Selects: Rockettes: Still Kicking After All These Years

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Speaker 3 Hey, everybody. Happy Saturday.
I got a select for you. This is Chuck here of the Stuff You Should Know podcast, introducing Rockettes colon, still kicking after all these years.

Speaker 3 This one came out January 1st, 2019, and it's about the Rockettes, and this is the time of year to talk about the Rockettes. I learned a lot about this

Speaker 3 organization, this dance troupe, and their storied history, and I think you're going to like it. So give it a a listen and please enjoy.

Speaker 1 Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 3 Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant.
There's Jerry. Happy New Year.

Speaker 3 You are too tall to be a rocket, aren't you?

Speaker 3 Just barely.

Speaker 3 Jerry and I can be rocketts. That's true.
And you can't.

Speaker 3 No, it's true. Which is a shame because you have the gams.

Speaker 3 I do, actually. I've got pretty decent legs.
You know? At least my calves are all right.

Speaker 3 What? No thighs? They're a little tree trunky for my taste. Oh, yeah?

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 I've got a bit of like a fertility idle thing going on, like up toward the hips and all that.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 Well, it's because of all those squats. I was not expecting to talk about this.
About your gams? Yeah. Oh, well.
I'll talk about my legs all day long. Well, let's hear it.
They're shapely. Okay.

Speaker 3 I gain all my weight between my waist and my chin. Aha.

Speaker 3 I don't, if you looked at my legs and my arms, you'd be like, that guy weighs 160 pounds.

Speaker 3 That's hilarious. And then the rest of me comes along to bust that myth.

Speaker 3 Step aside. Still have a nice little fanny? Sure.

Speaker 3 Everybody knows that. Sorry, listeners in the UK.
Oh, yeah, that means something different over there, doesn't it?

Speaker 3 It's just so dainty and nice that little

Speaker 3 five-year-old kids can say fanny in the United States. That's right.
It's just the Brits who are sickos. But this isn't about our gams.

Speaker 3 This is about a dance troupe, a legendary dance troupe. Yeah, about as legendary as a dance troupe can possibly be, are the Rockets.
I think so. I just said that sentence like Yoda.

Speaker 3 Can you do the voice? No. No? No.

Speaker 3 Not even going to try. But this totally surprised me digging into the research on this to learn that the legendary Rockettes of New York City and Radio City Music Hall are not from New York City.

Speaker 3 No, they're not. Where are they from, Chuck? Did you know this? I had no idea, no.
Yeah. So shout out to St.
Louis. Yeah.

Speaker 3 They were founded in the 1920s, 1925, to be exact, in St. Louis, Missouri as the Rockets,

Speaker 3 the St. Louis Rockets, which I think they were trying to be a basketball team, maybe.
The St. Louis Rockets? Sure.
Yeah, there was a choreographer named Russell Market,

Speaker 3 which is, I kept wanting to say Market, but that is an R. Yep.
And he founded them, like you said, in 1925. And he was inspired by a British dance troupe named the Tiller Girls,

Speaker 3 which was founded in 1894 by John Tiller. And it was kind of a similar idea.
He saw these Tiller girls and he was like, I want a high-kicking, glamorous,

Speaker 3 theatrical dance troupe of my own. Yeah.
So I'm going to rip it off. He did, actually.

Speaker 3 So John Tiller is widely acknowledged as the creator of what's called precision dance, which is where you have a bunch of dancers who are really highly trained, really athletic, and really precise in their movements

Speaker 3 that can move in such unison that you take

Speaker 3 a number of different dancers and they basically become one thing

Speaker 3 that can do things that an individual dancer can't do. And that's precision dance technique.

Speaker 3 And John Tiller literally invented it with, I think, four 10-year-old girls in the 1890s and he came up with some further refinements to it like when you put your hand around the waists of the people on either side of you it kind of lends to the unity of the whole thing

Speaker 3 and and

Speaker 3 Russell Maker Markert saw this and was like, this is amazing. If I can get some American girls with longer legs to kick higher, it'll knock everybody's socks off.
That's a quote, by the way. Yeah, and

Speaker 3 there's something to that synchronicity of,

Speaker 3 for me, for movement and sound, that just knocks me out every time.

Speaker 3 When I go and see a, a choir, what's like a hundred people singing together. And high kicking.

Speaker 3 Or a symphony. Just not only the sound, but the movement when you watch a symphony, that's a big part of it for me.

Speaker 3 Forget a choral symphony. Like I'm on the floor weeping

Speaker 3 if you take me to a choral symphony. But there's something about that precision of all these people together that's just really, like, I don't know what it is about it.
I mean, it's

Speaker 3 a collective voice or collective movement, but it's that precision that really just gets me every time. For sure.
Well, that's what the Rockettes are known for. It's their

Speaker 3 trade is precision dance. They're as good as it gets with it.
Although, the Taylor girls are definitely still around. They still have Christmas specials themselves,

Speaker 3 and they're doing their thing for sure. So

Speaker 3 it's not just an offhand thing to say the Rockettes are

Speaker 3 as good as they come in precision dance because the Tiller girls would probably say,

Speaker 3 I would dispute that statement. But they would say it with a British accent.
Right. I dispute that statement.

