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Dancing Queens

Two Hopefuls See What Being a Rockette Takes

Al Wright

     From the outside, the life of a Radio City Rockette seems like one of the most glamorous around. The glittering costumes, the fabulous makeup, the sparkling stages and doing what you love every single day — dancing. Two Alameda dancers got a taste of this lifestyle at the prestigious Rockettes Summer Intensive.
     And it was, indeed, glamorous — if glamorous means flying a red eye out to New York City, crashing on an inflatable mattress at your sister-in-law’s brother’s place, taking nightly ice baths and feeling muscles ache that you didn’t even know you had. This was Cristine Rottach’s week, and she never wanted it to end.
     Rottach, 29, and Sammie Witherspoon, 17, are arguably two of Alameda’s finest young dancers. They auditioned for the Rockettes Summer Intensive in January and won two coveted spots in the program, a sort of training ground for future Rockettes. Over the past nine years, 47 intensive alumni went on to become Rockettes, and needless to say, the Rockettes are a big deal. About 200 women nationwide make up the dance troupe, which has been around since 1925 and annually stars in the Radio City Christmas Spectacular and Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. The Rockettes are perhaps best known for their dramatic eye-high kick lines, impressively pulled off in heels.  
     “There’s a big misconception about what they do. They don’t just kick. The kicking is the easy part,” Rottach says. “To dance in heels all day long is an art. The reason people look at them and think it’s no big deal is because that’s their job — to make it look easy, to make it look effortless.”
     It’s true — Rockettes are a lot more than just their 300 kicks per show. There’s expert execution of ballet, tap and jazz. There’s precision, attention to detail and sharpness. There’s doing your own French twist and makeup. There’s being between 5 feet 6 inches and 5 feet 10½ inches tall.
     And learning exactly what it takes to become a Rockette is part of the intensive’s grand appeal.
     “If you learn how they want things done, it’s an advantage — the way they hold their arms, the way they do their kicks — they want it all a special way,” Witherspoon says. Witherspoon and Rottach both dream of being Rockettes, and they intend to continue going to the intensive each year and start auditioning for the iconic troupe. They currently train at Dance/10 in Alameda. Rottach, originally from Stockton, moved to Alameda when she was 23, while Witherspoon, born and raised on the Island, has been going to Dance/10 since she was 4 years old. Both are at the studio six days a week, taking and teaching classes.
     Witherspoon and Rottach were two of 650 girls at this year’s intensive who attend six consecutive days spread over five weeks. Some of the dancers are new and others are alumni — once you get in, you can return every year without auditioning. You still have to pay the hefty $950 for tuition, which includes a few lunches but no housing, airfare or much else.
     But for ambitious dancers, this is a small price to pay to learn the Rockettes’ choreography from Rockettes, in the same Radio City Music Hall studios where Rockettes rehearse. The days are jam-packed, starting with a 9 a.m. warm-up, followed by a three-hour technique class, one-hour lunch break, another three-hour technique class and, finally, the heels come off for a final choreography class. The dancers are done around 5 p.m. with blisters beneath taped
feet and soon meet up with an ice bath. The week ends with a performance, where dancers feel the pressure of quick costume changes and show off all the choreography pressed upon them.
     Sounds exhausting, but the Alameda dancers wanted more.
     “By Monday the next week, I was ready to do it all over again,” Rottach says.