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The Radio City Rockettes are more than just their trademark kick line, especially since lead choreographer Linda Haberman revamped their annual Christmas show in 2007.

"The show had no new creative input for an incredible number of years, and it was just time to bring some new numbers to it, bring it up to date, make it more exciting and accessible," says Haberman, a veteran Broadway dancer. "There's also new technology happening all the time, and I wanted to include that and just make it a better show."

What Haberman and her team of stage technicians and musical arrangers included was a gigantic, 90-foot LED flat-screen TV, 3-D computer animation and an intricate tap-dancing number choreographed to "The 12 Days of Christmas." All of these technical aspects, plus a computerized full-scale model of a red, double-decker New York tour bus, create a dazzling holiday pageant that not only wows kids and adults alike, but also maintains the legacy of the Rockettes for new generations of dancers, such as Elon native Katie Walker, 23, who became a Rockette last year.

A dancer since age 3, Walker joined the Rockettes after years of dedication, sacrifice and passion. Now that her work has paid off, she's performing in the "Radio City Christmas Spectacular" arena tour, which will come to the Joel Coliseum in Winston-Salem on Dec. 5. She's also one of the Rockettes selected to dance during the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade from New York City's 77th Street to Central Park West.

Touring across 37 cities in the United States and Canada, the arena tour is a re-creation of the live show at Radio City Music Hall in New York City.

An early drive for precision

Walker and fellow Rockette Jessica Pack pose together for the camera of a local news station during a scheduled media stop at Joel Coliseum in September.

The word to describe them is "precise." Standing in the dance position known as a "bevel," Walker and Pack tilt their heads, bend their arms and lift their left knees to the same angle, creating a symmetry that is almost unnatural.

"That's the pose that we stand in all the time," Walker says. "It's just kind of in our skin now."

The drive not merely to imitate her assigned choreography, but also to duplicate it is one that Walker has carried since she was a child. At age 3, she wouldn't stop dancing around the house, so her parents enrolled her in the Centre of Performing Arts in Graham, where she began to study ballet and tap.

When she watches the video of her first dance recital, Walker remembers correcting her fellow dancers, all of whom were the same age she was. Her love of precise dance steps as well as jazz dancing, which she began to study later, were two factors that guided her to become a Rockette.

"I loved learning things, and I loved specific details," Walker says. "You're in this position, not that position; your foot is on No. 2, not somewhere in between 2 and 3. And I knew that is how the Rockettes were taught everything."

"Her dance teachers could leave the room and say, 'Katie, could you show them this and go over it with them?'" says Angie Walker, Katie's mother. "And then as she got older, she helped a lot of kids."

Katie Walker spent her middle school years in dance competitions but quickly tired of this activity because she had a stronger desire to hone her craft. So with her parents' blessing, she enrolled in the dance department at UNC School of the Arts in Winston-Salem.

For the first year, Walker was a commuter, meaning her parents drove her from Elon to Winston-Salem twice a day. The following year, they agreed it would be best for Walker, who would be in the ninth grade, to live on campus. Other parents didn't approve of Angie Walker's decision.

"People really started to say, 'I couldn't do that. I couldn't let my child go,' and things like that," Walker says. "Then finally, I just told one mother, 'I love my child, too, but I love her enough to let her go and do what she wants to do as far as a dream.'"

Leaving her family and friends in Elon was difficult for Katie Walker, but she says that, like many of her friends, she was too busy attending classes and dance lessons and making curfew to get too bogged down.

Making the cut

At age 17, Walker moved on her own to the dance capital of America: New York City.

"There's other places around the country, but New York is the mother to dancers," Walker says. "It's the center of the dance world, and if you're going to be a dancer, most likely you're going to go to New York."

Living with a roommate, she first moved to the city as a member of the Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet Company.

"She had some friends who were coming to New York, and they were going to see the Rockettes, and she had gone there with them," Angie Walker says. "It was that time when she thought, 'I'm going to do this.'"

