There is, of course, more to Pellick's repertoire than dance tricks. He began studying jazz and tap almost as early as acrobatics, and expanded to ballet in his teens. He also discovered pretty quickly that concentrating on gymnastics wasn't for him. When he was about 8, Pellick recounts, "I trained in gymnastics, with all the equipment, for about a year and a half. I hated it so much. There was no artistic value allowed for the men, at the time. Everything was like: You have to do it exactly like this, the book says you must look like that… I just wanted to have fun. I wanted to dance through it. They weren't having that at all. When it came to performing, there was no real performing."
Pellick didn't need the sport of gymnastics to sate his competitive urge. He had already started participating in dance competitions, and by high school he was in one almost every weekend...and winning many of them. At such competitions as Showstopper, Starpower and Spotlight—which are held regionally, leading up to national championships—dancers are divided by age, genre and number performing (i.e., solo, duet, etc.). Pellick's very first time before the judges, he won the age 7-8 acrobatic solo division, despite a few snafus during his Lone Ranger-themed routine. In landing the first flip, he bruised his heels and his mask was jolted sideways. "My mask turned so I couldn't see, but I had been told—it was beaten into me: 'You're not allowed to touch your costume! If your pants fall off, you leave them off.'" He got through the performance but came off stage in tears; a pep talk by an older student from his studio steeled him for his next two routines in the competition.
Over the years, Pellick won some hefty cash prizes, but dancing competitively was never a mercenary endeavor for him. "I loved being on stage," says Pellick, whose titles included Mr. Dance of America (awarded by the Dance Educators of America) and Mr. Spotlight USA. "I got the opportunity to perform all the time, so that was in and of itself something I loved. Winning was just a bonus on top of it. Being in that atmosphere and being challenged by other people was so exciting. Also, my best friends were doing it as well, so we were getting to go together to all these events."
Several of the dancers Pellick befriended at competitions are now working in musical theater too. They include Mark Myars, Corinne McFadden, Kristen Gorski and Ioana Alfonso—all of whom were in the original company of Wicked with him. Pellick's best friend from the dance studio he attended as a teen, Ron Todorowski, played Eddie in Movin' Out and is in the cast of Twyla Tharp's follow-up, The Times They Are A-Changin'.
Though Pellick's family goes back four generations in his Pennsylvania hometown and all his aunts, uncles and cousins lived within three blocks of him, Pellick was ready to leave when he was done with high school. He headed west to Vegas, where some performer friends were already working. His first job was a revue called Imagine. It performed regularly in Vegas, but he was hired for a month-long South African engagement. When he returned to Vegas, he auditioned for the musical special-effects extravaganza EFX. Tommy Tune, the star, was at the audition and insisted a place in the company be found for him. So a new fairyland number was conceived for Pellick, who also served as Tune's dance understudy.
"He was such a great mentor," Pellick says of onetime gypsy Tune. "He gave me so much career advice, and he also gave me so much advice on just how to be a good person. Things would happen in the business atmosphere and I would be like: What am I supposed to do? And he'd say: Well, what would you do as a person? We would talk about how can you be a better person and then deal with all the things that go along with the business. He was very inspiring. He hung a little poster outside of his dressing room door that said 'Don't let anyone steal your joy.' I thought that was the greatest way to live. He's such a gentle man."
EFX was rejiggered with more of a rock-and-roll bent when pop/soap star Rick Springfield replaced Tune as the show's headliner, and Pellick's numbers were cut. The new choreographer, a pre-Hairspray Jerry Mitchell, told him: "You've outgrown this. Get out of here, go to New York. I'll see you in New York." Pellick didn't take his advice immediately. He stayed in Vegas and joined De La Guarda. About six months later, a spot opened up in its New York production—Pellick's ticket cross-country.
