Dancing Through the Depression

Forget Broadway.

The musical "Steel Pier" will be presented by the Department of Theater and Dance at the Center For the Arts Drama Theater, the second time the show will be produced in Buffalo. John Kander and the late Fred Ebb, composers of the hugely successful musicals "Cabaret" and "Chicago," wrote the musical.

"Steel Pier" was loosely based on the film "They Shoot Horses, Don't They?" starring Jane Fonda. The plot is centered on a young dancer and many of the other dancers and blue-collar people her life becomes intertwined with during The Great Depression, in the famous Atlantic City Ballroom, the Steel Pier.

"This play's about second chances. It's never too late to turn your life around. It's never to late to take a shot at something that you dream of or it's never too late to extricate yourself from a horrific situation," said director/choreographer Lynne Kurdziel-Formato. "So there's a hopeful theme to it."

During the Depression, dancers competed in dance marathons. The first recorded marathon lasted 36 hours straight. Eventually, these competitions would run for weeks and months.

One would most likely assume that these marathons would be performed during the day, and then the dancers would go home to their comfortable beds and get a good nights rest afterward. This is not the case. These dancers would perform 24 hours a day for weeks at a time and they would only get a 15-minute break every hour.

"You can see it in the show, the dancers would sleep on their partner and they would go into hallucinatory places where they would actually be dreaming while they were still awake," said Kurdziel-Formato. "... they barely had a chance to bathe themselves also and they would eat while they were dancing and would even have coins thrown at them and would fight the other dancers for the money."

Kurdziel-Formato compares these dance marathons to the current reality TV shows, such as "Survivor" and "Fear Factor," in which contestants perform physical feats to win money.

"I would relate it to the decadence of the Romans who threw the Christians to the lions. During the Depression the crowds would come half to see the dancers perform for their lives and half to see them collapse and essentially start to lose their minds."

All of the emotions that existed during The Depression are prevalent in this play, the desperation of all the dancers to earn money, have a place to live, be fed three meals a day while they were dancing, and a chance to be rich and famous pits the dancers against each other.

For this production of "Steel Pier," students are at the forefront of every technical aspect, including design and the running of backstage operations.

"(This production) contains a very high level of talent and commitment from the cast," said Kurdziel-Formato. "It's a mixture of every level of years from freshmen to seniors, while it's all student-designed."

"Steel Pier" opens Thursday and runs through Sunday, as well as Dec. 2 through Dec. 4. at the Center for the Arts. Discounted student tickets are available.