Speaker 3 So they were not as tall back then. The original height requirements were between 5'2 and 5'6.5.

Speaker 3 And now they went, we'll take your tallest dancer and make them our shortest dancer because I guess it's just, I don't know. I'm not sure why they did that.
But now it's between 5'6 and 5'10.5.

Speaker 3 And it is not because they want to exclude people

Speaker 3 or discriminate against people who are too tall or they feel too short, but it's so they can just all look, it's an optical illusion so they can all look the same height because they take that five-foot, ten and a half-inch dancer,

Speaker 3 although they don't have to be that tall, but they take whoever their tallest dancer is, put her right in the middle, and then just stagger it out from there. And in the end, everyone looks

Speaker 3 it's weird, everyone looks to be the same height, even though they're not. I don't understand how this works.
It's just I saw it so many different places that I'm convinced that it does work.

Speaker 3 I just don't get the

Speaker 3 illusion of it, how it works. Well, I think over four inches and 36 women, it's just so minute of differences as you scale down that it would take, I guess,

Speaker 3 an extraordinary human to be like, that woman is an inch and a half taller than the one five people away from her. Right.
You know? I got you.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I guess that's true. So you're just a normal person is what I'm saying.
Yeah,

Speaker 3 you should feel good about that. I fall for that optical illusion every time.
Yeah, everybody should.

Speaker 3 So they started with the Missouri Rockets with just 16 women. And like I said, now they have 36.

Speaker 3 And they debuted in St. Louis, but then went to New York to perform Rain or Shine on Broadway.
And that is where a man named S.L. Roxy, that was his nickname,

Speaker 3 Rothafell,

Speaker 3 which is an interesting name. That's where he saw them and said, hey, I got to get in on this.
This is amazing.

Speaker 3 Yeah, so Russell Markert took the idea from John Tiller and Roxy Rothafel said, hey, I want in on this jam.

Speaker 3 So I'm going to grab a few of these dancers from St. Louis and bring them over to New York City.
And we're going to have them start dancing there. Okay.

Speaker 3 And I know just the place for them. There's this new venue that's opening up in 1932.
And they're going to call it the Radio City Music Hall.

Speaker 3 And I'm going to make sure that these dancers are able to perform and we're going to call them the Roxyettes. How about that, huh? Huh? Because of his nickname.
Right. And Markert said, that's fine.

Speaker 3 Just make sure you pay me some money for it. Sure.
And he did get paid and got paid until 1971.

Speaker 3 It's hard to believe, but he worked for the Rockettes or with the Rockettes

Speaker 3 from 1932 to, or I guess even previous in St. Louis.
Yeah, 1925. All the the way until 1971.
Yep. Really amazing.
Yeah, it is pretty amazing. That's a pretty long career.

Speaker 3 So they opened Radio City Music Hall. I think they were part of a 17

Speaker 3 group act.

Speaker 3 And that was like such a hot ticket. Something like 100,000 people wanted in, but it's a 6,200-seat theater, which I think it still remains the nation's largest

Speaker 3 indoor venue, which is really saying something because I guess it'd just be like a theatrical venue, because obviously the largest indoor venue. Sports venues

Speaker 3 have it beat by quite a bit.

Speaker 3 Oh, theatrical. Okay, I got you.
It has to be, yeah, it's either movie or theatrical or something, but it's the largest venue of its kind in the United States, from what I see.

Speaker 3 Yeah, and for many years,

Speaker 3 they had specials every now and then, but it was sort of just a movie theater. Yeah, and here's the thing.
You could go see the movies. I think especially it started to take off in the 50s.

Speaker 3 Like before they would have premieres for movies and the Rockettes would like perform at the premiere.

Speaker 3 And then at some point, I don't know if it was Russell Markard or Roxy Rothenfeld or somebody said, well, why just do this once?

Speaker 3 How about every time somebody comes to see a movie at the Radio City Music Hall, we'll have the Rockettes perform. before the movie.
Can you imagine that? How cool that would be?

Speaker 3 It would be pretty cool. I mean,

Speaker 3 like imagine seeing that that and then being like, okay, now for the movie. That's just

Speaker 3 be a different experience for sure. Yeah.
But it was rough on the Rockettes because not all the movies were successes. So they would change the Rocket show for each movie.

Speaker 3 So if a movie came along and it was just a terrible flop, this whole choreographed routine that they'd learned would be out the door in two days.

Speaker 3 And now all of a sudden they had to learn a new one quick because there was a new movie coming in to replace that one. Oh, so they did a different routine for each film? Yes.
Interesting. Yeah.

Speaker 3 And sometimes they would have to learn it in a matter of hours, like around midnight before the next day's performances. I wonder if it was tied to the film.

Speaker 3 Sometimes, I think, but not all the time. I think it was, I think it was

Speaker 3 in some cases, but I think more than anything, they would change the routine just because the people coming to see a different film would want to see a different routine. Okay, I gotcha.

Speaker 3 That makes sense. Yeah.

