Getting The Job
In case you missed part one of our exclusive interview with the brilliant Girlie Show choreographer Alex Magno we premeried earlier this week, here’s an interesting excerpt on how he got the job:
Alex Magno: I got a call from the show’s director Christopher Ciccone asking me to meet him to possibly choreograph the tour. I had a dinner with him in Beverly Hills and he told me the show’s concept and askes me a few questions about my artistry and personal stuff and finally asks me to come in the next day to teach “La Isla Bonita” to the cast of the “Girlie” tour.
He gave me a concept to see how I would follow their direction. We ended up not using that concept but never the less they wanted to see what I could do with it. It was kinda crazy. It was based on a old MGM film. It was about a hotel bellboy, hotel helpers and a singer. Madonna was the singer and the dancers were the hotel helpers and they wanted me to a number like that. They told me the name of the film but I don’t remember it right now. But I’ve seen it and I put something together and I put down a whole concept based on just that.
That’s how I work, before I put ideas into steps I have to put things onto paper, to define who the character is and the motiviations. And it was great for me because that’s exactly the same way Madonna works and I didn’t know that.
Knowing the dancers I workshopped the night before with Luca Tomassini and Carrie Ann Inaba from the tour and some of my own dancers. Carrie Ann being Madonna. I workshopped for about two hours just to get an idea of what I had to teach. The next day Madonna comes in at two o’clock after music rehearsals and she sits down and watches the number. When the number is over she holds me by the shoulders and takes me aside away from everybody else and says: “Ok I like your work I just want to advise you if I don’t like something, if I say why are doing this steps, I want you to have a reason, I want to have a motivation, I am a performer that relies on a character, this is more a theatrical piece than just dance steps so every dance step must have a reason. So if I say I don’t like the step I don’t want you to take offence and I don’t want this to take you because this happened with other choreographers that I worked with. If you can do that then you’re cool”.
And I said, “good, that’s exactly how I work”. So it was perfect that her visions of steps and of dancing sort of fitted the way I choreograph. We had to do a choreography a day because they were behind schedule, they brought me in to put the show back in its place. There was a lot of pressure.
The director specifically asked me that, he said: “Can you do these many numbers in this amount of time?” I said: “I will do it, even if I will have no time to sleep”. So he said: “ok let’s take the chance”. So I got the job.
Click HERE to read the full “Girlie Show Interview” with Alex Magno. Our “Drowned World Interview” with Magno is coming up on MadonnaTribe in the next few weeks.