You may have already seen Adrienne Jean Fisher working for Cirque du Soleil. If, sometime in the spring of 2006, you were walking near Rockefeller Center and a young woman in high heels and angel wings handed you a flyer advertising Cirque du Soleil’s show Corteo…that was Adrienne.
Starting next month, you can again see her working for Cirque du Soleil. This time, though, she’ll be on the stage of the Beacon Theatre, in various costumes, as a cast member of Banana Shpeel. The new show, scheduled to begin a limited engagement next month at the Beacon on the Upper West Side, will mark Fisher’s New York City theatrical debut—and the fulfillment of a dream born of that promotional gig for Corteo. Fisher was given free tickets to Corteo, the first Cirque du Soleil show she’d ever seen. “I was just blown away,” she says. “At that point, I remember thinking: Oh, my gosh, I want to work for this company so badly.” She submitted her photo and résumé—and even video of her dancing—over and over to Cirque du Soleil.
When she finally got to try out for Cirque du Soleil last spring, she was put through two full days of tap and hip-hop at an audition specifically for the new show. A couple of weeks later, she went to a general ballet and modern audition that Cirque du Soleil holds periodically to find dancers for all its shows. She was feeling confident afterward, since she’d made it to the final 15 or so, but then she didn’t hear from the company. Adding to her uncertainty, about a week later she ran into a dancer from the Cirque auditions, who cheerily told Fisher she’d gotten the job. A couple of months went by before Fisher herself got the call that she was hired.
Her career heretofore has entailed ensemble work in regional theaters, modeling for print ads and performing with dance companies and on a cruise ship. But for almost a year now, Fisher’s life has been all about Cirque du Soleil. After being cast in its then-untitled new project, she spent three months at Cirque du Soleil’s Montreal HQ not just in rehearsal but in creation. The idea was already there: a vaudeville-inspired show that would incorporate both old-fashioned and contemporary types of dance and comedy and would hew as much to musical theater as to circus (the show is written and directed by David Shiner of the Tony-winning Fool Moon). But many Banana Shpeel numbers were developed in the rehearsal studio with the cast. “I had never been part of a process like that, where you walk into a room and everyone is improvising,” says Adrienne, known to her friends as AJ. “As a dancer, you don’t get asked to do that a lot.” AJ and her castmates participated in clowning workshops with Shiner, had individual and group voice lessons, tested out Jared Grimes’ choreography and did all kinds of other “really off-the-wall, creative stuff,” she says.
Banana Shpeel is heavy on tap and hip-hop. “Jared is a master of rhythm, and that is really contagious,” says Fisher. “I’m inspired to expand my understanding of complex rhythm and dynamics in hip-hop and tap because of him.” She previously studied hip-hop with Kelly Peters at Steps on Broadway and has appeared in a hip-hop instructional video. As for tap, well, the last musical Fisher was in was 42nd Street (at North Shore Music Theatre in her home state, Massachusetts).
The Banana Shpeel ensemble was also schooled in eccentric dance by Betsy Baytos. Eccentric dance, which was popular in vaudeville, is characterized by loose-limbed and contortionist-like moves. Baytos, one of the leading experts on the genre, has worked as both a dancer and a Disney dance animator, and Fisher says that Baytos had them study and imitate such cartoon characters as Goofy and Olive Oyl, who walk in an eccentric-dance-like fashion.
Banana Shpeel premiered with a December run in Chicago, with mostly the same cast, including Fisher. (Its New York opening, now set for April 29, has been postponed several times as revisions are being made.) In the five or so years prior to her employment with Banana Shpeel, Fisher was based in New York but working elsewhere. In 2008, she was in two musicals choreographed by Michael Lichtefeld: The Music Man at the Kansas City Starlight and North Shore’s 42nd Street. She was in a touring production of White Christmas, directed by Jeff Calhoun, and choreographed by Noah Racey, that originated at Atlanta’s Theater of the Stars in December 2007. During the 2005-06 season, Fisher earned her Equity card in the ensembles of Singin’ in the Rain and Gigi at the Barter Theatre in southern Virginia.
