NEW YORK – For their third Broadway show, husband-and-wife choreographing team Lauren Yalango-Grant and Christopher “Cree” Grant faced a high-stakes challenge: They were asked to make vampires fly.
Not just fly, but also fight and hang upside-down, 60 feet off the stage. Not just that but also make it effortless, like gliding. And, of course, completely safely, despite darkness and haze and props whizzing by.
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Making “The Lost Boys” soar was a little like a real-life game of Tetris, the couple say. And for creating some of the best visuals of the season, the couple has earned their first Tony Award nomination.
“You just have to break it down slowly and bit by bit, build one block and then you just keep adding so that no one’s going to get hurt or feel too chaotic. Because gravity is going to gravity," says Yalango-Grant. "As much as Elphaba taught us you can defy it, you cannot.”
From screen to stage
“The Lost Boys,” an adaptation of a 1987 teen movie vampire thriller starring Jason Patric and Corey Haim, follows a pair of brothers who tangle with a gang of young vampires who have taken over a California beach town.
It became a cult hit due to its stylish neck-biters on motorcycles, with feathered hair, earrings, leather jackets and gloves. That meant the stage flying had to be awesome.
“They have to look cool, effortless, a little bit sexy, a little dangerous, but they don’t have to try too hard because they’re vampires — they’re all powerful, right?” says Yalango-Grant. “So, we worked really hard on just this effortless cool, laid-back kind of vibe, not circus-y, not a lot of tricks.”
She and her husband choreographed flying for the four Lost Boys and two other characters, all who wore harnesses with thin wires covered in a black paint that absorbs light. The couple coordinated with the lighting team to ensure the wires never get a blast of light, making them almost impossible to detect from the seats.
Credit also goes to the company Flying by Foy, a leading specialist in aerial effects, for the rigging, tracks and winches, and aerial designers Gwyneth Larsen and Billy Mulholland.
“It took so much fine-tuning to get to where we are,” says Yalango-Grant. “And I’m just so proud of the work of all of us because it took every single person to make this look how it looks now.”
‘We’re the OG vamps’
Grant and Yalango-Grant began their careers as dancers, met while auditioning for the same dance company, Pilobolus, and then toured for eight years. They're married and have a 5-year-old daughter.
It made sense that if they were going to ask performers to put on harnesses and soar 60 feet up, they'd do it first. “We’re the OG vamps,” says Yalango-Grant, laughing.
“I think, as dancers, we already have this intuitive nature of understanding how our bodies operate and move, and then just applying that in a different way to flying wasn’t that much more difficult,” says Grant.
None of the performers had any aerial skills so the choreographers had to start with the basics: Each was assigned a X taped on the stage where they needed to stand before their flights and ensure their wires were hanging perfectly vertical. Eating a full meal before a performance turns out to be a bad idea.
Each flight is carefully coordinated with music, sets and lighting cues and run by stage managers using computers. Producers gave the teams one of the most valuable resources to get it right: time.
“You can rehearse all you want. You can talk about it all you want. But until you’re in the harness in the air, you just don’t know. So they allowed us to start training with the guys early on,” says Yalango-Grant.
Harnesses and quick-releases
Speaking of harnesses, fliers put on a base layer like compression shorts to protect from rubbing, and costume designer Ryan Park designed clothes to hide and accommodate the harnesses. He also designed a quick-release way to detach from the wire, leaving audiences amazed.
“They have to unclip with their pointer finger and their thumb and we just drilled it. We drilled it so it became muscle memory and as easy as brushing your hair behind your ear,” says Yalango-Grant. “It’s like a magic trick. It’s a sleight of hand.”
The harnesses aren't that comfortable, but the actors aren't in them all night. The musical has been mapped out to allow each actor time to put them on, get checked, fly and then remove the harness.
Ali Louis Bourzgui, who earned a Tony nomination as the leader of the vampires, says it took a while to condition his body to fly, requiring strength training and months of practice.
“It’s just a totally different movement pattern,” he says. “Your hips suddenly become your axis point of how you turn and how you move.”
He and his fellow vampires have become best buds, and there are times during performances when he looks over and really believes they're all flying.
“It is kind of a magical experience,” he says. “It’s pretty fun for us for the most part. The harnesses that we’re wearing, not so fun.”