Graciela Daniele

Michael Kantor: So, a lot of people talk about West Side Story as revolutionizing musical theater. How did it change your world?

Graciela Daniele: Completely. I was, in that time, in Paris. I went to Paris, I think it was 1957, 58, to study. And I stayed there, I stayed in Europe for about five years. I was living in Paris, and I was coming from a tour, and a friend of mine said, you must go to the Sarah Bernhard Theater, because there’s this marvelous musical that you have to see and they’re leaving. As musicals, what other musicals? You know, I was a ballerina. I didn’t know anything about musicals except for some maybe American films that I had seen. And they said it’s called West Side Story. And so I did go. The last, last show that I have. And I remember they used to have, I didn’t speak much English. I spoke Spanish and French and Italian, but they had titles, subtitles. And I started reading the subtitles and I did a while, I just… Forgot about the subtitles and I was totally immersed in the piece and I remember as if it was yesterday once I’ve been like 62 or something I walked until like two or three o’clock in the morning and I sat by the Seine and I thought I must go to that country I must go to New York to learn how to do what these people are doing to tell Dancing and singing and acting and you have to understand I was coming from a very strict ballet world, classical ballet, since I was seven years old and this fascinated me. I mean the fact that these people were characters living within the theatricality of the piece. So I decided to just come to New York for a little bit just to just to learn like jazz and modern dance and some singing and I saved some money and I came to New York and I went I asked for the the best teachers like jazz I didn’t know anything about jazz in that time and you know in Europe there was not that much jazz so they told me to go to mathematics and and who was a disciple of Jack Cole, who. Practically invented. And I went and started studying. Within a month, I was performing on Broadway. I auditioned and I was preforming on Broadway

Michael Kantor: We just ran out of film, and let us understand how lucky you were to get into Broadway.

Graciela Daniele: But the main point that I was going to make was a West Side story not only changed my life in a sense of a spiritual way or, you know, it changed my life geographically and culturally because I was an Argentinian living in Paris, living in Europe and very happy there, a ballerina, and all of a sudden I saw this piece. And I run here. Unfortunately, this was 1963, and I’m still waiting for another West Side story. It was a unique piece. It was milestone, you know. So since then, in my work, in the work that I like to create myself, this idea of using dance. As a mean, as a language to tell the story, not as an entertainment or as a bridge to a song, but as a means to tell a story, has been my preoccupation and my obsession, mostly in my small work, you know, in my…

Michael Kantor: Who do you think, and take us back to, obviously there was a time in the 20s and 30s when dance was just a bunch of girls up on stage. Who do think was the first to really change that so that dance meant more than symphony?

Graciela Daniele: Well, I think that probably Agnes, at least let me put it this way, it’s difficult to say who was the first, because perhaps if one goes to the ballet world, to the dance There were a lot of great choreographers that did that.

Michael Kantor: Better on Broadway.

Graciela Daniele: But on Broadway and, you know, in the general public, in the musical theater, I do not believe that that had happened before Agnes did it. And I believe that perhaps Agnes did it because she was partially in the dance world. By that I mean not Broadway, but she had her company. She knew about creating ballets. She had created ballets, so that she took that knowledge to the theater. And my god, what she did with Oklahoma was like, again, a milestone. So I think that perhaps for the musical theater, if I’m not wrong, I think she was the pioneer for it.

Michael Kantor: I mean what you’re pointing out is really interesting. Ballet, all the great choreographers in Broadway in a way had some ballet, many of them had great ballet. Balanchine, Agnes, Robin. How do you think ballet feeds into the Broadway musical?

Graciela Daniele: Well, I think that, well, it’s a difficult thing to say to me because, you know, I was a ballerina since I was seven until I was 23 when I came here. So I have a tremendous respect for the ballet world. I think there is, first of all, a discipline that is perhaps harder than any other language of dance in ballet. I say, sometimes when I look at this Petit-Hard, the young girls with the chignon and the, you know, you have to love this torture in order to do it. I don’t know how to explain it. It’s not fun, like you feel, oh well, you know, I’m going to disco a little bit and that’s fun, or it’s a technique that is, it’s rooted in you for such a long time. That becomes part of like breathing. So there’s a seriousness about it. There’s a discipline that it makes you really focus on it completely. The other thing is that I always found it gives the dancer a line, a beauty, a control of the body and an elegance. Became, you know, for the choreographer, it’s wonderful to have somebody who has that kind of technique of language. There is a difference between lifting one arm in a motion and lifting it with the knowledge that that arm comes from the lower back. So that the line is very elegant and complete. So, that’s the technical part of it, I think.

