GYPSY OF THE MONTH: Lorin Latarro of 'Guys and Dolls'

Lorin Latarro is a Juilliard graduate who's been in 11 Broadway shows, choreographed for stage and screen and already had one musical she's written produced. Perhaps the only place that wouldn't instantly impress everyone is at her family's dinner table.

Her two older brothers are both surgeons: Brian specializes in pediatric ophthalmology, Steven does maxillofacial and gum surgery. Her younger sister, Kristen, is a Harvard alumna about to get her MBA from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business. Dad's a retired dentist, mom a schoolteacher.

Lorin would have gone into medicine too had she not gotten into Juilliard. But as soon as she read of Juilliard auditions in Back Stage, she rushed into the city from her New Jersey hometown. "I hand-wrote my application on the bus," she recalls. The first part of the audition was ballet, and she later found out she was "crossed off the list" in that first round. "I was butting up against these girls who could have been in a company already," says Latarro, who'd trained at the New Jersey School of Ballet. Lucky for her, though, the school didn't make any cuts until the modern dance audition. "I really think it was my passion that got me in," says Latarro. "They saw how much I loved movement, and then they saw my solo that I'd choreographed myself. Then I got called back." Another day and a half of auditions and an anxious wait for a letter later, and she was in.

After she graduated from the Juilliard dance program in 1997, Latarro joined the MOMIX company. When she was in NYC between MOMIX's international engagements, she'd go to Broadway auditions—most frequently for Swing! "Every time, I'd get further along," she says. "I could see they had their eye on me, but it took, like, five times." And a hairline fracture of Jenny Thomas' heel shortly after Swing! opened. With less than a week's notice, Latarro was called in to replace Thomas, a swing dance champion who performed (in competitions and in the show) with her husband, Ryan Francois. Latarro also understudied Laura Benanti. "I grew up coming to see shows," she says, "and to be able to walk down 44th Street, past Shubert Alley, to go to my stage door at the St. James, it was a dream come true. It still is exhilarating, but I'll never forget what it felt like at 22."

Latarro did not have her Equity card the entire year she was in Swing!, since she was new to theater and the book-less show operated under an AGMA contract. On closing night, she remembers, "I was literally hanging onto a pole crying 'cause I was so scared I was never going to get to dance on Broadway again." But AGMA/Equity reciprocal membership kicked in and Latarro never went back to the world of concert dance. She's been working almost nonstop on Broadway ever since. She went straight from Swing to Fosse to Kiss Me, Kate, and later added the revivals of Man of La Mancha, Wonderful Town, A Chorus Line and The Apple Tree to her résumé. She's also been in Curtains and Spamalot, and she's become an audience favorite in the Broadway by the Year and Summer Broadway Festival concerts at Town Hall. Twice—in 2001 and 2007—Latarro was in three different Broadway shows within a calendar year.

The latest stop in this remarkable run is Des McAnuff's revival of Guys and Dolls, which opened March 1 at the Nederlander Theatre. Latarro is a Hot Box girl, a dancer in Havana and, in the opening ballet "Runyonland" (a new addition for this revival), a mink-wearing, cigar-smoking poker player. She also understudies Lauren Graham as Adelaide and is scheduled to go on in the role April 7-9 and 14-16.

Latarro's longest stretch in a Broadway show was Movin' Out, which she did for almost two years until it closed in December '05. She danced the lead role of Brenda at Wednesday matinees (to give Elizabeth Parkinson a break), opposite Michael Balderrama as Tony. "It was amazing," Latarro says of Movin' Out, which was directed and choreographed by Twyla Tharp. "The dancing was like flying—that's the only way I can describe it. Everybody who was in that show sort of dances differently now, because of Twyla. I learned so much [and] found everything she had to say was so smart and interesting.

"Movin' Out was unique in that the story was just told through dance, so the acting and the dancing are completely integrated," she continues. "And Brenda's journey was huge. She started as this high school virgin, and she went through a first marriage and a divorce and a war and a friend dying, and being with another friend—they end up hating each other and growing separately and then come back together. This is a huge journey for a woman on stage to do without any words."

Latarro had had her eye on Movin' Out before it even bowed on Broadway. "I remember seeing the workshop and just being like, 'I want to do this.' That's where I come from—concert dance. I really learned to act through my dancing."

Her acting-in-dancing ability has made up for her, uh, shortcomings when she's competing for jobs against women of more typical chorus-girl dimensions. "I don't get to perform on Broadway because I'm blonde and 6-1," says the 5-foot-3 Latarro. "I think the acting and the storytelling is really why I've been hired." Rather than being a detriment, Latarro's size has opened up even more opportunities for her to do the kind of dancing she likes best. "I love partnering—I'd rather dance with another person than do a solo," she says. "So my size has been really great for that, because I've gotten thrown in the air and tossed and flipped!" And when she does get to play roles that usually go to leggy blondes, she relishes them—like her 2006 run in Spamalot, directed and choreographed by Casey Nicholaw. "Casey's so free. He wanted showgirls, but he wanted all shapes and sizes of showgirls. I got to be my height and be a showgirl, and wear these huge lashes and sequined dresses and those hats..."