Speaker 3 So in the 1940s, they were one of the first groups to sign up for the United Service Organization and go and perform for the troops.

Speaker 3 And in the 1950s is when things really started to

Speaker 3 kind of take their toll. Like they were performing sometimes up to five times a day.

Speaker 3 And so they said they built a dormitory there,

Speaker 3 which, you know, they could live in. I don't think they were required to.
But it really was to accommodate the fact that they were working almost around the clock

Speaker 3 because learning these new routines, like you said, and then performing up to five times a day. Really grueling stuff.
It was basically the prototype for Google.

Speaker 3 Just making it so your employees didn't have to leave.

Speaker 3 Oh, interesting. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, just go sleep in your pod.
So the Rockets, their fame started to grow

Speaker 3 pretty quickly.

Speaker 3 And they made like a few steps, if you'll forgive the pun,

Speaker 3 along the way that kind of cemented them as

Speaker 3 much a piece of America as apple pie or baseball or moms or what have you.

Speaker 3 So the 50s were also big for the Rockettes too, because they joined the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade in 1957, I think. Yeah, that was the big, the big move.

Speaker 3 Yeah, because they went from just a group that you either had to go to New York or go off to war to see

Speaker 3 to, wow, they're in my living room now. These girls are high-kicking on my television, and I'm just loving life.

Speaker 3 All right, so let's take a break. It's 1950s.
Good times are ahead, and then dark times come in the 70s because it's New York City in the 70s, and everything was kind of awful then.

Speaker 3 So we'll be back right after this.

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Speaker 3 Okay, hey, before we get started, Chuck, I want to say we put on a pretty good stage show ourselves. We've been known to.
And we've got some coming up, you know, plug-plug.

Speaker 3 Yeah, there's no high-kicking involved. There could be if people demanded it, I would be willing to do a little high-kicking.

Speaker 3 So are we talking about some shows? Yeah, let's do that real quick.

Speaker 3 All right, so we're going out west for our annual sojourn in January where we go to Seattle and we go to Portland and then we end up at SF Sketchfest like we always do in mid-January.

Speaker 3 Yeah, and I've got a end of the world live show on Friday at Sketchfest, and you have a movie crush on Saturday at Sketchfest, right?

Speaker 3 Yeah, I'm doing a matinee show at 1 o'clock on Saturday, January 19th with Busy Phillips as my guest. Nice.
And my show is Friday the 18th at Cafe du Nord, and I am my own guest.

Speaker 3 Fine solo. And then I have another one in Brooklyn on the 24th at the Bell House, too.
Oh, I thought you already did that one. No, uh-uh.
It got postponed to January 24th. Oh, great.
Yes.

Speaker 3 so you haven't missed it there's still time for you to come fantastic

Speaker 3 uh so that is our little plug how about that yeah and of course our our big stuff you should know show is at the uh castro on what is that thursday night that is thursday the uh 17th yeah so come see us at the more in seattle revolution hall in portland at the castro in san francisco yep check out our individual little shows uh our our cute little individual shows

Speaker 3 and there's plenty of information on sysklive.com. That's right.
So now it's the 70s.

Speaker 3 New York is

Speaker 3 suffering, which is crazy. When you look at pictures of New York City in the 70s and early 80s, even just hard to believe how bad things were there.

Speaker 3 Yeah, it was pretty rough. And actually, it's funny, like, you can thank Rudolph Giuliani for, I guess, cleaning up the town, if you want to call it that.

Speaker 3 Okay.

Speaker 3 Have you ever heard that?

Speaker 3 What, to thank Rudolf Giuliani for cleaning up the town? Uh-huh.

Speaker 3 Sure. Okay.
Good for him.

Speaker 3 So

Speaker 3 I saw him in the park one day. You did? What was he doing? Talking to a duck? No, he was doing like a photo op, but I had friends in from

Speaker 3 another country even, I think. And I said, hey, guys, that's the mayor of New York over there.
And they were like, oh, that's nice.

Speaker 3 And I went, it's kind of a big deal to just walk around and see the mayor of New York. Did they say, ah, vate-va-cha?

Speaker 3 I think they're Australian, actually. Yeah.
Oh, that was my Australian impression. Oh, that was good then.
Yeah. Thank you.
That's pretty good. That's a great story, Chuck.
Yeah, it's fine. But

Speaker 3 for them, they didn't understand fully that the mayor of New York City is

Speaker 3 quite a big deal to see him just out and about in the city.

Speaker 3 I have a similar story. I was watching one of the first few seasons of Law and Order on my television one day, and there was the mayor of New York City,

Speaker 3 Rudy Giuliani. Interesting.
But I knew it was a big deal. I got another story.

Speaker 3 Did you know in the Michael Bay film Pearl Harbor that they comped in Bruce Willis's John McClain character from Die Hard in one hospital scene? How? Just digitally. That's an anachronism.
I know.

Speaker 3 That doesn't make any sense. Did they really do that? Yeah, you can look it up, Pearl Harbor, John McClain, and there's like screenshots of

Speaker 3 John McClain in his white tank top just briefly for a blip in the background of one of the hospital scenes in Pearl Harbor. It's so weird.