Michael Kantor: Help tie that into the way that then those people took that and brought that seriousness to the Broadway show

Graciela Daniele: Well, in the case of Agnes and Robbins and Balanchine, I think the main thing that they brought, it was the storytelling. Not only the technique. I’m not talking now about the technique anymore. About storytelling is what I just, I said before, that I think they brought the ability and I don’t think that they were thinking about it. I think it’s just a natural thing, as a choreographer, as they were, as artists, as they were, to use movement to express a situation, an emotion, a character, to develop a character more. So it is different than just doing a number in which you bring the kids. And, and, uh… And you do great steps and you modulate at the end and you a strut that makes everybody feel very safe and very comfortable and very happy and they applaud, you go bravo. It’s different. In their work, although they knew how to do that too, their work was more as writers through movement and I think that is very, very, special.

Michael Kantor: When you were growing up, when you were very little, did Broadway mean anything to you?

Graciela Daniele: Nothing at all, nothing at all. I mean, I was born in Argentina. I went to the theater cologne as a student. The theater cologne in that time in the 40s, late 40s was probably like the Bolshoi used to be. School, subsidized by the government, extremely into a very classical world. So that, to tell you the truth, I mean… I imagine that I must have heard the word Broadway, but it didn’t mean absolutely anything to me.

Michael Kantor: What do you think, let’s cut for one sec, how much time do I have left?

Graciela Daniele: Makes money. I mean, it’s a very well-paid job compared to the sacrifice that the dance world is, you know, brings. I mean you see these companies, I live in the corner of the Joyce Theater and I see a lot of these wonderful, wonderful companies, thousands and thousands of talented dancers. They live for those two weeks at the Joyce Theater once a year. So, I mean, it’s very, very hard. On Broadway, you’ll make a very good salad.

Michael Kantor: What about in terms of dance, maybe vocabulary or means of expression, what’s different about there than, say…

Graciela Daniele: We are talking commercial theater. I personally, as a dancer, when I was a dancer on Broadway, and I was extremely lucky because I worked with the best. Everything I am and I know comes from the Michael Bennett’s, the Balfaz’s. So, you know, I can’t complain. But, as a dancer, I only was asked to do this because I was not a dancer and I was asked to do maybe 25% of what I was able to do. There is a, and I’m not talking about, you know, all the shows. I’m talking about the majority. Of course, once in a while comes something like dancing. Fosse does something like that. It’s not even a musical, sort of like a review of dance. So it is sort of the closest to a dance concert you can get.

Michael Kantor: But generally…

Graciela Daniele: I don’t believe that the dancers are asked in the majority of shows that I have done or even choreographed myself. Are asked to do as much as, like for instance, Robbins did in West Side Story or Agnes did in Oklahoma. You see, but that’s not a problem so much of the choreographers or it’s the properties. The musical theater on Broadway is a formula. And you have to fulfill that formula. And the formula is not necessarily doing something glorious as noise funk, which is… There you have somebody, I’m sorry I said that I was waiting for West Side Story, but I have to tell you that was to me another milestone. There goes, there is an incredible show in which such a difficult theme is being told and the majority of the storytelling is done through tap. Yes, that’s extraordinary. But that happens once every 50 years or every 30 years or. And it doesn’t come from Broadway. It’s not what you expect on Broadway. It usually comes from like George Wolfe and Sevier from the public theater, from non-profit theater. Who dares to do things that Broadway never dares to.

Michael Kantor: I love this idea that in a director’s mind, Broadway is a formula. Tell me about that. What is the formula? And what happens if you don’t, if you try and break it?

Graciela Daniele: Well, usually you’re not very well accepted in the case of noise funk, it was, so I think that perhaps to break the formula you have to be exceptional, as opposed to just good or different.

Michael Kantor: But define it, if you would. You said, say, tell me again, Broadway is a formula. What is the, you know, roughly?

