GYPSY OF THE MONTH: Edgard Gallardo, Chita's new Bernardo

"You can't act with someone you idolize," Chita Rivera states in Chita Rivera: The Dancer's Life when she recalls her first reaction to costarring with Gwen Verdon in Chicago. Edgard Gallardo knows exactly how she felt. He, after all, is the one who partners with Chita for the Dancer's Life excerpt from West Side Story.

Yes, in "Dance at the Gym," he's playing Bernardo to the original Anita. He's mamboing with Chita Rivera, the first Hispanic to receive the Kennedy Center Honors and a beloved celebrity in his native Puerto Rico. To assuage his nerves and excitement, he had to convince himself "to treat her like any other partner." Gallardo says that when he first started doing the role—and the lift that goes with it—"all I'm thinking is: 'Here is the well-being of the whole show sitting on my right shoulder.'" Talk about carrying a show!

Gallardo has been involved with The Dancer's Life since its workshop in July 2004, but he didn't get the Bernardo role until fellow ensemble member Robert Montano left the show (to do The Mambo Kings) before its tryout at the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego. Gallardo had been invited to do the workshop because of his prior association with both Rivera and director/choreographer Graciela Daniele. He made his Broadway debut under Daniele's direction in the 1995 musical Chronicle of a Death Foretold. And in 1997-98 he toured with Chita & All That Jazz, a cabaret-type act that recreated some of Rivera's numbers from past shows but did not include her whole autobiography as The Dancer's Life does.

Gallardo says Rivera still teasingly reminds him of his tardiness to the audition for All That Jazz. He and about four other guys were up for a swing role, and when Chita recalls the incident, "she always says it was either my smile or something about me that said to her, This is the guy that I want." What he remembers most is meeting her on the first day of rehearsals: "I said, 'Ms. Rivera, thank you for this opportunity.' And she said, 'No, it's Chita.'"

That was his first indication that this Broadway legend is legendarily ego-less. "Some stars really don't like you to invade their space, or their spotlight," Gallardo explains. "Chita's the total opposite: She always likes to share that space and she always likes to be next to the dancers on the line. She takes the time to go out with us after the last show of the week, in a very informal environment. When we were touring with Chita & All That Jazz, she had us over to her place, and she had gotten all this food, and then you see her right there in the kitchen getting the food ready for us! She doesn't want to be waited on. She always wants to give back. The way that she treats people comes from that background of being a gypsy."

He has worked with other Broadway icons, such as Jennifer Holliday in Dreamgirls and Robert Goulet in Man of La Mancha. Those are two of his vast touring and regional credits, which also include My One and Only, Peter Pan, Sugar, Leader of the Pack, several go-rounds with West Side Story, European runs of 42nd Street and West Side, and the entire 2000 season at Sacramento Music Circus: Evita, Anything Goes, The King and I and Hello, Dolly! He played a dancing Christmas tree, bike-riding panda and toy robot in the 1996 Radio City Christmas Spectacular and appeared in the 1998 Broadway revival of On the Town.

Gallardo got a later start than many of his fellow gypsies. Born and raised in Mayaguez, on the west coast of Puerto Rico, he didn't start dancing until adolescence. He performed in the opening and closing ceremonies of the 1979 Pan American Games in Puerto Rico and was then selected for a traveling youth dance troupe called Ballet Isleño. One of its gigs was the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade circa 1980—where, prophetically for Gallardo, Chita Rivera performed "All That Jazz." He decided in high school that he wanted to pursue a theater career. "When I told my parents, they said, 'Absolutely not! We won't pay for it!'" So he majored in biology at the University of Puerto Rico, graduating cum laude. "When I graduated, I said, 'Here's my diploma. I'm going to New York.'"

Upon arriving in the city, Gallardo immersed himself in dance classes, sometimes taking several a day. He put his biology studies to use as well. One of his dance teachers was Gabriela Darvash, former artistic director of Romania's State Opera Ballet, who taught the Bolshoi technique. "Coming from a biology background, I had studied anatomy, and she's very anatomy-oriented," Gallardo says. "She knows the body really well and how the mechanics of the body work. It really clicked in my head. A lot of people misunderstand her because she is from the old school."

He also trained with Phil Black, who helped instill consistency and pride in his work. "He always wanted me to dance with this fire," says Gallardo. In addition, "he really improved my self-esteem. If you don't have a tough skin, taking the rejection and all that stuff that comes with auditioning can get to you emotionally. You have to kind of build a cocoon around yourself to be able to get through and not take things personally." Black also taught him Jack Cole style—which probably makes Chita Rivera very happy, since she laments in her show that Cole (regarded as the creator of theatrical jazz dance) is unknown to many younger dancers.

Chita also says in The Dancer's Life that "We owe our teachers, the good ones, more than they will ever realize"—which motivated Gallardo to thank Black and Madame Darvash in his program bio. "They really were the ones who pointed me in the right direction," he says. "They changed my dancing, basically." Another dance discovery he made after coming to New York was tap, which he had never studied before (he belonged to a modern dance company while in college). His delayed introduction to it has made him enjoy it that much more. "I never ate meat loaf growing up, so it's one of my favorite things to eat now," Gallardo says by way of analogy. "It's the same thing with tap dancing."

