Sergio Trujillo: Making Jersey Boys Dance (When The Four Seasons Didn’t)
August 28th, 2011World Scene writer James D. Watts, Jr. has a marvelous preview of the Broadway productions that are heading to Tulsa as part of Celebrity Attractions’ 2011-12 season. Three of the season’s productions were choreographed by Sergio Trujillo: Jersey Boys, The Addams Family, and Memphis. Check out what Trujillo had to say about the challenges of choreographing JB:
The biggest challenge in making “Jersey Boys” dance was the fact that the Four Seasons didn’t.“When I began to work on this show,” said Sergio Trujillo, the choreographer for the Tony Award-winning musical, “I watched every bit of footage on the Four Seasons that I could find. And the more I watched, the more I thought, ‘What am I going to do?’ Because these guys didn’t move at all.”
Most of the moving Frankie Valli and his musical cohorts did was vertical – as in up the charts, with songs such as “Sherry,” “Walk Like a Man,” “Rag Doll” and “Who Loves You” that made the Four Seasons one of the most popular groups of the 1960s and ’70s.
But regardless of how stationary the Four Seasons might have been when on stage during their performing days, “Jersey Boys,” the musical version of their story, was going to have to dance.
“My job on this show wasn’t just traditional choreography,” Trujillo said. “This is a very kinetic show, and I was responsible for almost all of what happens – the way the stage furniture moves around, how the characters get on to and off the stage.
“There may not be a great deal of what people think of as ‘dancing’ in ‘Jersey Boys,’ but it is a very completely, very tightly choreographed show.”
Visit TulsaWorld.com to read the full interview.