Graciela Daniele: Well, first of all, let’s put it this way, Broadway is commercial theater. I’m not saying, to me, being a foreigner, not a foreigner. I’m American now, but I’m saying, you know, coming from another point of view, Broadway is a street. It’s nothing but a street, what happens, I think, that to this particular nucleus of theaters come the best people in the world. Not only Americans, but from everywhere they come. There is an Aura about it and going back to like the children the dancers who want to be on Broadway I think it’s very it when I said money. I don’t think it is only that I think there is this aura It’s like, you know, it’s like when I was a kid I would look at Hollywood pictures and think that America was like that Everything was like the Hollywood pictures I saw, you you know so there is that aura the legend of the white way and the big stars and the glamor and all that, that I think they feel very attracted to, especially if they are born here and they live with that legend constantly. So there is that side too of wanting to be on Broadway. The formula, okay, the formula. I think that… The formula for the musical theater is first of all based on periods in the theater, in the musical world. First it was reviews. There were this wonderful, the twenties, you know, the Ziegfeld and that’s what musicals were about. And that was coming from vaudeville, from, you know, how do you call vaudevilles in English? Vaudeville, yeah, individual acts, yes, Vaudevilles. So that was the first American, where music started in America. You know, then all of a sudden a little girl could come and dance, and another man would come and do a soft shoe, and you know, that’s how it started. The minstrel show, so it started as a review. Then it started, then stories started happening. So that for a while it was a very an important story, a fluffy kind of story, that would… Encompass a lot of variety acts, which are the numbers, you see, so that you see all the 30s musicals that are based on that. So the, you know, boy meets girl, girl meets boy, you know, that kind of thing. And then we have 12 production numbers, which is really nothing but an excuse to continue doing a review, you now, but with a little story. Then came the times of book musicals, which that the formula was. Give more importance to the book. Create the music to support. And then came, I mean, I’m telling this this, I was never in that time. I mean I came towards the end.

Michael Kantor: Then when you came in, what was happening?

Graciela Daniele: Well, actually when I came in, I think that it was sort of a transitional period because I came in in the times of Michael Bennett and Bob Fosse. It was like Jerem Robbins was starting to go away with Fiddler and, you know, that was the time there was, it was the end, it was when he was retiring into the ballet world, going back to the ballet word. And Michael and Fosse were, our champion was there. So there was a, it more eclectic. Because at that moment, I think the concept musical started happening. Like, for instance, Bobby would do his own thing. It didn’t matter what, you know, I mean, he started as a choreographer, but once he became the director choreographer he did his own thing, he created, he co-wrote it. So it was more the concept of musical. And actually that, I believe, that sort of has lingered a lot. I mean, we still have that happening. So there was more mixture of formulas in the way. But basically, basically, let’s put it this way. As a director choreographer, for Broadway, I am giving, I am given a script and score and there are certain demands. You need a big opening number. You’ve got to have a big opening number. Hopefully that is going to have such an impact in the audience that you can remember Michael say that to me With a good opening you can write on for the next 20 minutes So that’s a formula. I’m not saying it’s a bad formula I’m saying it is a formula that you better fulfill. Otherwise you’re going to get in trouble In dance, for instance. People, audiences, and producers, of course, and investors, like to have applause before the end of the number. And hopefully, I personally love not to have applause at all until the very end of a show, but the formula is that, you know, you want, and at the end the number, they want to have people, like a warm-up act almost, before it ends. So there’s a formula for that. What do you do? You do a rally in town in the music, then you stop, and then you start from slowly on a strut or, you know, just like you do, I mean, you see it. I mean Gower Champion did it, Fosse did it. Better than everybody. I do it. It’s a formula because it’s safe for the audience. They record, for instance, why do American audiences? Love, and not only American audiences, most audiences, I mean there’s a lot of tourists too, love Radio City Music Hall. Precision kicks, you see 50 women doing the same thing. They love it, they adore it. Why is that? Why do you think it is that. Safety. You don’t have to think, you recognize. And it’s very well performed, it’s impeccably done. So everybody knows where the kick line is. And when you do that formula of doing a retard and everybody stands and everybody puts their hand on the head and look up there and put the shoulder there and they go slowly, there’s something visceral. Audiences react to. And that’s the formula. Again, it’s not bad, but it is the formula! So when you fight that, what you’re doing is going against what is expected.

Michael Kantor: Do you think Michael Bennett went again what was expected or not?