Rockettes choreographer Haberman says becoming a Rockette requires excellent dance skills. Because of the many rigors involved with performing the dance-intensive show, she looks for physical strength and fitness.

"They also have to be able to work really hard and enjoy that, and they have to want it," says Haberman, who sits in on all auditions. "And you can see that when you're at an audition, people that really want it."

Walker says when she auditioned in spring 2008, more than 600 other hopeful dancers showed up.

"And when you finally get in, they take you in at about 100 at a time to a large rehearsal hall," Walker says. "You learn two jazz numbers, a tap number and a kick line, and they made cuts within each group."

By the end of the day, Haberman whittled the number of hopefuls down to about 50 dancers who had to return the next day for a second round. Haberman taught them another dance number, then asked them to perform everything they had learned in two days. After that, she made a final cut, reducing the number to 25.

Walker made the final cut, but that meant she had to wait four months before she knew whether she would become a Rockette.

"I actually found out on my birthday, which was like the best birthday gift I ever had," Walker says. "I was napping, jumped up from the bed, and I was pretty much in my apartment jumping up and down.

"I think the lady on the phone was laughing because she could pretty much tell that I was screaming and jumping around, breathing very hard."

Her first kick line

One thing that Walker learned after becoming a Rockette is that when they do their world-famous kick line, no one in the group actually holds on to each other.

"I always thought they had their hands on their backs, but you don't touch because you're doing so many kicks in the show, you're tired, and if someone's pushing on you, it's hard," Walker says. "We feel the fabric of the girl behind us, one arm's up and one arm's lower, and you're just using the feeling of their fabric to make sure you're not flying out around them."

Making it to her first kick line in front of a live audience required months of intensive practice, beginning in October when the dancers would rehearse up to 10 hours a day, six times per week. Those who didn't pick up their choreography fast enough had to attend extended rehearsals ---- called "after school" ---- while the other dancers went home to rest.

Walker says her first five days of practice, which are referred to as "boot camp," were especially grueling.

"You're just dancing nonstop, and those were a rough five days," Walker says. "But once you got past it, you were like, 'OK, my hamstrings are starting to feel a little better.' "

Fortunately, the production was able to treat the many aches the cast developed with a team of athletic trainers who are on call 24 hours a day. Walker and her fellow Rockettes would sit in ice baths for about 15 minutes at the end of each rehearsal to reduce the lactic acid that prolongs muscle pain.

Just as Walker was about to perform with the Rockettes for the first time in Chicago, the cast was nearly sidelined by a stomach virus. All of the alternates had to be called in, and although Walker was feeling ill, she pushed herself to perform anyway.

"I told myself, 'I'm not missing my first night as a Rockette to be sick,'" she says.

It was worth it. While performing her first round of eye-high kicks in front of an audience, Walker grew emotional.

"I just remember having total goosebumps, staring at the audience with tears, and I couldn't believe I was doing this," Walker says.

Neither did her mother, who had traveled from Elon to see her daughter's debut.

"You're just kind of beaming from ear to ear because it takes a lot of work on a parent, too," Angie Walker says. "You just kind of want to stand up and say, 'That's my daughter.'"

Christmas with the Rockettes

It took many sacrifices for Walker to become a Rockette.

And because the Rockettes perform shows every year during the Christmas season, one sacrifice that Walker continues to make is spending holidays away from friends and family.

The situation was made somewhat bearable on Christmas when Walker and her fellow Rockettes prepared a holiday feast. Meeting in a hotel dining room that had been closed for Christmas, they each prepared a festive dish and ate together like a makeshift, albeit very large, family.

"I made an pie out of artichoke, cheese and eggs," Walker says. "That was gone in two seconds."

Then her friends surprised her with a package of cookies, cupcakes and a small Christmas tree sent to her hotel room.

"I set my tree up in the bedroom, had my cookies and cupcakes, and that was my Christmas," Walker says.

 

Contact Joe Scott at movieshowjoe@gmail.com

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