Speaker 3 So, you know, there's a nude woman in the window of one of the buildings that the rescuers fly by. Apparently, the Disney movie from the 60s? Yeah, all these weird movie Easter eggs.

Speaker 3 Just bored editors, I guess. That's exactly what it is.
Bored juvenile editors. All right, so it's the 1970s.
In New York. None of this has happened yet that we're talking about.
The rescuers did.

Speaker 3 The rescuers did, but there was no die hard. There was no Pearl Harbor movie.
Right. Except for Tora, Torr Tora, but no bad Pearl Harbor movie.
Okay.

Speaker 3 No Rudy Giuliani.

Speaker 3 He was alive. Sure.
But he was not the mayor of New York City in the 1970s. Not as far as we know.
Who was that? That was Ed Koch. He was the 80s, I think.
Oh, was he? Maybe late 70s.

Speaker 3 All right, we'll get that straightened out. Okay.
But New York City City is going down the toilet, including, believe it or not,

Speaker 3 the great Radio City Music Hall, much like our own legendary Fox Theater in Atlanta,

Speaker 3 was facing shutdown and demolition, potentially. Yeah, there was a rough transition from some of those old movie palaces after people stopped

Speaker 3 going to movie palaces and moved out to the suburbs.

Speaker 3 A lot of those beautiful places were left out in the cold. And some of them didn't, well, a lot of them didn't make it, but some of them almost didn't make it.
Like you said, the Fox and Radio City.

Speaker 3 And apparently it was going to be turned into a parking lot. And Belushi himself got onto the news desk at Saturday Night Live and was railing against the demise of Radio City Music Hall.

Speaker 3 And the Rockettes, too, had said, hey, hey, hey, hey, this is our home. This is an iconic place.
Let us help go raise awareness and funds to save this place. And they did.
They were successful.

Speaker 3 They got it put on the National Historic Register of Historic Places, and it has a landmark designation.

Speaker 3 Not just the building, there's 1,200 buildings in New York with the landmark designation, but only 110 interiors have the landmark designation.

Speaker 3 And Radio City Music Hall is one of them, which means that its interior is so amazingly beautiful that it is a protected landmark in the United States. Yeah, I've never been in there.

Speaker 3 I haven't either. I've been to Carnegie Hall, but never Radio City.

Speaker 3 That's on the list for sure. But it's interesting because they tried to, their whole deal was, is they wanted exclusive movie bookings.
Like

Speaker 3 they were to be the only theater in town that would be showing a particular movie. So that limits their

Speaker 3 pool immediately. And then they really preferred G-rated movies.

Speaker 3 They had really strict screening criteria. So that just, it narrowed down their movie pool so small that they would go weeks and weeks at a time where nothing happened there.

Speaker 3 Yeah, so they would just shut down. Because again, remember, like the Rockettes are a dance troupe that you would see before you saw a movie.

Speaker 3 So if they're not showing movies, they're not showing the Rockettes. And at this time in the 70s, the Rockettes said, okay,

Speaker 3 our talent is being wasted here. At least let us go take the show on the road while you guys are sitting around waiting for another movie to come along.

Speaker 3 And they actually gained that right because they're union dancers, we should say. We'll get into that a little more later.

Speaker 3 But they managed to get the right to take the show on the road and they really started to make a name for themselves in the 70s in places like Tahoe and Vegas. Sure.

Speaker 3 Apparently made a huge fan out of Sammy Davis Jr., who would come see the same show like night after night when they play in Vegas or Tahoe or whatever. He was just fascinated by the Rockets.

Speaker 3 Love that. For sure.
Little Sammy.

Speaker 3 What a great guy. We should do a show on him.
Apparently, he also, oh, yeah, I'm down with that.

Speaker 3 He also surprised them on stage once by joining them on stage for a dance number which apparently he knew because he'd seen the show so many times wow which that's a pretty sammy thing to do in las vegas high kicking that's well his his kicks weren't so high run out on stage unbidden uninvited he's a little guy he was he's the the littlest racket i imagine he wow but he was too so uh they're doing their show on the road here and there they're making ends meet radio city is struggling uh even though it was designated as a landmark.

Speaker 3 The 80s were not super kind to Radio City either.

Speaker 3 They very famously appeared at the halftime show of the Super Bowl in 88.

Speaker 3 They're trying to change with the times. They're dancing it in the 90s at different places.
And they're always doing their Christmas deal throughout all this after, you know, they started doing that.

Speaker 3 And what was that, 57? 32.

Speaker 3 Oh, they did the Macy's parade in 32? Oh, no, I'm sorry. I thought you meant the Christmas Spectacular.
Yeah, the Macy's Parade was the Thanksgiving parade was 57.

Speaker 3 Yeah, so they've got their holiday stuff, their Easter specials, their Christmas specials.

Speaker 3 They're dancing at inaugurations for George W. Bush.

Speaker 3 In fact, they came

Speaker 3 under fire for dancing at Trump's inauguration. Well, the dance troupe almost was split asunder over whether they wanted to do that or not.
Yeah, it was a big deal. It was a huge deal, actually.

