'Romy & Michele: The Musical' celebrates the power of dancing to your own beat

Choreographer Karla Puno Garcia shares why dance is key to the story of the titular BFFs, first in the beloved movie and now off Broadway at Stage 42.

Summary

• Choreographer Karla Puno Garcia talks about the importance of dance to Romy & Michele's High School reunion and its Off-Broadway musical adaptation
• The film includes multiple scenes where Romy and Michele express their friendship through dance
• Garcia pays homage to these scenes while working in a mix of musical theatre; jazz; funk; and '90s dance fads to heighten both comic and dramatic moments in the stage musical

When people think of Romy & Michele's High School Reunion, they think of colorful homemade outfits and a soundtrack of '80s and '90s bangers like "Just a Girl," "Footloose," and "Addicted to Love." They think of Post-it Notes and the "businesswomen's special." And maybe, just maybe, they think of Romy and Michele's delightfully weird dance moves. Those are certainly top of mind for choreographer Karla Puno Garcia of Romy & Michele: The Musical, a new Off-Broadway adaptation of the cult-favorite film at Stage 42.

"I think dance is actually a huge secret love language that Romy and Michele have," Garcia observed. "They connect with their bodies, with dancing to their own beat."

That applies both figuratively and literally. As in the 1997 movie starring Mira Sorvino and Lisa Kudrow, the musical's title BFFs are a quirky but lovable pair shunned all through high school by their peers. For their 10-year reunion, Romy and Michele lie about their careers to impress their former classmates but later realize their true selves, and their bond, are cool enough.

Much of this journey of friendship and self-acceptance happens on a dance floor. When Romy gets stood up by her crush at prom, Michele offers to dance with her instead. In their 20s, they frequent clubs to meet guys, only to deem every man unsuitable and groove with each other instead. And of course, in one of the movie's most famous scenes, they take the reunion by storm with a totally uninhibited dance to Cyndi Lauper's "Time After Time" — the same song they danced to at prom a decade before.

Adapting the reunion scene for the stage, Garcia "definitely wanted to hit iconic pictures and moments that we all recognize from the movie," she said. "And then with our amazing cast, Laura Bell Bundy [as Romy] and Kara Lindsay [as Michele], we want to bring their silliness and [...] energy to the dance as well." Fittingly, "wacky" and "all over the place" are how Garcia described the choreography of the Off-Broadway show as a whole, which blends musical theatre, jazz, funk, and '90s dance fads to heighten both comic and dramatic moments throughout. (The famous "businesswomen's special" line, for example, gets expanded into a full song in Gwendolyn Sanford and Brandon Jay's original pop score.)

As the popular theatrical mantra goes, if your emotions are too big to speak, sing them, and if they're too big to sing, dance them. When Romy and Michele dance together, they reaffirm their love and support for each other when words fail. By weaving dance into the fabric of the duo's friendship on screen, writer Robin Schiff — who has a playwriting background and adapted her screenplay for the stage show — created a story easily translated to a musical format.

After all, Romy & Michele is all about "finding your own song to dance to," Garcia said. "That's what they realize and they discover, and that's something that we can all discover. What's the rhythm we all want to dance to in life?"

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Photo credit: Kara Lindsay as Michele and Laura Bell Bundy as Romy. (Photo by Valerie Terranova)