Graciela Daniele: No, he was absolutely brilliant. He, what he did, which was, for instance, let’s talk about the end of chorus line, because I remember seeing it and calling him immediately and saying what a brilliant thing you did. What he did was to give to the audience what the audience expected, expected, which the big top hat and the, what the audiences, Well, some did, you know, the… Intelligent, they’re the ones, the perceptive ones, understood, was that that was a comment that he was making. That you had, you know, an entire, you, know, two hours of whatever the show lasted, talking about these individual people with their pains and their hopes and their lives, their complicated lives, as individuals, and that everything they go through, all this torture they have to go through. To get a job, to be on Broadway, is to be in an assembly line. Now, that, to me, was genius. That was the genius of Michael. He gave the audience what they expected. What he meant was something else. So if you can do that.

Michael Kantor: In general, help us understand again, Broadway is the place to do what kind of work.

Graciela Daniele: I believe that it’s to do hits. That every single dream is to go to Broadway so that it becomes a hit. Be it, of course, commercially, financially, that’s very important, but critically too. But it’s the word hit, you know, it’s that thing, that show that’s going to last. A long time and make everybody…

Michael Kantor: So, unlike Robbins and other folks like that, Michael Bennett’s training wasn’t ballet, was it? No. Where did you get his training?

Graciela Daniele: You know, he told me, but I can’t remember, but he started working with, I mean, I know he was born in Buffalo, and he got into West Side Story, I think that was like the first thing that he ever did. And he was about 15 years old, he was a kid, a tiny little kid, but Michael was Dance itself. I mean, his body was tiny body and extremely mobile all the time, like a squirrel, you know, and very precise. No, he didn’t have any belly. As a matter of fact, when we did Follies, I was his assistant in a couple of shows and Follie’s was like my favorite show, It was a beautiful show, and we had this sort of Bolero, and it was kind of Latin. Very elegant, very classical. So he used me a lot for line and position. Like do that, do that though. I like that one, do the other one. I loved working with him, I learned so much, so much. I did promises, promises with him and I did Coco with Katharine Hepburn with him and I Did Follies and then a couple of Milliken shows and I learned some much.

Michael Kantor: Why do dancers like him so much?

Graciela Daniele: Because he was good. He was so smart. He he was so instinctively smart. And he was relentless about detail. I remember again, you know, one of the things that he told me, always look what nobody’s looking. He told me that, because he believed that I would become, he helped me a lot because I didn’t know that I had it in me choreographed, I had no idea. And he helped a lot, he just believed in me and said you’re going to do it and he recommended me for jobs and the whole thing. And some of the things he would say, not necessarily because he felt he was teaching me, but you know I had big ears and big eyes and listen, but sometimes he would things that were like pearls of wisdom, It’s the same thing as Bobby, you know. That stayed with me and that was my schooling. I was listening to these great, great artists talking or saying something. Look where nobody’s looking. That’s wonderful for a director or a choreographer. And I understand exactly what he’s saying because now I’m going to the theater and that’s what I do.

Michael Kantor: What was he like as a person?

Graciela Daniele: I met him before Coral’s Line. By the time that Coral line came, I was already, you know, going in my own. And I believe people said that he changed, I don’t know. He was, in the time I met, which was probably, I guess, late 60s, early 70s, you know, that was the time when I worked with him, about four or five years, and we worked constantly together. He was extremely inspiring. He was constantly in the mood, constantly… So you could see his eyes just thinking. You could hear him searching all the time. He was very funny, very, very funny. But he was a kind of biting kind of humor. You know, caustic kind of humor. Extremely sexy. I mean, I felt that he had a natural sexuality about him, that, you know, men and women just fell for him. You just fell in love with him. And I always felt, at least in the times I was with him, very, very, very respectful of dancers, extremely respectful of dances. And so was Bobby. They just… That’s what I feel to myself. I mean, I’m told I’m like that, but I think that it comes not because they were like that. But if you remember how hard it was, even though you’re not doing it anymore, you have to be respectful of that. You have to love those actors and those dancers, because they go through so much. They go through a lot of pain, and it’s very hard, it’s hard. So, I don’t think that they ever… Neither of them ever forgot, and they were extremely nurturing.

Michael Kantor: Did you ever see Michael Day?

Graciela Daniele: Oh, yeah, well, in pre-production. I mean, we did pre-production for 40, for about six months. We were actually doing pre- production with, and Bob Evian, too, who was his assistant, down on 19th Street on the, what was it called, the American Laboratory, I think it was called. It was a building that Robbins had bought, and now it’s a theater, too. A building that Robin had bought and had huge. Rehearsal rooms, so that’s the way actually we rehearse partially, and we spend days and days and days of watching some slow motion Fred Astaire and getting up and doing stuff, doing, you know, doing movements, and oh, he was unbelievable, and he was great with all this kind of late 60s style, too, like, the first time I saw him was a television program that was called Halle-Balu. And he did, you know, with Donna McAfee, he did all this tight kind of thing. It was adorable. Oh, he was wonderful.