Speaker 3 And they had revived the Easter extravaganza.

Speaker 3 They renamed it the New York Spring Spectacular the year before and they said they took a year off and I don't think they ever went back to it because of all the controversy over 2016 and the inauguration it was just such an unusual experience for the rockettes

Speaker 3 like they're they're just like America personified and for there to be a huge national conversation about you know them performing at an inauguration it was a big deal for the organization for sure especially for the dancers who are like career rockettes Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 3 Should we talk a little bit about just being a rockette? I think we should, man. Because we've done it.

Speaker 3 We have. I mean, there was a brief time.
Although we've basically entered Dinah Lohan territory now. Who's that? Lindsay Lohan's mom.
She very famously lied about being a rocket. Oh, really?

Speaker 3 Yeah, she said that she has a background in show business.

Speaker 3 She was a rockette for a while, and some journalists went and dug around and they found out that she was definitely they had no record whatsoever of her under any name maiden or married uh ever being a rocket it's always amazing to me when uh very provable or disprovable public lies are told by people like that or like politicians who say that you know like they fought in a war when they didn't like that's happened yeah uh it's just i don't know why people say things like that that's like no we kind of can go check that really easily.

Speaker 3 Yeah, even, but even without like, you know, the checkability of it to just like, you know, lie in an interview like that, to puff yourself up, I guess. Yes.

Speaker 3 Like,

Speaker 3 I don't understand the psychology of it. Is it just because you don't feel like you're giving the interviewer enough of what they need? Or

Speaker 3 did they lay some sort of trick that led you into it? Or I don't understand it either. Yeah, I wonder if people start to believe these lies.

Speaker 3 Like if you make up a story about yourself and you just stick with it for so long,

Speaker 3 it's weird psychology. Yes, human psychology is indeed quite weird.

Speaker 3 Didn't you have a web show called Psychology is Weird? Nuts. Psychology is Nuts.

Speaker 3 Little short-lived video thing. Yeah, go check that out, everyone.

Speaker 3 Oh, and we'll take a break.

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Speaker 2 Yeah, with USA-made kids-specific frames and patented safety technology, kids are learning to ride in just one day with no training wheels needed.

Speaker 2 It's why Guardian is America's favorite kids' bike and the New York Times and Wirecutters top pick three years in a row.

Speaker 3 That's right. My daughter has a Guardian bike and she loves it, and that thing was really easy to put together.

Speaker 3 And get this: this holiday season, Guardian is offering their biggest deal of the year: over 40% in savings on all bikes, plus $100 in free accessories.

Speaker 3 Guardian bikes have become one of the most sought-after gifts of the season, and inventory is going fast, so don't wait. Join over a half a million families who've discovered the magic of Guardian.

Speaker 3 Visit guardianbikes.com to shop now.

Speaker 2 Living with a rare autoimmune condition comes with challenges, but also incredible strength, especially for those living with conditions like myasthenia gravis or MG and chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy, otherwise known as CIDP.

Speaker 2 Finding empowerment in the community is critical.

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Speaker 3 Listen to Untold Stories, Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Speaker 3 And we're back. Yes, so we were going to tell everyone about our experience as rockettes

Speaker 3 because we're Dinah Lohan.

Speaker 3 So

Speaker 3 here's the thing. If you're a rockette and you've been doing this for 10 years, you're a pretty long-lived rocket.
Although, I think I saw

Speaker 3 one woman who is a rocket. And if I'm talking weird all of a sudden, it's because I am stalling everybody

Speaker 3 looking for her name and I'm not finding it. But I think it's Lindsay Howe.
I'm almost positive her name's Lindsay Howe. I believe she has been a rockette for 14 years.
That's a long time.

Speaker 3 That's a very long time to be a rocket because as you will soon learn, being a rocket is extremely difficult and very demanding.

Speaker 3 And inside of show business and out, they're widely seen as probably some of the best professional dancers in the business and certainly some of the most disciplined professional dancers in the business as well.

Speaker 3 But it's really hard to do for a really long time. And one of the main reasons why is because their work schedule is extremely grueling.

Speaker 3 But with Lindsay Howe, she would make the same amount of money that a first-year rocket would make.

Speaker 3 Because they're all paid the same. They work the same hours.
They do the same work. Some of them are kind of promoted as like the faces of the rockettes.

Speaker 3 The company, I think the Madison Square Garden Company that owns Radio City Music Hall and the Rockettes are really protective of their image.

Speaker 3 And like they aren't free to just kind of talk to the media or whatever. There's some that are kind of like, you and you and you, you're the Rockettes, you're the face of the Rockettes.

Speaker 3 But other than that, everyone does the same amount of work, same amount of hours, same amount of pay.

Speaker 3 And one of the reasons they do that is because the point of the Rockettes is not to have standouts. It's not like other dance troops or other Broadway troops or anything like that.

Speaker 3 There's not meant to be stars. The Rockettes are the star, and they're meant to be one

Speaker 3 single unit that moves and works and lives together. Yeah, and they're unionized.
So

Speaker 3 they make most of their money over the holiday season. So they walk out after a couple of months with about 40 grand in their pocket, which isn't bad

Speaker 3 for a couple of months' work. But it is, like you said, super grueling.

