Paper Mill Playhouse has a season of musicals that are really going to kick butt (including The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Ever After). And kicking things off is a completely re-imagined, Broadway-bound revival of Cole Porter’s Can-Can, which is serving lots of leg and flouncy skirts through October 26. (Did we include enough kick references yet?) The musical stars Tony nominee Kate Baldwin as a Parisian café owner in the 1890s who risks it all to feature the scandalous dance. When BroadwayBox caught up with the show’s leading players, we wanted to know, when not performing the can-can’s porte d’armes, what do you consider your signature dance move at weddings, parties, etc?
Kate Baldwin (La Mome Pistache)
“My husband [Graham Rowat] and I have a dance party every night with our three-year-old. So I can tell you my husband’s is the white man’s overbite and I’ve got this tapping the hip, rock star thing that I do. It comes from the days when I was on a cruise ship and I had the microphone in one hand and would tap in the other.”
Jason Danieley (Aristide Forestier)
“My wife [Marin Mazzie] and I met doing a play and for some reason she had a signature move, and it was the thing I saw her do that I thought, ‘oh, that’s sexy.’ And so my move is this ridiculous version of trying to be sexy like Marin Mazzie.”
Greg Hildreth (Boris Adzinidzinadze)
“I’m a fan of the body roll. I’ll break out a body roll if the right music in Starbucks comes on; I’ll just go right into it.”
Megan Sikora (Claudine)
“I think it's the salsa because you can do it to any song. Just get it going, maybe grab an old person and start spinning them around the dance floor.”
Michael Kostroff (Jean-Louis)
“My signature dance move is the seated observation. I kind of invented that. It’s my thing; I don’t want people stealing that now. People go to an event and say, ‘I wonder if he’s going to do it? Is Michael going to do the seated observation?…Yes! He’s doing it.’”
Justin Robertson (Etienne)
“It's a sensible time step.”
Mark Price (Hercule)
“Wedding or party? How about just my living room late at night? I’ve got some pretty jazzy moves after 11 o’clock at night. Me and the cats can really burn up the floor.”
Can-Can runs at the Paper Mill Playhouse through October 26.