Before Latarro joined Spamalot but while she was still in Movin' Out, she assisted Vince Pesce (the April 2006 Gypsy of the Month) in choreographing West Side Story for the American Musical Theatre of San Jose, Calif. She also played Shark girl Rosalia in the production, for which Tharp allowed her to take a leave of absence. "That was the other thing that was kind of extraordinary about Movin' Out: Twyla really stood by the idea that you need to take a break from doing something and go and feed your creative brain by doing something new and coming back," Latarro says.

To the leaden-footed masses, switching between two dance-intensive shows might seem, in the least, confusing. But Latarro says it had only positive results: "As an artist, to be in a show and do the same thing over and over again, then leave for three weeks and move differently, think differently, and then come back, you come back better. You come back fuller and you continue to grow."

As a choreographer, Latarro assisted Pesce again on the 2007 TV reality competitions Grease: You're the One That I Want and Clash of the Choirs. Last year she choreographed How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying at the White Plains Performing Arts Center and The Jersualem Syndrome, a show in the New York Musical Theatre Festival (NYMF). She was Noah Racey's associate choreographer for the inaugural All Singin', All Dancin' show in the 2007 Summer Broadway Festival, and she co-directed and co-choreographed last May's Broadway Musicals of 1965 concert (she has appeared in eight Broadway by the Year productions and All Singin', All Dancin' in both '07 and '08). Latarro also has choreographed several benefit performances for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS and assisted the choreographer for the 2002 production of Where's Charley? at Williamstown Theatre Festival, in which she had an ensemble part.

Her choreography career has come so far, Latarro is thinking Guys and Dolls might be her last Broadway show as a performer. A big boost came from being selected in 2008 for DanceBreak, the annual showcase for six up-and-coming choreographers, who are chosen by a judges panel composed of top choreographers, directors and producers. Each DanceBreak participant creates two eight-minute pieces for an industry showcase. "The phone calls keep coming in now to choreograph," Latarro says of the response to her February 2008 presentation. "I love performing so much, but I also really love being creative. So sooner or later I'm going to have to make a decision."

Latarro's ambition isn't limited to choreographing musicals but to creating them entirely. With Josh Rhodes, another gypsy-turned-choreographer, she cowrote lyrics and the book for The Cosmopolitan, a show about an opera company transplanted from Manhattan to Newark that was featured in the 2005 NAMT (National Alliance for Musical Theatre) Festival. They're now working on a dance musical about a single girl in NYC—Tickets for Two and The Fourth Date are among its working titles. "The writing and the choreographing are very similar idioms," says Latarro. "They're both storytelling, just one is with a pen and one is with your body."

She also credits growing up in an academic-oriented household for her talents that extend beyond dancing. "I owe my parents a lot for giving us all well-rounded educations," says Latarro, who shortened her real last name, Campolattaro, for professional use. "One of the reasons I want to choreograph is I think mathematically, because of the way they forced me to study."

Yet her parents wholeheartedly encouraged her interest in dancing. From a young age, Lorin was taken to the theater—her first two Broadway shows were Annie and the mid-'80s revival of The King and I, with Yul Brynner. Her family lived in Fairfield, N.J., just half an hour from Manhattan, and they would regularly come into the city for the day so Lorin could take classes at Broadway Dance Center: She would take four in a row—training with the likes of Frank Hatchett, Madame Darvash and Phil Black—while her "parents would sit there with brown-bag lunches," she recalls. At night, they'd see a show on Broadway.

One night they were picking up their car after a show when Latarro's mother approached another woman in the garage. "My mother said: 'You look like a dancer. Are you a dancer?' And she said, 'Yes, I am,'" Latarro relates. "'My daughter wants to be a dancer. Talk to her about if it's hard.' She said: 'Well, you're the first ones to come, the last ones to leave and the least-paid.' I said, 'I still want to do it.' And she said, 'Why don't you come see Black and Blue tomorrow night? I'm in the show, I'll take you backstage afterward.' I have pictures of this: She took me to the girls' dressing room, I met Bunny Briggs, I got to stand on the stage, I got everybody's autographs." And a decade later, when she made her Broadway debut, Latarro sent that Black and Blue performer, Deborah Mitchell, a note.

Then there was the time in the early '90s when Latarro saw a show that "rocked my world," she says. It was Guys and Dolls in its last Broadway revival, featuring Sergio Trujillo—the current revival's choreographer—in the ensemble. "I was blown away," says Latarro. One classic musical she never got to see on stage before she was in it was A Chorus Line. "Sadly, embarrassingly, I grew up with the movie," she says. "I think my parents thought it was too bawdy, and it was always around, so they tended to pick the newer shows to see."

In 2006, Latarro was part of the original company of the Chorus Line revival, understudying Cassie, Sheila, Judy and Diana. Her regular role was Vicki, the girl who can't dance (and is cut) in the opening number, and she got to go on as a principal only about once a month. "It felt like I was understudying my own life a bit," she says. "As grateful as I am that they entrusted me with doing four of the biggies, I would have loved to be standing in that line eight times a week and really live inside one of those girls. I loved the show so much, it was hard to sit on the sidelines."