Speaker 3 If you want to become a rocket, you're not required to, but there is something called the Roquette Summer Intensive Dance Program where you can go, you can enroll, you can spend six hours a day

Speaker 3 learning everything over the course of about a week, all the choreography,

Speaker 3 how to get in that shape, stay in that shape, how to prevent injuries,

Speaker 3 and sort of the business of it all. And

Speaker 3 like I said, you don't have to do that, but they do place a lot of rockettes if you attend that intensive dance program.

Speaker 3 Well, some I saw out of a thousand that have taken it, 60 have gone on to actually become rockettes. Yeah.
Because it's very tough to become a rocket, too.

Speaker 3 Yeah, Yeah, and I mean, I get the feeling that that has less to do with the program than just how hard it is to make that cut. Right, right, exactly.

Speaker 3 So not only do you have to be fit enough to kick those famous kicks up to 1,200 times a day through all these shows, but

Speaker 3 there's one clothing change. You got to do all these costume changes, but there's one in particular in between

Speaker 3 the Parade of the Wooden Soldiers and New York at Christmas that you have to be completely changed out in 78 seconds. 78 seconds.
And these costumes are not like super easy to take off.

Speaker 3 The Wooden Soldier ones in particular are pretty complex.

Speaker 3 So 78 seconds probably goes by extremely fast. Yeah, and there's 36 Rockettes total performing.
on stage, but there are 80 certified Rockettes total overall.

Speaker 3 You have a morning cast, an afternoon cast, and then you have for each of those shows, you have four swings or extras per. So, like, if someone's like, I just twisted my ankle, I can't do this.

Speaker 3 They have four women waiting in the wings for each of those morning and afternoon shows. Yeah.

Speaker 3 So, the thing is, though, is they're working six days a week, or the Rockettes are performing six days a week. If you have two casts, rather than work all or work both casts six days a week

Speaker 3 they'll they'll alternate to give one another a day off and they'll do that on days sometimes where there's four performances in a day which means that if you are a rocket there are days and i've seen also sometimes they're back-to-back days where you're where you're doing four performances in a single day four 90 minute performances and that's when those 1200 kicks that you mentioned chuck comes in because some of those shows have 300 high kicks and we're talking eye level kicks and if you do four of them in a day, you've just kicked at eye level 1,200 times in a day.

Speaker 3 And from some of the articles I've read, that is about as much as your body can possibly take.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I mean, they all, in the interviews I saw, there was that great New York Times article where they really sort of dive into a day in the life of a rocket during the holiday season.

Speaker 3 And they all kind of are like, there's no way to prepare your body for this.

Speaker 3 Like we are in the best shape that a dancer can be in, and it just destroys us to the point where, like, one of them said that just taking their stockings off at the end of the night is laborious.

Speaker 3 And, you know, with their commute, depending on where they come from, some of them are awake and either commuting or rehearsing or performing 20 hours in a day.

Speaker 3 Just grueling, grueling stuff. But across the board, they also all say that it's the only job that they want.

Speaker 3 It is a great sorority and sisterhood and an honor to be one of these, over the years, 3,000 women who have made that cut. Right.

Speaker 3 You know, none of them are like, well, it's really not worth it in the end.

Speaker 3 Yeah, no, I mean, at least the ones who are allowed to speak to the media certainly have a lot of positive things to say about being a rocket and like how familial it is and how you're just hanging out with your best friends.

Speaker 3 And it is a great gig for a dancer, especially as one of these articles pointed out, if you're a dancer who who doesn't sing.

Speaker 3 Yeah, that's a rare thing to get that kind of a gig. I think it's one of the few for jazz and tap dancers where singing's not involved.

Speaker 3 But also not just like a good gig, a good paying gig too, like 40 grand for a couple of months of performances. A lot of the rockettes,

Speaker 3 they don't live in New York. They'll come live in New York during the season when they need to rehearse and then do the Christmas spectacular.
And then they go home.

Speaker 3 So they might live in New York from September to the end of December and then they go back home and wherever home is, 40 grand probably goes a lot further than it does in New York unless they live in San Francisco, in which case it's probably

Speaker 3 goes even faster. But it's a really good paying gig.
They also have benefits because their union and their contract workers, they have year-round benefits. Yeah, that's great and 40 grand.

Speaker 3 So they can go work as Pilates instructors, as nutritionists, as all the other stuff that they do during the year normally, and then they come back and they're a rocket.

Speaker 3 But something I thought was pretty cool was even if you're, say, a 10th year rocket,

Speaker 3 you get invited back. Like once you're a rockette, you're in as a roquette.
But you still have to audition in April like everybody else. Yeah.

Speaker 3 So you audition in April. And if you make the cut,

Speaker 3 you start to go get in shape. And then rehearsals, I think, start in September.

Speaker 3 And rehearsals are six hours, six days a a week for basically the six weeks leading up to the performances, which run from mid-November till

Speaker 3 I saw December 31st. I also saw tickets available for a January 1st show.
So I don't know if they extended it or not.