Michael Kantor: Describe the Who’s That Woman number.

Graciela Daniele: You mean the mirror number? Well, that was another genius stroke of his. It’s really, again, you know, in a fact and a way that number probably was, as I said before, told the story, not only through the lyrics, but what he put into it, which was based on the story of Follies, the show itself, which is a reunion of all Follie’s girls because the theater is going to be torn down. And of course, the ghosts of these women are there. All these performers are there, so the young ones, we were the ghosts, and the more mature ones would be the. So in the middle of this party, these ladies started remembering this number that they used to have. And on another plan, on another rake, we came in being the double of these woman. With his wonderful costumes and doing it, you know, great perfection while these ladies were, you, you know basically marking the number. So it was this duality of age which was, you know again, it was a tap number. It was a number, but again his genius made it elevated to another totally different. Point of view, which is confronting your youth.

Michael Kantor: You said that Follies was spooky. Why was that?

Graciela Daniele: Spooky. Well, I guess because… I believe that, you know, I don’t look ever, as a person, I, I don’t like going back into the past. I don’t even like having pictures. I don’t even look at pictures from the past, because I think it’s, it’s frightening. You, if you get, if you get back there, is, is you don’t, you’re not liberated to live today and hope for tomorrow. And I think that that In that sense, it’s a little spooky. It was a little bit spooky for us, the young ones. I was the young one then, to look at oneself, at a mirror of what we would be 30 years or 20 years later. And it’s like if you were able to look at your old age, look at yourself in the mirror and then see yourself as you’re going to be. I think that’s a little spooky. They were perfect for each other. Let me see if I can have a metaphor for it. It’s like… Okay, it’s like Michael was the hurricane and, you know, flying through the sea. And Bob was the land where the hurricane comes down. He was. He was, together they make a perfect human being. I don’t know how to explain it better than that. He was a, I mean if I were to paint them, probably it would be that Michael is off the ground, try, you know, going like that and just Bob just sitting there holding onto one foot, just to make sure that he’s not going to. Disappear into the stratosphere or something.

Michael Kantor: Great, I’d just like to go back on one thing you said earlier, which is contemporary moves were important.

Graciela Daniele: Mm-hmm.

Michael Kantor: Mm-hmm.

Graciela Daniele: Well, he’s our generation. I think that’s very important, you know. I mean, he did, he was like we all are, the children of Jack Cole and the children Robbins and even the children of Fosse because he was younger than Fosse. But he wanted, he was, he He loved contemporary music. He loved, you know, rock and roll and disco and all that. And he was a young and energetic guy. So he wanted to incorporate his own generation, the motion of his own generations into his work.

Michael Kantor: So, how is Bob different from Michael?

Graciela Daniele: Where there were, you know, different artists, they had a lot of similarities actually. Well, they’re not gonna get mad with me right now because they really didn’t like each other so much. But having worked with both, I can say, and the similarities came from perfectionism. They were both about detail and perfection. Created in choreographically, he told me this so I can say it safely. He said to me that he had so many, he didn’t have too much technique which I don’t believe because I’ve seen him dancing when he was young and he did have it so I think that that was, he was lying there but he was being modest about it but he did say that He had certain physical things, like, you know, his hands or his shoulders, whatever. And he used that they were not, you know, to his taste, they were great dancing things. So he used them to create a style. And that was the genius. Because he is a stylist. When you see his work, you immediately that is Fosse. You know, it’s like if you see a certain period of Picasso, you know that it is Picasso. I mean, not perhaps all of his periods, but, you know, one specific one. So he used, what he told me is that he used his, what is the word, handicaps, to create a style. And perhaps that’s true, you know, the lowering of the shoulders, the curved shoulder, the cigarette in the mouth, the pelvis work, the small pelvis work. The vaudevillian attack, because that was his beginnings. He started as, you now, in vaudeville. And then his love, obsession almost with women and, you know, sensuality and sexuality and his sense of humor, which I thought he had great sense of human, great sense of humor. And so I don’t know that they were that different. I mean, yes, they were different. I think it was a different generation, I believe. But I don’t know that basically they were that different. They were great artists. Looking for a new way or a unique way of saying something, of being in the theater. And they created extraordinary pieces.