When he went to a Hairspray audition in New York, Mitchell greeted him: "Finally! You're here." But they didn't work together until 2004's La Cage revival. Fearless when it comes to swinging above the audience's heads, Pellick had some qualms about the special demands of a Cagelle role. "I was so nervous about being a woman. I didn't want to lose all sense of me and the masculinity that I have," he says. "When we were auditioning, Jerry didn't want any heels, wigs, makeup. He was: 'If you can convince me with none of the extra stuff, then I'm going to believe it when we add [the costume].' And he was right. You really just commit to it and create a character."
Mitchell started developing the La Cage choreography that would earn him a Tony in a workshop with the dancers. Pellick remembers the fourth or so day of the workshop: "We came in and there was this giant metal birdcage. We were laughing, like 'What the hell is that?' And Jerry said, 'Don't ask, just go get inside of it. Start playing.' I was like, 'You're kidding, right?' And he was: 'No. Let's see what we do.' And he and I had so much fun playing in that birdcage."
Pellick also has great memories of working with Wicked choreographer Wayne Cilento. "He has an incredible sense of individuality, he doesn't want everyone to look the same," Pellick says. "He assembled the ensemble in a specific way, so that everyone brought something different to the table and was unique character-wise. He really used what we could do." Wicked is also where Pellick met director Joe Mantello, who is now his boyfriend.
For Pellick, the second time (on Broadway) was the charm: Wicked turned out to be a blockbuster, whereas Dance of the Vampires had been a bust. "That was an eye-opening experience, to say the least," he says of the critically savaged Vampires, which closed in six weeks. "Because I was in it, I always believed completely in what I was doing. It was my first show, so I just thought: If I believe and trust and commit, I'm doing my job properly. I really had no idea until I saw things start to unfold, like after we opened and the reviews, then the dwindling ticket sales. I didn't realize we were on a sinking ship until it got really bad."
Such unabashed enthusiasm makes it hard to believe Pellick once needed a break from dancing. He quit classes around age 12—due in part to a disagreement between his mother and the dance school—and stayed away for about three years. "I was burnt out because I was the only boy in my studio, so they pushed me into all the classes. I was at the studio every day, and Saturdays from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. I loved it and I wanted to do it, but it got to be a lot," he says. He stayed in shape dancing by himself at home and taking up baseball, football and golf. When he resumed classes at 15, they were at a different studio closer to Pittsburgh, Marie Lynn's Superstar Dance Center. It was there that he studied with Mark Marino, the teacher who had the greatest impact on him. "It was the first time I'd ever been taught by a man. It was such a positive influence because it wasn't just girls around all the time," Pellick says. "He gave me the opportunity to be the best that I could be—and made it possible. He and his mother, who was the ballet mistress, put me on scholarship. He made me aware that I could make a career out of this if I wanted to."
Pellick now moonlights from his performing career as a competition choreographer for two studios, Dance Dynamics of Memphis and All American Dance Factory in the Tampa area. Ultimately he'd like to become a choreographer full-time—but only after "I'm done performing completely," he says. First, "I want to dance as much as I can, as long as I can, and I want to work with every choreographer and director to learn." In the meantime, he's inspiring younger dancers even without teaching them directly. Natalie Fotopoulos, one of the finalists on the Fox reality hit So You Think You Can Dance, lists Andy Pellick as one of her favorite professional dancers—along with Ann Reinking and Gregory Hines—in her profile on the show's website. (Fotopoulos' mother owns Dance Dynamics.)
Pellick has another online presence…here on BroadwayWorld.com. When informed that he's been the subject of several mash notes by BWW message boarders, including some in a "Hot Chorus Boys" thread, Pellick says: "What? No! Oh, my God. That makes me blush. I'm the goofy kid—like, I'm just…not goofy, but not a sex symbol." Yeah, but look at the admirers he's attracted while attired in fangs, feathers, fur and wings.
Photos of Andy, from top: outside the Richard Rodgers Theatre earlier this summer; monkeying around with Stefan Raulston (left) in Tarzan; backflipping in Dance of the Vampires, with Brendan King behind him; sans moth and ape makeup; as Angelique the Cagelle in La Cage Aux Folles; with his boyfriend, Tony-winning director Joe Mantello. [Tarzan photo by Heinz Kluetmeier]