Speaker 3 Yeah, and it's funny, like 40 grand sounds like a lot of money over a couple of months, and it is, but when you break it down per show, it breaks down to about $135 a show. Yeah.

Speaker 3 Which all of a sudden, it doesn't seem

Speaker 3 like great money. No, but that's what you make as a standard cast cast member for a Broadway union dancer

Speaker 3 or actor or variety performer, I think, is the union they're part of. So, no, it doesn't seem like much, but that's another reason why the Rocket gig is so good.

Speaker 3 You get overtime on those days when you do a third and a fourth show. You're getting overtime pay.

Speaker 3 And there's multiple shows

Speaker 3 on multiple days. So you can, I mean,

Speaker 3 another actor at a different gig working the same days over the same period would not make that amount of money, that 40 grand, because they wouldn't have any overtime.

Speaker 3 They wouldn't have that many shows. Yeah, and I don't think anyone like dreams of going to Broadway to become rich and wealthy.

Speaker 3 Like, part of the allure of Broadway is you're with the best of the best, and you can say, I danced or I sang or I acted on Broadway. With Brian Cranston.
I saw him on Broadway. Yeah.

Speaker 3 I saw Michael McKeon on Broadway. Oh, yeah? An accomplice.

Speaker 3 The audience was the accomplice. That was the big twist.
Oh, well, you just ruined that one. Was it good? It was great.
It was one of the greatest stage performances I've ever seen.

Speaker 3 I saw Lenny live on stage.

Speaker 3 Derek Saint-Hubbins. Yeah, this is before I knew him as anything but Lenny.
I was like eight.

Speaker 3 Oh, so this is a while ago.

Speaker 3 Cranston is in something new on Broadway now, I think, too. Network.
Right. Oh, man, I want to see that.
Sure. I bet that's good.
I saw that it was described as, get this, Chuck, get ready for this.

Speaker 3 Oh, boy. Electrifying.
Really?

Speaker 3 A Broadway show described as electrifying? His performance was electrifying. I don't think I've ever heard that word used for the theater.
I know.

Speaker 3 So another thing, though, about the Rockettes, even though they do make most of their money over those couple of months and then they have the rest of the year to,

Speaker 3 in a lot of cases, be like a dance instructor or something like that or a fitness instructor.

Speaker 3 They increasingly are working more and more,

Speaker 3 more and more months out of the year, whether it's as ambassadors for the Rockets or doing like video things for YouTube. They are increasingly called on to do other

Speaker 3 things.

Speaker 3 Yeah, a lot.

Speaker 3 So

Speaker 3 what is the woman who came along as the lead choreographer and director and really kind of

Speaker 3 punched it up even further? Her name is Linda Haberman and she took over, I think in like the mid-2000s,

Speaker 3 maybe 2008, and she kind of brought like this whole new,

Speaker 3 not new, it's not a whole new thing. She just kind of, she made it a little more pro-feminist, a little more like you go girl kind of vibe to the Rockettes than they had before.

Speaker 3 They were seen, you know, rehearsing in the rehearsal gear rather than like full costume. And it was just kind of like

Speaker 3 the intent I get was to make them more

Speaker 3 people. Yeah.

Speaker 3 Yes, because one of the great criticisms of the Rockettes is that they're nothing but like teeth and legs, just a bunch of women

Speaker 3 out there kicking, like forming one large uber woman who can kick her legs amazingly high and has like the whitest, gleamingest teeth ever you've ever seen.

Speaker 3 And that

Speaker 3 it was really kind of just objectification of women, like to like by definition and uh Linda Haberman like really kind of took that and and tried to unravel it quite a bit and she also took the show so we should talk a little bit about the show it's a

Speaker 3 it's depending on who you are it's either like just beloved traditional Americana kitschy

Speaker 3 offensively sexist who knows but I think the first two are kind of the predominant views of it. It's kitschy and sweet, or it's it's you know endearing Americana.

Speaker 3 And Linda Haberman kind of took that and tried to punch it up into the 21st century a little more. And there's like way more visual effects than there were before.

Speaker 3 There's like a 3D component, I think, to this year's show or recent year's shows. Like the whole theme is like a girl wants a video game, and her mom is kind of showing her,

Speaker 3 you know, why that's not so great because it's a violent video game.

Speaker 3 There's a lot of kind of updating that Rockets have undergone in the last few years, and that was largely from what I understand Linda Haberman's doing.

Speaker 3 I think she was the one that digitally inserted John McLean from Die Hard. She was.

Speaker 3 He swoops in in the New York Follies section. No, I'm glad they updated things because this was a prime case of like a beloved American tradition that could use some refreshing.

Speaker 3 And you can highlight them as humans and individuals and still, you can have both, you know, and you can still have that desired effect of uniformity and precision that they're known for you know right exactly

Speaker 3 but they don't have to be just like faceless and nameless you know no and i read a few like feminist critiques of the rockettes and they seem to have been kind of outdated like i really feel like linda haberman did a good job at like take yeah she she kind of took those those critiques and and changed them in a lot of ways that's great um one of the other criticisms is that it wasn't until 1985 that the Rockets had their first woman of color as a member of their cast, of their troop.