Michael Kantor: Tell us about the first rehearsal for Chicago. Oh, I love it. What did Bob do to involve?

Graciela Daniele: I love that. That’s one of my favorite stories because I had never worked with Bob. I had admired him for many years, but I was what was considered a Michael girl. So, you know, it was like, it wasn’t… The first day, I remember it so clearly. I was very excited. We were only the dancers. He was going to start working on the opening, all the jazz. So there was only Wayne was in another room working by herself, and in one room there was Cheetah and all of the dancers, and we were at a place that he loved going to, which was called Broadway Arts, And we’re not baking. Studios, but he loved, you know, he was very ritualistic about it. He loved working there, you know. All his steps were there, all his ideas were there. So anyway, so we went in and he showed us pictures, frozen pictures of dances of the circus, you know, like Black Bottom, Charleston, Shimi, but it wasn’t steps. They were like images, you know like different frozen pictures. And we did some of them. And then he said, go over there. There’s a trunk full of the props, like hats and bows and feathers, and pick up anything you want. So like children. So we went to the trunk, and we started looking. And everybody, somebody picked up a top hat, another derby, picked up the garter and feather, and somebody bow or whatever. And we went back onto the floor. He says, okay, now everybody open up and says, okay, you do shimmy in slow motion, you do blood bottom in slow-motion. Coming on this count and just coming slowly and stop there and just getting there. So all of a sudden, those frozen pictures, which we had to include the movement into it, that means to go from here to there. And that’s how the creation of all the jazz, how he started all the Jazz. The most interesting part of it, too, was that when Patricia Zebrot, who was the costume designer, was involved in it, our costumes had those particular props that we had chosen, because he was a great director. I mean, you know what Bob was, he was a great director. Brilliant as a director. He believed that instinctively you were going to go for something that was creating your character without thinking about it. That’s why as a child you would pick something. Oh, I like this. The children do that. And so that you were using that as part of the creation of that character. Even though we were ensemble, it didn’t matter. To him, he treated people very individualistically. And it was like that. It was absolutely right. We went for the things that attracted us. And we created our own character out of those feathers or top hat and…

Michael Kantor: What did you grab, do you remember?

Graciela Daniele: Yeah, I grab a feather, a feather that’s, I think that’s my humor, straight feather like that. And I grab the garter. I guess that was the sensuality or whatever. So that’s what I had. I had a cap with a feather and a garter

Michael Kantor: I’m, you know, the man. What was Bob Fosse like outside of rehearsal?

Graciela Daniele: Um I think he was very complex. But again, you know, I didn’t know him that much. I knew him mostly. You know, my director and my choreographer and I was the dance captain so I had that kind of you know, relationship with him, but not necessarily I wasn’t his friend or anything like that. But I got to talk, sometimes when you talk to artists, it seems to me like they’re in the midst of working, they seem to be more open perhaps than when they are in real life because the truth, you know the art comes through and makes you totally naked inside. I always had this feeling that Bob was much more of a romantic, much warmer, much more vulnerable that he chose to reveal. And that’s maybe I’m crazy about it. You know, maybe I am making up all of this. But there is a, I have observed through my life that when somebody works so hard to be cynical. Or morose, or distance, is because they are protecting something. Because I don’t think that we are naturally that way. I think we are much more, or maybe, maybe I’m crazy, but I feel that if we feel safe, we are very open. And I think that perhaps he was covering a lot of, I mean, I know for instance his love for Nicole. Was so obvious when Nico walked into the room just to see when he spoke. That was so moving to me, just to see him talking about her or looking at him when she walked into it. That showed to me somebody with a great heart. He helped me a lot. I remember I would call him and say, Bobby, I’m doing this. Would you mind coming and giving me notes? And he did it. He did it seriously. He didn’t do it just, oh, you know. He would call me the next morning and give me, you know, 20 pages of notes. And you’re doing this, and, you know, why don’t you do that? He really cared.

Michael Kantor: When you mentioned, you know, Michael told you to look at things that no one else would look at. What did Bob Flossie see?