He had seen a lot of tap dancing as a child watching old movie musicals on TV, which sparked his desire to perform. Gallardo was also inspired by the plays and playwrights, like Calderón de la Barca, of Spain's Golden Age, "which we had to study in school." And one particular production of a later Spanish playwright, Federico García Lorca, sealed the deal. When he was in junior high, he saw García Lorca's The House of Bernarda Alba for the first time. "I was riveted," Gallardo says. "It just made me feel what you're supposed to feel when you see theater: catharsis. So many shows now are for the commercial value. People will go see a jukebox musical and they're singing in the audience and dancing in the aisles, which is great entertainment, but the original purpose of theater was to bring some emotion."

He's still enthralled by Bernarda Alba and wishes there were a role for him in the play about a widow and her five daughters. (Graciela Daniele is directing a Michael John LaChiusa musicalization of Bernarda Alba due to open in March at Lincoln Center Theater.) Another giant of Latin literature that Gallardo had grown up reading was Nobel Prize winner Gabriel García Márquez, who wrote the novel Chronicle of a Death Foretold. He came to see the Broadway musical version that Gallardo was in, and Gallardo still has the cast picture with García Márquez hanging in his kitchen. But it may have been only his second greatest experience with that show: He went on in the principal role of Santiago mid-performance during Chronicle's first preview, after George de la Peña pulled a hamstring in the opening number. Gallardo didn't yet have a costume for the part and hadn't rehearsed it extensively (as it was one of five roles he was understudying), and most of the other cast members didn't know he was taking over for de la Peña until he was on stage. That night, at the party at Sardi's, they gave Gallardo a standing ovation when he entered the room. "It was like the most thrilling night of my career," he says. He continued to play the role for a full week.

Rivera's show has, of course, brought its share of excitement too. During the San Diego run, both Tony Mordente, a member of the original West Side Story cast (and Rivera's ex-husband), and George Chakiris, who won an Oscar playing Bernardo in the film, came to see the play. Gallardo also has gained a connection to some great choreographers of the past that he never got to work with. "I'm living vicariously through Chita and Graciela," he says. "Anytime I hear them tell a story about Bob Fosse or Jerome Robbins, it's like icing on the cake. My eyes open up. I want to be like a sponge and absorb as much as I can, so I can keep that in my 'database.'"

That musical theater heritage is The Dancer's Life's gift to audiences, not just its cast. "There's so much history in this show, it can enrich anybody's life," Gallardo says. "Anybody who has the desire to go into theater should come see the show, because there's so much to learn from it. Even for someone not in theater, there's so much in it that is inspirational."

One of the workshop's original numbers to survive till the Broadway production is the tango, which is used for the section of Dancer's Life when Rivera reminisces about her romances. "It was almost like being in school, learning a new vocabulary," Gallardo says of the piece's development. "Every movement has a meaning. Tango is one of Graciela's specialties." He also has found Daniele's specialty to be creating a nurturing, collaborative environment. "She is like mother hen with the little chicks. She is so giving and so knowledgeable. Everything that she brings in has a purpose. Nothing is just dancing for the sake of dancing," says Gallardo. "She gives you trust as a performer that you're going to do your homework. The rehearsal process is always very positive—no tension."

The ensemble's job has also been made easier by the physical therapy provided by the show's producers thrice a week. Gallardo goes on his own to physical therapy two times weekly. "I do believe in using physical therapy proactively instead of as a reaction," says Gallardo, though he first started going to therapy when he tore cartilage in his left knee in 2003 while rehearsing a Stomp-like industrial for Harley Davidson. He had knee surgery and was dancing again five weeks later.

Gallardo has ventured outside the dancer's life to do some extra work in television and movies, including Zoolander (he's sitting behind Christine Taylor in the newsroom), Law & Order and Law & Order: Trial by Jury. He was up for a featured role, of a bodyguard, in one L&O episode but lost out to another actor who, Gallardo believes, "was a little more like what people have in their heads that Latinos look like." Which reminds him of Chita's on-stage acknowledgment of how often she was told by casting directors: "I'm sorry, but you're just not Latin enough." Gallardo says he gets that a lot too.

It shouldn't be an issue, though, for an upcoming benefit concert he hopes to be part of: Latin Rhythms, which his Dancer's Life castmate Richard Amaro has produced the last few years for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS. Gallardo also has something else special planned for the spring. His parents' 50th wedding anniversary is in March, and he's planning to fly them to New York to see The Dancer's Life. It will be their first time seeing him perform on Broadway.

Photos of Edgard, from top: lifting Chita in "Dance at the Gym," with (from left) Alex Sanchez, Richard Montoya and Deidre Goodwin on the floor; with Dreamgirls star Jennifer Holliday on the 1994 tour; at Joe Allen, a favorite eatery of the cast; with Chita and fellow ensemble members Cleve Asbury, left, and Sanchez. [The Dancer's Life photo by Paul Kolnik.]