Chicago Broadway star Ann Reinking, died Saturday at the age of 71.
Ann got her big break in the late 1970s when she was cast as the replacement Roxie Hart in the original production of Bob Fosse’s Chicago inheriting the role created by the legendary Gwen Verdon and then went on to become the director’s lover, muse, collaborator and keeper of his creative flame.
According to her family, Reinking died in her sleep in a hotel room in the Seattle area, where she was visiting one of her brothers. The cause is not yet known, Dahrla King, her sister-in-law, told The New York Times. “The world and our family have lost a vibrant, amazing talent and beautiful soul. Ann was the heart of our family and the life of the party,” Reinking’s family said in a statement issued on Monday. “We will miss her more than we can say. Heaven has the best choreographer available now.”
Reinking was an indelible presence on stage; a luminous, Joffrey Ballet-trained dancer who, with her distinctively husky singing voice and piercing beauty, moved from the chorus line in such shows as Cabaret, Coco, and Pippin, to taking starring roles in Dancin’, Sweet Charity, and the 1996 revival of Chicago.
She also made an impact in Hollywood, starring in Fosse’s Oscar-nominated All That Jazz and the film version of Annie directed by John Huston, playing Grace Farrell, the secretary of the billionaire Oliver Warbucks. In a tribute published on Tuesday, The New York Times dance critic Gia Kourlas recalled the impact Reinking made in that film. “Wearing a silky yellow dress — it swirls around her legs like a partner — she begins with a jazzy, playful walk, pausing every few beats for a shoulder shimmy or a whirl,” Kourlas wrote.
“She kicks and wilts like a rag doll. Dashing through a hallway, she hops over a chair, plays the harp with a couple of finger snaps and continues forward, spinning through space as if she’s gliding on wind — blurry, gleaming but indelibly articulate. What a daredevil! What abandon! In her exuberance, it feels like Ms. Reinking is showing us the sound of laughter.”
That her first big role on Broadway was replacing the four-time Tony winner Gwen Verdon was both fitting and prescient, as each was perhaps the most indelible, and often imitated, Broadway dancer of their respective generations.
More significantly, the two would have their own long-term romantic relationships with Fosse (though only Verdon would marry him). The two women would go on to have an amiable friendship, one captured in the Emmy-winning TV series Fosse/Verdon. (Michelle Williams played Verdon and Margaret Qualley played Reinking; Sam Rockwell played Fosse.)
As Vanity Fair wrote, “When Fosse took up with Reinking the gorgeous, gifted chorus girl in his production of Pippin Verdon did not act the part of spiteful ex. Instead, with class and grace, Verdon took Reinking under her wing, developing a close friendship that would outlast Fosse.” (“Annie taking over had extraordinary symmetry,” Verdon once recalled. “Pieces simply fell into place.”)
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Reinking’s career came full circle in 1996, with the Broadway revival of Chicago, staged nine years after the director and choreographer’s death. The 1975 original had been a well-reviewed but only modestly successful musical, hampered by the fact that it opened during the same season as that critical and commercial juggernaut, A Chorus Line.
In addition to returning to the role of Roxie, playing opposite Bebe Neuwirth, Reinking also took over the choreography, bringing her unmatched knowledge of Fosse’s style to the production.
The revival started out as a limited-run, bare-bones production at City Center, part of the “Encores” series. But the opening night reviews were ecstatic, the show quickly sold out, and then, a few months later, it transferred to Broadway, where it won six Tony Awards, including one for Reinking’s choreography. That revival continued to run on Broadway until the coronavirus pandemic shut down the Great White Way earlier this year.
Reviewing the Encores production for The New York Times, an initially skeptical Ben Brantley wrote, “How do you do Fosse without Fosse?” Then he explained, “The answer, in two words: Ann Reinking.” Calling the show a “particular personal triumph“ for Reinking, he wrote, “the years have mellowed her Minnie Mouse voice into a sensual smokiness and refined her comic timing.
Her deceptively casual dancing both exudes ripe sexuality and winks at it. And her show-stopping performance of ‘Roxie,’ with a cadre of chorus boys, is really a blissed-out, erotic duet between a star and her audience.”
Reinking was also the co-creator, co-director and co-choreographer for Fosse, a 1999 musical that showcased Fosse’s choreography and that won the Tony for best musical that season. The musical was Reinking’s final appearance on Broadway, as she briefly filled in as a replacement ensemble member in 2001.
Ann Reinking is survived by her husband, the sports writer Peter Talbert, her son, Christopher, and six siblings.
SOURCE: VOGUE