by Justin Avery Smith. @JustAVerySmith.
BOSTON - Taylor Dorado, star of The Bartoli Theater’s production of Chicago as Billy Flynn, put out an official statement this week declaring he did not volunteer for the role of Dance Captain, despite his very vocal knowledge when it comes to Fosse choreography being far superior to everyone else’s thanks to his “many years at Julliard”. He is insisting he had the role thrust onto him by director Meghan Allen - an idea that absolutely nobody is buying.
“I already have enough on my plate by being the male lead and the self appointed vocal coach of these tone deaf hyenas,” noted Dorado while doing an endless series of jazz squares. “I really don’t need to waste my time with a bunch of toddlers with two left feet! But they really wanted me.”
We caught up with director Meghan Allen during a late evening rehearsal to ask exactly how reluctant Dorado was to take on the position.
“Not only did we not assign the role to anyone, Taylor jumped right in after I casually brought up that we'll have to start thinking about choreography soon,” said Allen, speaking to us from outside the theater after Dorado threw her out during rehearsal for "The Cellblock Tango". “This rehearsal was just supposed to be tech cues anyway. I swear I saw him getting yelled at for being in the booth.”
Dance ensemble member James Evans managed to sneak away during a thirty second break allotted by Dorado for good behavior. He described what it's been like for them to learn under their new Dance Captain.
“For someone who doesn’t want to be Dance Captain, he sure loves to punish off-beat steps with a red hot poker to the feet. We’ve already had three dancers sent to the hospital, and two of them got poked just because Taylor felt like it,” said Evans in an extremely quick and hushed manner, quickly looking behind his back to see if anyone was there. “It’s only our second rehearsal.”
It should be noted that during Dorado’s own rehearsals for scenes as Billy, and numbers such as “Razzle Dazzle”, he called for line multiple times and sang many notes out of tune. This is likely attributed to his decision to spend a week solely on puppet work for “We Both Reached For The Gun”, on top of also being the self-appointed understudy for Amos in “Mister Cellophane”, citing his reasoning as “I wanted to.”
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