Graciela Daniele: Well, he, you know, he was… He gave me the best notes always. He would ask me why I was doing something. And I think that’s always the best. He… He tricked me sometimes into explaining something to him. And therefore, because I’m not dumb, I would understand that if I had to explain it to him, I wasn’t doing it. He didn’t tell me that, but I got it. I have a wonderful story about Bob. When I was in Chicago, I was playing the role of Hanek, which only speaks in Hungarian, which I had learned phonetically. Of all the languages, I kept on saying, of all the language I know, why do you choose the one I don’t speak, right? The only words in English that I said was not guilty, that’s all. So, I had worked out my own history, you know, as Hanik, and I had made a decision that even though she was, so we got into rehearsals and of course, after his heart attack, you know we were rehearsals for a week and he had his heart attack and then we had to close shop for three months something then that we went back. So now we are in the official rehearsals. And he starts working on cell block tango, which is a magnificent piece. And where all of the prisoners have something to say, they explain the reason why they are in prison. So Hanyek, the character I’m playing, goes and she explains the reason in Hungarian. We continue, he continues staging and little by little I see that you know he’s talking to every single girl. You know, everybody from Cheetah, everybody has a little direction, he has a direction. He doesn’t say a word to me and of course you know that as a performer you’re always insecure. You don’t know if you’re doing it right, you don’t, you know somebody doesn’t good or know you’re in the wrong direction, you just need that. So a few days passed by, and then finally, because I was the dance captain, I had a moment with him in break or whatever. And I said, Bobby, by the way, is it okay what I’m doing? I mean, am I on the right track? He says, why? He says well, I said you know, cell block tango and the character, am I in the right tracks? He says why do I care? She says, you’re guilty. She’s guilty, right? No, you are guilty. He said, you’ re guilty. And then he turns around, and he starts walking out of the room. And I swear, in that moment, I felt like killing him. And it was so, I was so desperate. How, why does he say I’m guilty? I mean, why is he talking to me? Why? He turns around. Oh, no, no. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I did it wrong. He said to me, I don’t understand. What she says, and therefore she’s guilty. And then he starts walking away. And I felt so frustrating and desperate. And then she goes to the door, and I remember this, turns around and he winks his eye, and he leaves. And I get it. He made me feel exactly how Hania. Great direction. We never spoke about it anymore. Nobody understands you, so therefore, as far as I’m concerned, you’re guilty. That was it. It was that simple.

Michael Kantor: How did both of those mentors of yours died very close together? Yes. How did they die, and how did it affect you?

Graciela Daniele: Well, um… I don’t know, perhaps died, I mean death, they died because they had to die, they died because Was time for them. The only thing that I can say is how it affected me is affected me a little bit like when my I lost my father although I wasn’t very close to him but when when he died it was like oh my god I never have a chance to talk to him again and then when I lost my mother it was that’s it the only thing that I have is memories. The emptiness. It was like all of a sudden there was a big, lonely panorama around me and I was standing sort of alone there. Let me emphasize that my relationship with them was never a close relationship. They were not my friends, I mean, yes, they were my friends of course, but what I’m saying is it wasn’t like I was having dinner with them every week or, you know, it wasn’t like that because I did have other mentors like Alan Johnson that I worked with as an assistant for about, I don’t know, five years, four or five years who’s one of my best friends and we talk still and you know so there is not. I am not saying that I was so close to them that my life fell apart. It was the influence of it.

Michael Kantor: What do you think their loss meant to Brian?

Graciela Daniele: Well, I think that we lost probably them. Two of the most important people in the musical theater ever. I personally think so. And I’m not talking just because they created hits. It was because they were great artists. And when you lose somebody like that, the entire community is in. In a shock and you mourn them probably for the rest of your life. I mean it’s you know it’s this empty space there. Optimistic, I know it will be filled up again, you know, probably when Gower went, it was the same feeling. Certainly recently when Mr. Robbins died, it was a shock, even though he was older and we sort of expected because he was sick. But, so, loss is loss, it’s loss. But they were major, major, major artists in the musical theater. You know, you can count them. Perhaps two hands, that’s about it, how much I would say from the very beginning, who brought the musical theater to a standard and to a level.

Michael Kantor: What about Steve Sondheim, how do you feel about his work and what do you think is his greatest?

