Choreographer Lorin Latarro, rock’s whisperer on Broadway, provides flight to the Who and Huey Lewis

NEW YORK — The quintessential rock musical “The Who’s Tommy” is thrillingly alive once more on Broadway. And just some blocks away is a brand new rock present that includes music by Huey Lewis and the Information.

The connecting tissue between them is the in-demand choreographer Lorin Latarro, identified for her bespoke strategy and a fluency in relation to rock.

“Once you attempt to be literal with rock ‘n’ roll music, you’re you’re in bother as a result of the fantastic thing about rock ‘n’ roll lyrics are that they reside in metaphor,” she says. “I feel dance, by definition, is a metaphor. So dance and rock truly are actually nice mates.”

Latarro’s muscular, fluid and fashionable dance model — together with having one of many little one actors enjoying Tommy twirled and flipped like pizza dough — is born from the love and respect that solely comes from a former member of the ensemble.

“I like dancers. I feel dancers are extraordinary individuals and extraordinary artists who’re doing it as a result of they like the sensation of flying and the sensation of dancing,” she says. “They’re actually not doing it for the cash or the celebrity.”

Latarro has a particular knack for working with rockers. Along with shaping reveals for Lewis and Pete Townshend this season, she’s additionally put Inexperienced Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong and Melissa Etheridge into “American Fool,” and helped Trey Anastasio and Sara Bareilles obtain their Broadway goals. Subsequent up: Working with the band Practice on a brand new musical.

“In all probability aside from possibly Twyla Tharp, she’s probably the most articulate choreographer I’ve ever come throughout,” says “The Who’s Tommy” Tony-winning director Des McAnuff, who first labored with Latarro in a 2009 revival of “Guys and Dolls.” He calls her very collaborative and at all times open.

“She’s hungry for suggestions, for enter. And once we’re within the room, we travel prefer it’s tag group wrestling. Both of us can step up and put fingers up, so I can’t say sufficient about her.”

For “Tommy,” Latarro makes use of the ensemble to maneuver the units, pull and the carry the grownup Tommy round, menace the pinball wizard and twirl the mute and blind younger actors enjoying Tommys round.

“It’s so humorous as a result of Des was like, ‘I feel you’re asking an excessive amount of of those youngsters.’ And I used to be like, ‘I’ve a 6-year-old. Have you ever seen a 6-year-old currently? They’ll do the whole lot.’”

Time Out known as her the present’s “most beneficial participant,” saying she helps make the musical right into a dance present and “Latarro comes by means of with exceptional numbers — the Broadway season’s greatest choreography to this point.”

Latarro grew up in New Jersey decided at an early age to do what she cherished. “I used to be at all times a dancer. In first grade. I advised everyone I used to be going to be a dancer,” she says.

She typically skipped college to take the bus into New York to take dance courses at Broadway Dance Middle or see reveals. She noticed the musical revue “Black and Blue” 11 occasions.

“I met one of many dancers and the women took me backstage and so they put eyelashes on me, and that was it. They have been so good and so they simply modified my life.”

She graduated from The Juilliard College and danced in 14 Broadway reveals, together with “Fosse,” “Swing!,” “A Refrain Line” and “Movin’ Out.” She additionally was a member of such corporations as Robert Wilson, Martha Graham and MOMIX.

“I like every kind of motion and as a dancer, my objective was to by no means get pigeonholed,” she says. “My objective as a choreographer is type of related: I’m not interested by having a method that appears like one particular model. I’m extra interested by creating motion that actually speaks to the story.”

Her choreography credit embody “The Curious Incident of the Canine within the Night time-Time,” ”Arms on a Hardbody” and “Waitress,” Bareilles’ adaptation of a 2007 movie a couple of waitress and pie-maker trapped in a small-town diner and a loveless marriage.

For “Waitress,” Latarro had onstage a bunch of soon-to-be-delivering mothers transferring to the heartbeats of their infants, and three waitresses singing as they add actual components to a pie combination.

In a single quantity, the heroine performs numerous fantasies, like profitable a pie baking contest, being thrown a suitcase and garments for an try and flee and floating within the air together with her lover. Latarro was impressed by studying an article concerning the significance of daydreaming.

“Nobody within the viewers actually needs to see choreography about components and pie making. What’s she excited about?” she says. “She’s excited about escaping her marriage, and he or she’s excited about operating away. And he or she’s excited about making out with this horny physician. Impulsively it unlocked the staging.”

Latarro often begins with the textual content and thinks about what the characters are feeling and what she wants to speak to the viewers. Solely later does she hearken to the music.

That components did not precisely work with “The Coronary heart of Rock and Roll,” Lewis’ new musical. Latarro knew each phrase to each single Huey Lewis track. “I had posters of Huey on my wall that I kissed earlier than I went to sleep at night time,” she says.

The present, which tells the story of a on a blue-collar man hoping to make a final stab at a profession in music, is constructed from present Lewis’ songs like “Hip to Be Sq.” and “If This Is It.”

Latarro’s dancers leap and race throughout the stage, do methods and get to be foolish and likewise atmospheric. “They get to point out off,” Latarro says.

“Their job on this present is to be buoyant and tremendous bodily and assist with the enjoyment of it and positively assist with the storytelling.”

Rely her one-time crush amongst Latarro’s admirers.

“Watching Lorin work has been only a revelation,” says Lewis. “These dancers are wonderful and so they get means up off the bottom. It’s fairly one thing to observe.”

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Mark Kennedy is at http://twitter.com/KennedyTwits