Alyse Alan Louis and the Cast of Soft Power (Joan Marcus).
Tony-nominated choreographer Sam Pinkleton shares the YouTube videos, dance labs, and rehearsal room tactics that built the flashy old-school style for the musical within a play.
To say Sam Pinkleton’s process of choreographing Soft Power was unconventional would be an understatement. Then again, when has Pinkleton, a Tony nominee for Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812, ever been conventional? And yet, he packs the dance in the Public Theater’s new “play within a musical” with gobs of conventional musical theatre movement.
That’s because Soft Power is a subversive, ambitious new piece of theatre using American musical tradition to question cultural appropriation, the relationship between East and West, and democracy’s worth. The satire follows the fictional David Henry Hwang, who is writing the book to an American-style musical set to premiere in China, and the Chinese producing executive Xue Xíng, who wants him to make that musical more Chinese. When David is stabbed, he enters a dream state where he instead writes a musical about the run up to and immediate aftermath of the 2016 Presidential election. We enter that musical world, a show in which Chinese newcomer Xue Xíng tries to teach Hillary Clinton about democracy (much like, say, Mrs. Anna teaches the King of Siam about ruling his East Asian kingdom).