| See 'Chicago' In A Whole New Light by Richard Dymond Article publishing date: October 13, 2000; Bradenton Herald Roxane Carrasco, who turned 31 two days ago, knew from age 3 that she wanted to sing and dance for a living - and her life's dream was to one day meet her idol, dancer Chita Rivera. Now, years later, she's not only met Rivera but she's currently playing one of the roles Rivera made famous, Velma Kelly in the national tour of "Chicago: The Razzle-Dazzle Musical" coming to Sarasota. "My mother and I would watch the old musicals on TV in East L.A., where I grew up," Carrasco said by phone from New York last week where cast members assembled for a national tour which began Oct. 6 in Stamford, Conn. and has an eight-show run at the refurbished Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall beginning Tuesday. "I grew up wanting to be Chita Rivera," Carrasco said, with a laugh. "She's Puerto Rican and I'm Chicano. We both have that Latino thing going." Rivera, still a sublime dancer and actress, played Kelly in the original 1975 Broadway cast of "Chicago," a story set in the jazz age of the 1920s. Carrasco never had a dance lesson until she was 18. But she had confidence and something else her mom gave her. "She told me, 'You're an actress right? Then act like a dancer.' " She's been a professional since age 16 and has concentrated, like Rivera, on musical theater. She played Anita in a national tour of "West Side Story" and was Morales in "Chorus Line." Carrasco met Rivera in 1992 when Carrasco was in "Tommy." "Her daughter was a assistant choreographer," Carrasco recalls. "I was invited to an event. We passed in a hallway, our eyes met and she must have seen my elation. She said, 'You are cute." Someone introduced us and said, 'This is Roxane Carrasco. She wants to be the next Chita Rivera.' I was mortified. She did a slow take and said, 'And I bet you could do it. Have dinner with my group tonight.' She was so generous. She included me in the conversation. She created a fan for life." Diehard "Chicago" fans know the story by heart. Roxie Hart is in jail for killing her boyfriend who left her. She tries to pin the murder on her husband. Her jailmate is Kelly, Carrasco's character, who is doing time for killing her husband and sister when she caught them in the act. The musical, with its tale of crusading lawyers trying to turn murdering women into stars, is bitingly satiric and frighteningly current (it was written in 1926) considering today's headlines. But dialogue isn't the only way Bob Fosse, who originally composed the book for "Chicago," gets the message across. The real language of "Chicago" is the vocabulary of legs, arms and hands. "Everyone I talk to has a favorite 'Chicago' dance number," Carrasco said. "For some it's 'All That Jazz' or 'Mister Cellophane' or 'Cell Block Tango.' "But my favorite moment is called 'Tap Dance.' Roxie is begging her husband for money. She is doing a real and verbal tap dance around him and we see three men in special lighting singing softly with her. It's very Fosse." "On opening night in Connecticut when we heard the audience go nuts after 'All That Jazz' I just fired up," Carrasco said. "We always know what kind of audience we have after 'All That Jazz.' If they go nuts, we go nuts. "That night when the show was over I had so much energy I just had to move. I couldn't stop." Rivera would probably approve. |