Speaker 3 Oh, yeah. The first woman of color was a Japanese woman named Setsuko Marahashi.
And in 1985, she joined. In 1988, the first African-American woman joined.
Her name was Jennifer Jones.

Speaker 3 And the reasoning, apparently, it was

Speaker 3 Markert who was like, no,

Speaker 3 from all I saw, it had nothing to do with racism. It was the idea that it was going to disrupt the visual unity of the dance line if there were differing skin colors in this dance line.

Speaker 3 And apparently he was so nutso about it. Like you would get in trouble if you had a suntan.
Like

Speaker 3 that's how he wanted everything to be. homogeneous and in unison.
Well,

Speaker 3 regardless, in the 21st century, in the late 20th century, that sentiment didn't hold up. And I guess shortly after he died is when they started adding women of color more to the Rockettes troupe.

Speaker 3 Yeah, and then they saw people of color in that same dance line and they went, oh, it's still awesome and synchronized and looks great. Exactly.
And from his grave, he went, no.

Speaker 3 He started rolling around in it.

Speaker 3 Oh, goodness. So you haven't seen a Rockets Christmas Spectacular, huh?

Speaker 3 You mean live in person? Yeah. I have not.
I have not either. Are we going to go now? I think we should.
I want to know if any ruquettes listen to this show. Yeah.

Speaker 3 That would make me super, super happy. It would for me as well.
And the only other small tidbit I have is they have microphones in their heels of their shoes. I saw that too.

Speaker 3 They used to play recordings of their tapping, right? Oh, I don't know.

Speaker 3 That does not surprise me. Yeah, and then they figured out how to do the actual, like broadcast the actual tapping.

Speaker 3 So we're going to go one day, Chuck. We're going to go see the Christmas Spectacular.

Speaker 3 We're going to go see the live nativity with the real camel and donkeys and the wooden toy soldier march where they fall down like a domino in slow motion. It's pretty amazing stuff.

Speaker 3 And if you want to know more about the Rockets, then go to Radio City Music Hall and find them there. How about that? That sounds great.

Speaker 3 Well, since I said that, then it's time for listener mail.

Speaker 3 I'm calling this, I was a search and rescue rescue

Speaker 3 victim volunteer.

Speaker 3 So this guy, his dad, I'm going to summarize the beginning of it because it's kind of long, but his dad lives in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and is a member of the local SAR team.

Speaker 3 And so they were like, we need someone to play the victim here. And he was like, I'll do it.

Speaker 3 This guy's son. So.
Here's what happened. He set off into the heavily wooded area and did, he said, I did everything I could to think of to try and fool the dog and the handler.

Speaker 3 handler i ran in circles went back over my own trail i threw off my hat i even found some garbage and rolled around in it to mask my scent wow

Speaker 3 once i had done everything i could think of to try and fool the dog and handler that would be tracking me i found a nice comfy spot up uh in a bush on a hill where i could just watch the dog and the handler try and track me i thought i'd done a pretty good job but once i called the handler and let him know I was in position, it was all over very quickly.

Speaker 3 I sat sat back and everyone was shocked to watch the dog basically retrace my trail step by step. Every move I made, all those circles,

Speaker 3 finding my hat even that I had thrown off, even getting into that pile of garbage that I'd rolled around in.

Speaker 3 I love that this dog is just basically making a fool of poor Ryan up there in the mountains. So he said, needless to say, the dog found me in short order.

Speaker 3 I gave him lots of praise for the great job he had done. Thankfully, I was never in any real danger.

Speaker 3 so my experience was a lot more enjoyable, obviously, than when people are in real need of a search and rescue dog. Thanks for the great episodes, guys.

Speaker 3 Keep me company on overnight shifts and make it all go by quicker. So if you read this on the show, can I get a shout out to my girlfriend, Taryn?

Speaker 3 She would be thrilled to hear her name get called out on the show. I think that just happened.
Yep. So that is from Ryan.

Speaker 3 I like the gusto that Ryan put into trying to fool this dog. Rolling in garbage.
And I equally loved that this dog was like,

Speaker 3 whatever.

Speaker 3 So thank you, Ryan. Thank you, Taryn, for listening.
And thank you to the SAR dog. Sure, Scruffy.
If you want to get in touch with this, you can go to our website, stuffyushouldknow.com.

Speaker 3 You can find all of our social links there. And you can send an email to Chuck, Jerry, and me at stuffpodcast at iHeartRadio.com.

Speaker 1 Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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Speaker 2 Living with a rare autoimmune condition comes with challenges, but also incredible strength, especially for those living with conditions like myasthenia gravis or MG and chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy, otherwise known as CIDP.

Speaker 2 Finding empowerment in the community is critical.

Speaker 2 Untold Stories, Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, a Ruby Studio Production, and Partnership with Argenix explores people discovering strength in the most unexpected places.

Speaker 2 Listen to Untold Stories on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 1 This is an iHeart podcast.