“He told us about Fosse’s fascination with all things (Federico) Fellini and clowns,” Paulus said. Hinson’s quintessential musical search for meaning inside the world of the circus, she got all the confirmation she needed that she was on the right path from Walker. When Paulus told Walker she wanted to transplant Stephen Schwartz and Roger O. “He had worked with Fosse for years, and so having Chet was so important to me,” she said. Paulus also knew there was only one man for the job of “bringing back the Fosse”: Choreographer Chet Walker. When Pippin Director Diane Paulus knew she wanted to bring Pippin back to life and set it in the athletic and sensuous world of circus acrobatics and gymnastics - “we knew we had to bring back the Fosse, too,” she said. Fosse didn’t have a technique,” said Walker. He says the primary lessons Fosse taught him were “humanity, how to be with people and how to listen.” The mentor Walker knew never raised his voice or got angry. ![]() Walker doesn’t know the driven, oversexed hothead many people remember as the semi-fictional character Roy Scheider played in the Fosse-directed film, All that Jazz. Walker then conceived the Broadway tribute Fosse, which won the 1989 Tony Award for best musical. That led to several impressionable years “behind the table” assisting and observing Fosse, who died in 1987. Two years later, he was added to the company of Pippin, playing a peasant. Walker was 16 and auditioning to join the cast of Fosse’s TV concert, Liza with a Z. When Walker met Fosse in 1972, “I was the size of a peanut,” he said. ![]() Today: Choreographer Chet Walker.)īob Fosse has been gone for 27 years, but protégé Chet Walker still refers to the icon of modern dance exclusively as “Mr. (Note: “The Pippin Profiles” is a series of interviews by Arts Journalist John Moore with the “Pippin The Musical” cast and creative team leading up to the launch of the first national touring production in Denver on Sept. Choreographer Chet Walker believes the legendary Bob Fosse “had a style, not a technique.”
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