope, dreams, community warmth and purpose all through the musical’s dancing and movement.
“I've tried to physically represent that we're capable of more than we could ever dream of.
“As a choreographer, it's such a gift to be able to help people dream of things that they didn't know they were capable of, and encourage and support them to get there.”
All it takes, Marconi will remind you, is a little Paciencia y Fe.
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