Susan Kikuchi has had a long association with the King and I.
Her mother, Yuriko, performed the role of Eliza in the original 1951 Broadway production of the musical, in signature ballet ‘The Small House of Uncle Thomas’.
Yuriko was with the Martha Graham Dance Company at the time, and was approached directly by the legendary choreographer Jerome Robbins to be in the Broadway show.
“Of course she said ‘I’d be honoured to work with you Mr Robbins’, and that began that whole relationship. She was not only Eliza on Broadway, she went on to be Eliza in the movie and then to choreograph and pass the torch to me.”
Kikuchi was born during the Broadway run, and subsequently worked in productions of The King and Ifrom the age of seven: first as one of the children, then as a soloist, dance captain, assistant director (on the Broadway production with Yul Brynner), and as choreographer and director. She is now choreographer for the revival of the John Frost 1991 award-winning production, which is now touring Australia.
This is her sixth John Frost production of the musical, which went from its Australian premiere to play on Broadway and the West End,and it is therefore her second King and I in Australia.So how, I wondered, did she keep the original choreography fresh?
“It’s the same procedure as in the concert dance world where you have a classic ballet,” asserts Kikuchi. “And thisis a particularly good Jerome Robbins balletas it is 15 minutes long and they don’t have dance of that length now on Broadway.So you work with the new cast to try and focus their performance and get as good as a product as you can.”
Kikuchi believes that although the dancers in the 1950s original were good, today’s maybe even better technicians. However, because of the musical’s unique style, a fusion of classical Thai dance and ballet, no dancer really knows how to approach The King and I. “Therefore, we had four weeks of boot camp in Sydney where they learned the style.”
The challenge has been to get the fantastic detail of the choreography, says Kikuchi, “from the smile and the Thai-styled positioning of the arms and hands to the reasons for wanting to do a certain movement, as well as the vocals. Also to convey the story the dancers are telling on behalf of the secondary romantic lead, Tuptim. It’s that sort of precision and detail which can breathe new life into the ballet.”
Like her mother, Kikuchi also trained with Martha Graham, later joining the company. She also worked with Robbins – on the 1989 anthology Jerome Robbins’ Broadway. “Graham and Robbins were entirely two different types of people – but both very demanding in their own way. I got to watch genius at work.
The detail they wanted was very challenging, but the product was fantastic. Both relied on musicality and drama, the storyline. In Jerome Robbins’ Broadway the dancers were not expecting the amount of repetition they would have to do in one sequence.
At the end of ‘Cool’from West Side Story they would have to snap their fingers and then drop their arms, and that one particular move was rehearsed about 100 times. Robbins was that demanding. He knew what the beat should feel like, what the acting notes were – the total picture. It was thrilling.”
It is therefore that kind of “Robbins” precision that you will see from the dancers in The King and I.
‘The King’ and I moves from Melbourne to the Sydney Opera House on September 7.
Susan Kikuchi served as director and artistic program manager of the Graham Ensemble and School. Broadway credits include Pacific Overtures, Flower Drum Song and South Pacific. She is also Artistic Director of the New Dance Drama Educational Projects Florence, Italy.
This article was first published in the August-September issue of Dance Australia magazine.