Graciela Daniele: I think he is absolutely magnificent because he is his own voice, and that is so rare in the commercial theater. And I applaud the fact that he never compromised. That’s another thing that is quite amazing. Of course, he was lucky. He, you know, I mean, that counts for something. You know, he was lucky in the sense that very young, he was doing his own thing and being involved with some of the greatest people on earth. The West Side Story, Bernstein, Robbins, Arthur Lawrence, you now. So that is luck too. But the one thing that I admire so much about him is that he created. What he believed in, he still is doing what he believes in and he’s never compromised. Or at least I haven’t seen him compromised. Through hit or not hit. And that’s hard.

Michael Kantor: What do you think of this great show?

Graciela Daniele: Well, I am, you know, personally, I think Phallus, but not because I was in it, just because I felt that he has such heart and such, it was entertaining for everybody, and yet it had the scope of the score. It was so. You know, when you listen to that score, it’s like one after the other. Brilliant, brilliant pieces. And I think he was still, I think that he still had, he had a romantic side to it, and I am a romantic, and therefore, I tend to go through to that. You know? Perhaps his greatest score, you know, for other people is not Follies, but for me, it was.

Michael Kantor: Your contribution.

Graciela Daniele: Shall I go? Yes. Yes, I think that if we, if I had to analyze it, I would say perhaps Michael, yes, served every single show the piece itself. In Bob’s work, there was always Bob’s imprint. But that comes from the fact that He was, you know, he co-wrote, and again, because he was a stylist, because, you know, so that is the black box. And dancers in a certain position immediately tells you it’s Fosse. It is true, too, that Fosse didn’t create that. I mean, it was coming from, you know, nothing is new on the, I mean he was taking that from somebody else and putting his stamp on it. But I think that he was very specific. Bobby was extremely specific in his own style. It always was Fosse. Well, Michael was more… He wasn’t so much of a stylist. He served the piece with, you know, different ideas. I mean, Chorus Line was not similar to Follis or Accompany or, you know they all had their own little flavor.

Michael Kantor: What do you think makes Andy Get Your Gun a great piece of musical theater?

Graciela Daniele: I did say it was a great piece of musical theater today.

Michael Kantor: What do you think of it? What’s good about it?

Graciela Daniele: It’s one of the most brilliant scores I have ever heard in my life. That makes it a great score, a great musical. Because, you know, especially in those times, you now, in 1940s, again, going back to small plot to justify a great score, that’s, you, know, it was Irving Berlin, for Christ’s sake. You have to stand up when you’re surveilling, you know? And I’ve never, I mean, I have to tell you, I just don’t know other shows that have… Hit after hit. It’s like every single number. It is a classic.

Michael Kantor: You think he struggled, you know, Rodgers and Hammerstein who produced it had sort of broken ground with this book musical, and he was the review man through the fifties and whatever. You think that he struggled to fit all those hit songs into a…

Graciela Daniele: I don’t know, you know, I have no idea. I mean, the best people to ask is their daughters who are adorable, the three of them, and they have so many wonderful stories. But I think, I mean the little, what I read about him, I think I mean somebody who writes a 25 Alexander Ragtime band, who happens to be a white Jewish man singing. You know, playing, composing something as jazzy, as American, as black, as that. You have to wonder, did he think a lot? I don’t think that art is about thinking a lot or fighting a lot. One of his daughters told a story the other day, which was about, was it Lost in His Arms? No, no, no. It was, there’s no business like show business. That when he was writing Annie, they needed a transitional moment and he didn’t know exactly what to do so that he went and wrote this little piece called, There’s No Business Like Show Business. And it was a transition. It was the end of, it was actually, we used it as a transition between sing one and sing two. So all of a sudden there were like three people or four people who were singing this. Little song, which was the transition, which happens to be the American musical anthem, right? And so, I don’t know. You know, that’s, it’s a question not only about Berlin, it is a question about what creation is. I mean, is it something that you sit there and you think and fight with, or it just pours out of it, out of you? You know this, like Martha Graham used to say, there’s a channel, you have a channel. Keep the channel open. It’s not up to you to think about it, to criticize what you do. Keep the channel open. And I think that Mr. Burley had a clean channel because he kept on boring one after the other. And they stand until today. I mean, it’s amazing how they envelop the audience. I’m sitting there watching the show. And, you know, now I don’t watch it so much. I feel the audience around now that it’s running. And I can see their faces, their enchantment. Children, six years old. It’s not like it’s, you, know, 70-year-old people who remember the original, they have to remember the origin. No, no, it’s not that. This is six-year old, eight-year, who have never heard the score, I’m sure, that come out.