The hills are alive and kicking in Doug Elkins’s Frí¤ulein Maria

Hip-hopping and gender-bending are a few favourite things in Doug Elkins’s Fräulein Maria, a mad ode to The Sound of Music

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      Complete with a voguing Rolf and cross-dressing nuns in black hoodies, Doug Elkins’s whimsical ode to The Sound of Music is not your everyday concept. So just imagine the New York City contemporary-dance renegade trying to sell the idea to the brass at the Rodgers & Hammerstein Organization.

      To get the rights to mount his cult hit Fräulein Maria back in 2006, Elkins says he had to meet the suits at a long boardroom table in Manhattan, surrounded by photos of old-time stars like Yul Brynner, Mary Martin, and Julie Andrews herself.

      “They were a little bit curious, a little suspicious. You know, they were holding up my CV like it was a wet diaper,” the affable artist tells the Straight over the phone from Portland, Oregon, where his Fräulein is amusing audiences before heading to Vancouver for the first time. Things didn’t proceed well as Elkins tried to explain his concept of deconstructing the classic 1965 movie musical. “I said, ”˜I’m less interested in the linear narrative of The Sound of Music than I am about the collective memory of The Sound of Music in an audience.’

      “And I had to be very transparent with them. I said, ”˜I think you should know that Liesl will be played by a six-foot-one white man, and that Rolf will be played by a black vogue diva, and that Maria is possibly going to be played by three people, one of them a small Puerto Rican man.’ ”

      To hear Elkins tell it, they weren’t impressed. It came down to convincing the Rodgers & Hammerstein folks to let him mount the show so they could see it in the flesh, with the promise he’d cancel it immediately if they hated it. They came to its hit run at the tiny New York City haunt Joe’s Pub, then told him after the show, “We don’t know what the hell it is, but we love it.”

      And the rest, as they say, is history. Fräulein Maria, a wild blend of hip-hop, George Balanchine, Martha Graham, and more, has become a sensation not only in New York City—where it’s evolved into an offbeat annual tradition for families—but around the world. The New York Times has said it offers “about as much visceral pleasure as it’s possible to have in a theater”.

      Elkins never imagined the show would take on such a life of its own when he was first inspired to create it. The idea hit him when he started watching the classic Julie Andrews film with his own children, Gigi and Liam (who are now 11 and 9, respectively), and realized what iconic meaning it had not only for himself but for others. “For me it was one of the first movies and music-theatre things I remember being taken to as a child,” he tells the Straight. Through repeated viewings, he grew to see the story about the wayward nun who teaches the von Trapp family to sing and have fun as a metaphor for the power of art.

      But what sets Elkins’s wonderfully warped Fräulein apart is how he samples countless different dance styles and fuses them into a flowing whole that becomes a kooky crash course in his art form. Elkins, who got his start as a B-boy, launched his own company in 1988, and has choreographed all over the U.S. and Europe, is like a super-sponge, not only soaking up the urban forms that have surrounded him in New York, but going so far as to study everything from capoeira to Scottish dance to add to his repertoire. (Watch for both styles to surface in Fräulein.)

      His approach comes from an innate curiosity, says the choreographer, who, in our free-associating conversation, quotes everyone from Constantin Brancusi to John Cage. And then, to explain, he refers back to the kids who inspired his Fräulein in the first place—and who he says have changed his entire approach to dance.

      “You look and the floors in their rooms will be covered with every kind of toy, every piece of Lego, Barbie doll, car, truck, painted Play-Doh figure, balls of string tied from dresser drawer to bed—and they’re creating these worlds that are a mishmash of all their stuff,” he says, erupting with enthusiasm. “And I would say, as a choreographer or anybody making anything, you’re still doing the same thing. Maybe you’ve moved on from Barbie and Play-Doh, but that game is still being played.”

      In other words, with Fräulein Maria, the inimitable dance artist is mish-mashing more than a few of his favourite things.

      DanceHouse presents Doug Elkins and Friends’ Fräulein Maria at the Vancouver Playhouse from next Thursday (February 3) to February 5.

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