How 24 pairs of leather pants, a tearaway tutu, and 3 a.m. takes at Lincoln Center made for the defining dance movie of a generation. ChloeAngyal reports
“What genuinely brings tears to my eyes is I’ve had a number of male dancers approach me and say, ‘I showed my parents that movie and that’s when they understood why I love to dance,’” says Amanda Schull. Photo: Columbia Pictures The year 2000 was boom times for teen movies, which is what Center Stage looks like at first glance.
Larry Mark, producer: Amy Pascal, who ran Sony in the day, had always wanted to do a dance movie. She had had a script developed, one draft of it, by Carol Heikkenen. I had just gotten over to Sony with a production deal, and she said, “Larry, this might be a good movie for you to hop on.” Mark: I’ve always been a fan of ABT, that’s for sure. I think I’d seen him do something there and just thought he had amazing charisma. Amy and I went to see an ABT performance in Los Angeles, and we went backstage and visited with Ethan.
And then in the spring of ’99, the auditions started. Everyone knew about it. [New York] City Ballet, ABT. We’re the big classical and neoclassical companies in New York, and we all knew about it. A lot of people were auditioning. Mark: We were all over the map. We were auditioning practically everywhere. We sent people into various cities. Any place there was a ballet company, I think, the casting folks were visiting.
We were mid-Met season, which is two months at the Metropolitan Opera House, where we do eight shows a week and a different program each week. So we were doing this ballet, Snow Maiden, and it has kind of a slippery floor … there was a rash of injuries that week, and among them, Angel. He blew out his ankle. So then I got a call to come back to audition for the role of Carlos. Then I got it, and they changed it to Charlie. So unfortunately, Angel’s misfortune was I guess my advantage.
Mark: Amanda Schull, that was one of those ones where you’re just seeing every girl who seems to fit the bill. Amanda came in and combined all the qualities that the character as written required. She was lovely and appealing and graceful and energetic. ‘I Don’t Want To Be the Obvious Fake in the Middle of All This’ For some roles, like the talented-but-jaded Eva Rodriguez and the star student living with an eating disorder, Maureen, the casting team was willing to prioritize acting talent over ballet ability and hire dance doubles to make up the difference. Some cast members, like newcomer Zoë Saldana, were game to jump onboard. Others, like Broadway veteran Donna Murphy, had concerns.
Saldana: They knew that I was not a professional ballet dancer. I think I’d stopped dancing three years or two years before that. So they wanted to see how I could move. Donna Murphy, Juliette Simone: I read the script, and I said, “This is ridiculous. I mean, I’m not a trained dancer.” The script would read, “Juliette jetés across the room” and “she demonstrates this” and “she demonstrates that.” I thought I should be seen for the role that Deb Monk played, [Maureen’s] mom.
Gallagher: And then it became the glorious process of researching. That was really surprisingly powerful because I got to go to rehearsals at ABT. I was so moved. I got to sit in the front and watch them rehearse, and it was all I could do not to start crying. Because what they were doing was so hard, and required so many years of expertise and sacrifice and pain. And nobody was getting rich from it, nobody was getting famous from it.
Schull: There are a couple of scenes where he’s sort of one of those, like, gently evil people. The tone of his voice stays level even when he’s telling you that you’re never going to have a career. And I’ve worked with a lot of people like that before where you swallow that pill and then you realize, “Oh, they were being hideous.”
Pratt: I was so singularly obsessed with not being a dancer. I would go take ballet classes to try to improve my skills [at] Broadway Dance Center and Steps. I just remember being in total envy of what these women and men can do. [My dance double] was the sweetest person, and my gosh, she was so talented. At that time I think she was the only woman of color at New York City Ballet.
From left to right: Amanda Schull, Eion Bailey, Sascha Radetsky, Susan May Pratt, Shakiem Evans, Victoria Born, Zoë Saldana, and Ilia Kulik. Photo: Amanda Schull Radetsky: When we did dance rehearsals before we started shooting — I think that was the first time [Amanda and I] met. Murphy: I think my first day on set was a classroom situation, and I was very nervous because the entire corps were all City Ballet and ABT dancers. So I thought, “They’re just gonna, you know, out me in no time.” And somebody came up to me and said, “Where do you teach?” Part of me said, “Well, I guess they don’t know me as an actress.” But another part of me thought, “Oh my God, they think I’m a real teacher.
Mark: Nick really wanted to have it feel as real and authentic as possible. Clearly, that is Julie Kent. Clearly, that is Sascha Radetsky. Clearly, that is Amanda Schull. We’re not closing in on their faces spinning about. We’re actually seeing their whole body from head to toe. It’s a very Gene Kelly approach to dance.
Scene Breakdown: ‘We’re Going to Play ‘Can You Top This’’ A little over halfway through the film, the love triangle between Jody, Cooper, and Charlie comes to a head … in the form of pirouettes and bravura jumps. Jody is still smitten with principal dancer/aspiring choreographer Cooper, who cast her in his controversial rock-pop ballet but has been distant and cruel ever since their one-night stand.
But we shot that studio face-off challenge after we shot the final performance scene. And in the final performance scene, I do a double tour, pirouette, double tour, double tour. And in the script, I’m supposed to be finally doing what I couldn’t do in the studio face-off — which is [what Cooper performs], three [double tours]. But that’s only because after we shot the final performance, we got in the studio, and Ethan was like, “Oh, I’m just going to do another double here.
Deborah Monk as Maureen’s mother, Nancy Cummings. Photo: Columbia Pictures Bailey: It was the hardest scene to film. I always struggled with that. In the audition it felt very strange to me. Pratt: That kind of rings a bell. I remember another scene that was cut out where we were in bed in his apartment, and [Eion] was asking Nicholas, like how he should be loving toward me. Nicholas made this hilarious joke like, “Listen, you’re straight, I’m gay, you figure it out, okay?”
Schull: We did go over there, we did play Truth or Dare, and what happens in Eion’s great apartment stays in Eion’s great apartment. He wanted it to be a part of the relationship between Amanda and Ethan and to reflect that — that her love was being fought for by the two men. Like the good old MGM times, a reflection of what has happened in the movie before.
Stroman: I would ask him to do a certain combination or certain step, and he would just turn to me and say, “Sweet.” I’ve never had a dancer say that to me before, just say, “Sweet.” And then go do it and do it extraordinarily well. And of course, the costume that I’m unbelievably proud of is the one that Amanda wears where she twirls and it undoes.
However, I have to say, they were a very stressful ten minutes, and people were yelling at me each time.McDonald: Ethan had a little wooden handle under the tutu to pull. It literally was like something that you’d grab to pull a doorknob with. Ash: I remember one day [when they were filming Jonathan’s ballet] we had to wake up early, get ready early, because on a film set it’s always “hurry up and wait.” So we were sprawled out on the floor, half asleep, exhausted, and then it was, “Okay, we’re ready.” We had to just jump up and dance.
McDonald: Every dancer dreams of coloring their pointe shoes an interesting color, because of course it absolutely screams your feet out. Pratt: A few years ago I ran into [Larry], and I was like, “Hey, I want to be a really mean ballet teacher” [in a future series]. Pratt: Of the films I’ve done that’s the one that seems to mean the most. I mean people love 10 Things, but people really love Center Stage. It’s a lot of people’s guilty pleasure.
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