She'd had a similar feeling earlier in her career—when she was hired for Fosse to spell Mary Ann Lamb during a 12-week leave, and then stayed in the show as a swing. "Of course I didn't want to swing at the time. I wanted my own track desperately," she says. "But in hindsight, how lucky I was to actually step into singing 'Life Is a Bowl of Cherries' and dancing with Ben Vereen one day and with Bebe Neuwirth the next, and singing 'Cabaret' some nights."

Though she left Chorus Line after only a couple of months on Broadway (she'd also been in the San Francisco tryout), she rejoined the cast a few times. In the spring of 2007, after she'd returned from working on the Grease reality show in L.A., she filled in as Sheila for a couple of weeks; then, in mid-2008—after a year in Curtains—she resumed understudying for the final six weeks of Chorus Line's run.

Latarro received the Gypsy Robe for Chorus Line and would have gotten it for Apple Tree but decided to pass it on to the next-most-experienced ensemble member, Dennis Stowe (last month's Gypsy of the Month). She received it again for Guys and Dolls, and says that if she does another show—which would be her hard-to-top 12th—she'll pass once more. "Everyone should get a chance to wear the robe, ya know?"

Over the years, Latarro has had only the briefest of unemployment interludes. There were a few months after Kiss Me, Kate closed—which happened to be soon after 9/11, when all New York business was suffering. And last fall she found herself without a show to go into when Rob Ashford's planned revival of Brigadoon—in which she'd been cast—was axed two weeks before rehearsals were to begin (and after Latarro took a trip to Scotland). "Rob's ideas were just stunning," she says. "Again, it had the sensibility of flying. And I'm like, 'Oh, let me do one more show where I can fly!'—metaphorically speaking. I hope one day it does come back."

After the Brigadoon cancellation, Latarro found a worthy venture to occupy her freed-up time: organizing a benefit for Broadway wig mistress Natasha Steinhagen, who'd been stricken with ovarian cancer. Latarro, who knew Steinhagen from Curtains, directed and choreographed Kickin' It, a special Oct. 13 performance featuring Karen Ziemba, Norm Lewis, Noah Racey, Elizabeth Parkinson and a lot of gypsies. (Click here to see some of the dance numbers.) It raised about $12,000. "What better way to create art than to do it in someone's honor?" Latarro remarks. "It worked for me to show off my choreographing, and it worked for her to show we really stand by our idea of family in this community." 

Within her actual family, the Kickin' It benefit was Lorin's way of practicing medicine alongside her brothers and father. "I tease my brothers, because they're such compassionate doctors, about the connection between the healing arts and what we do," she says. "What we do is very healing in its own sense, like putting on the benefit was my own way of healing her." That's not the only talent she shares with her siblings; they too are musical. Lorin says her sister is an excellent singer and dancer, and her brothers have played saxophone in a jazz band. And they're all close: At one time, Lorin, her sister and one of her brothers all lived on the same block on E. 36th St.

Latarro has ended up having a far more varied career than she anticipated back when she was a Juilliard student and had her sights set directly on the Martha Graham company. "Being little, Italian and turned-out, and passionate and an actress, I really thought I'd be in the Graham company," she says. "I had posters of Martha up in my dorm room, and I was always chosen to do that rep." She did join the company after college, but at the time they had a sporadic performance schedule, having just ended their residency at City Center. She left Graham when she was accepted into MOMIX, a troupe known for its illusionist style. Latarro danced with MOMIX for a year and a half, everywhere from Europe to Israel to South Africa. "The traveling, as fabulous as it was, was starting to get weary," she says of her decision to pursue musical theater. Once she'd performed in a Broadway musical, she says, "I just fell in love with it. It all fell into place. I went, 'Oh, this is really where I belong. This is where all my gifts sort of come together.'" She's also discovered: "There is the opportunity to dance really well on Broadway. It's not all just step-touch. We're really working hard and doing artistic work. It's very fulfilling—it's not rote, it's not monotonous. Sometimes, people who haven't crossed over don't understand that."

When Latarro gives classes at such studios as Ripley-Grier and Broadway Dance Center, she aims to teach more than just dance routines. "The integration of dancing and acting is something that sometimes people are missing when they're teaching," she states. "I feel that's how you get work: Walking in a room and being a character who happens to dance this way is more important than just being a great dancer."

Photos of Lorin, from top: ever-thrilled to be performing on Broadway!; second from right, dancing at the Hot Box in Guys and Dolls with (from left) Jessica Rush, Kearran Giovanni and Lauren Graham; starring as Brenda in Movin' Out; opening last summer's All Singin' All Dancin' II with "Life Is," from Zorba; showing off her expressive technique; wearing the Gypsy Robe on Guys and Dolls' opening night, with choreographer Sergio Trujillo; backstage during her 2001 run in Fosse; outside the Nederlander last month. [Guys and Dolls photo by Carol Rosegg]