Marcia Talley - Dead Man Dancing

The section of seats immediately in front of us nearest the stage seemed to have been reserved, and now I saw why. A boom camera sailed back and forth over the first several rows, like a grazing Brontosaurus. On the other side of the stage in front of the proscenium arch, a black-clad Steadicam operator appeared to be testing his equipment.

More quickly than I would have thought possible considering the security measures in place, the rows behind us became occupied. Soon, people began filling the balcony, too. The noise level steadily increased. The rustling of paper, the shedding of coats, the scuffling of shoes, the crackling of candy wrappers. Kids talking, parents hushing. Shouts of greeting. Coughing, sneezing. Even people breathing, multiplied by two thousand, contributed to the noise.

Just when I thought I’d be called upon to take Chloe to the restroom again, more for entertainment’s sake than out of necessity, a man bounded down the aisle and up a short flight of steps to the stage, his green shirt bright as a traffic light as he paced in front of the Hippodrome’s purple, gold-fringed curtain.

Some guys should never wear jeans, and this fellow was one of them. He was dressed in the same green SWD T-shirt as the rest of the crew, but he’d tucked it into his jeans and cinched it in with a belt riding several miles south of wherever a normal waistline might be. Clapped to his head was a serious pair of headphones with a wireless microphone attached to one side on a flexible stalk.

‘Who is that guy?’ Paul asked.

I shrugged. ‘Some sort of technician?’

‘Ladies and gentlemen, good morning!’

A few scattered ‘good mornings’ drifted stage-ward from the audience, including an enthusiastic one from Chloe, who had been well trained by Mrs Gottschalk, her third grade teacher.

On the stage, the guy cupped a hand over one ear. ‘I can’t hear you! Let’s make some noise back there!’

‘Good morning!’ the audience roared.

‘That’s much better.’ He took several steps forward. ‘Welcome to our first casting call for Shall We Dance? ’ He raised both arms over his head and clapped his hands, which we took as a sign that we should do the same.

So we did.

As the applause died down, the guy continued, ‘My name is Dave Carson, and I’m the stage director for this production. I’m the boss. I tell everybody what to do. I tell you what to do.’ Up went the arms, and everyone clapped like crazy. Meanwhile, his T-shirt crept out from under his belt, revealing three inches of white, very hairy belly.

Dramatically shielding her eyes, Ruth said, ‘Tell me they’re not going to put that on TV.’

‘Vomit girl was.’

‘Oh, right. I forgot. This is family television.’

‘Do you mind ?’ hissed the woman on my right.

Dave Carson apparently didn’t notice any cool breeze caressing his midsection, so he forged on. ‘A funny thing happened on my way to Baltimore today.’

Paul moaned. ‘Lord, he thinks he’s a comedian, too.’

‘Shhhh.’ The woman on my right was annoyed again.

‘I walked into a bar down on Howard Street, and I sat next to this guy with a dog lying at his feet. And I said to the guy, Does your dog bite?…’

‘Oh, no, not a bar joke.’ I reached over and put my hands over Chloe’s ears.

‘Grandma, I know this joke,’ Chloe whispered.

Thinking kids are growing up too darn fast these days, I removed my hands from her ears. ‘You do?’

‘Uh huh. It’s not his dog.’

Up on the stage Dave said, ‘I thought you said your dog didn’t bite! And the guy says, Hey, it ain’t my dog.’

‘See?’ Chloe scoffed as all around us the audience erupted in laughter. I should have put a hand over Chloe’s mouth instead of her ears.

Encouraged, Dave pulled out another one. ‘Say, did you hear the one about the circus owner who walked into a bar?’ He paused, waiting for a response.

‘No!’ shouted someone directly behind me.

‘Tell us, Dave!’ somebody else yelled from the balcony.

Dave shuffled his feet in an aw-shucks sort of way, then forged on with an old chestnut about a tap-dancing duck. I zoned out and watched Jackie O take shape under Chloe’s pencil, looking a little like Minnie Mouse, but without the ears.

I snapped back to attention when Dave screamed into his microphone, ‘Your duck is a rip off!’ and spent another agonizing minute waiting for the punch line. ‘So, asks the duck’s former owner, did you remember to light the fire under the pot?’

I managed a modest titter at that, but the rest of the audience roared so loudly you’d think it was the funniest joke they’d ever heard.

‘Well, I don’t think we’ll have to light any fires under the feet of the contestants here today, do you folks?’

Nooooh !

Dave made a time-out sign, cutting the audience off in mid-cheer. ‘As you probably know, over the next few months, we will be conducting talent searches in New York, Chicago, Kansas City, Dallas and Los Angeles, so if you have friends in any of those cities, tell them to put on their dancing shoes and come on out! Email ’em. Text ’em. Call ’em on your cell.

‘And speaking of cell phones… do you have a cell phone? Of course you have a cell phone. Everyone has a cell phone. My goldfish has a cell phone. Well, get them out now.’ Dave waited for the deafening noise of everyone scrambling in his or her purse, bag or pocket to die down before continuing. ‘Now, find the off button and push it. Done? OK? Now put those phones away. You won’t need them any more today. OK, so you wanna know how it works?’

Oh, yes! Tell us, Dave. Tells us how it works!

‘What we’re going to do here today, and in those other cities I mentioned just now, is pick a total of sixty-five couples to compete in the finals in New York City. When they get to the Big Apple, they’ll be told which six dances they will have to perform, and they’ll be given just five weeks to prepare before the competition begins. One of the couples you see here today could very well be our next Shall We Dance? champions!’

Oh, yes! How cool is that!

‘So, are we ready?’

The audience was so ready, hooting and hollering, that if Dave didn’t get on with it, they were likely to storm the stage.

‘But, first,’ he shouted over the din of the restive crowd, ‘first, you’ll meet our three esteemed judges.’ His arms shot skyward, followed by renewed clapping and hooting.

‘They’ll sit up here,’ Dave Carson said, turning to his left and indicating with a sweep of his arm the curtain, which was slowly rising to reveal a starkly furnished stage. Wide and enormously deep, the Hippodrome stage could easily accommodate the most ambitious of Broadway shows, even those that required full-size helicopters to touch down in the center of it.

Now, however, it was furnished with a single, long conference-style table and three chairs, with their backs to us. Three microphones, one for each judge, sat on the table, and between the table and the back of the stage, was a standing microphone.

Eva leaned over and whispered, ‘The judges will be facing away from us?’

‘They face the contestants who’ll be dancing back there, I suppose, behind the standing microphone.’

‘Once we begin,’ Dave continued, ‘the contestants will be called out one couple at a time. Steve Owens here -’ Dave gestured to the sound man on stage right – ‘will cue up the music. Let’s put our hands together now for Steve!’

Yay! Yay for Steve!

‘Each couple will have ninety seconds to show the judges what they’ve got.’ Dave leaned toward us, the audience. ‘Ready?’