Contact which opened today in 2000 at Lincoln Center Theater's Vivian Beaumont Theater, might take the cake as the most unusual "musical" to win Best Musical at the Tony Awards, which it did that same year. Contact, made up of three one-act dance plays, has no live spoken or sung words, and no live music.
When the work premiered Off-Broadway in 1999, also at LCT, director-choreographer Susan Stroman was approaching the height of her powers. She'd already won a Tony Award for her first time out as a Broadway choreographer, for 1992's Crazy for You; and had since choreographed Show Boat, Big, and Steel Pier on the Main Stem. Contact would give Stroman her debut as a director-choreographer, a dual role she would go on to repeat on Broadway for The Music Man, The Producers, The Frogs, Young Frankenstein, The Scottsboro Boys, Big Fish, Bullets Over Broadway, and others.
The first of the show's three vignettes was set in an 18th-century forest clearing with a giant swing that helped become a three-person exploration of sex and mistaken identity. The second scene moved things to Queens in the '50s, with the wife of a small-time gangster dancing out the disappointments in her marriage as she dreams of escape.
The centerpiece of Contact was inspired by Stroman's visit to a dance club in the Meatpacking District. Stroman kept noticing a woman in a yellow dress who would take the dance floor and find various men to be her dance partner, only to then disappear into the crowd. Stroman's dance piece of the experience would become Contact's third act, set to a number of prerecorded popular tunes like The Beach Boys' "Do You Wanna Dance?," Squirrel Nut Zippers' "Put a Lid On It," and Stéphane Grappelli's "Sweet Lorraine."
Stroman collaborated with book writer John Weidman on the piece, a reminder that the job is not always merely writing a musical's dialogue. A book writer can also serve as a designer of a show's plot and structure. The original cast was led by Karen Ziemba as the Girl in a Yellow Dress, and Boyd Gaines as the man obsessed with her. Over what would become a two-year, 1,010-performance run, the show welcomed performances from such dance artists as Charlotte d'Amboise and Andy Blankenbuehler. Gavin Lee performed in a 2002 West End engagement.
PBS broadcasted the show's final Broadway performance as part of their Live From Lincoln Center series in 2002, a telecast that won a Primetime Emmy Award.
Flip through the opening night Playbill for Contact below:
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