There’s a reason Andy Blankenbuehler has two Tony Awards—and now another nomination. The Bandstand director-choreographer demonstrates time and again his ability to convey a mountain of story in minuscule gestures and buried emotions in expressive dance.
Set in post-World War II Ohio, Bandstand paints the picture of veterans home from the war and their struggle to return to life “Just As It Was Before.� Donny Novitski, played by Corey Cott, buzzes with the drive to becoming a successful bandleader, and when he hears of a national contest to discover a band to play in a new Hollywood film, he assembles a crew of fellow veterans to achieve the dream he and his lost war buddy imagined.
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There are layers of hurt, loss, fear, and hope to uncover in Bandstand, and Blankenbuehler spent years finding his way; he found it through dance. “The world is the lens that tells the temperature of who you’re looking at,� he says.
“I very rarely choreograph dance breaks,� says Blankenbuehler of his tendency to layer dance on top of dialogue, lyrics, scene transitions. “If you look at all the shows I’ve done, like ‘Battle of Yorktown� [in Hamilton] has ten seconds of a dance break; it’s a five-minute number. Rarely do I say, ‘Let’s just do this completely without narrative,� but whenever I do the idea has to be strong.�
Which brings us to the section of the song “Nobody� Blankenbuehler chose to teach in this video tutorial. The number, on the whole, feels autobiographical to the director-choreographer, knowing what it’s felt like to have someone tell you “You can’t� and that rebuttal of “No one is gonna tell me ‘no.’�
“The break that we did today, it’s gone through like ten versions, none of which I was happy with, until I really discovered let’s let this moment emulate Donny’s energy walking down the street,� he explains. “[Once] you have that crack that you can go through, then the storyline makes sense. As a choreographer and as a director it’s a constant thing to me to say ‘make this idea mean something.’�
