“Today” and “tonight” signify Friday, June 5.
PORT ANGELES — This feels amazing.
The dancing, this music, this body — they feel all right for Anna Pederson, choreographer of “A Chorus Line,” the classic musical at Peninsula College this weekend.
Director Kristin Quigley Brye called Pederson last summer, back when she was Anna Unger and about to get married. I know you’re planning your wedding, Brye said, but you’ve got to be our choreographer.
Her answer was an exuberant yes. Which led to another yes, to Brye’s entreaty that Pederson also take on the demanding role of Cassie, the onetime lead dancer who must start her career over again at a chorus-line audition.
For Pederson, this show isn’t just another turn in the spotlight. When she began reading “A Chorus Line” and watching videos of the dance numbers, every line resonated.
Pederson, 22, has danced since she was a tot of 3. By high school, she was at the top of her class, a whisper-thin ballet dancer.
But “it was a love-hate thing; I never thought I was good enough,” she said.
Nobody knew she was struggling with anorexia and bulimia. And when she graduated from high school at 17, she gave up dancing, believing she didn’t have the body for it.
Pederson grew up in Exeter, Calif., but had long imagined living in the green Northwest. So she researched community colleges up here, made phone calls, enrolled at Peninsula College, packed up her car and, at 19, started her new life.
This was 2012, and by September, she’d won a role in “The 39 Steps” at the Port Angeles Community Playhouse.
This opened the door to the theater community, and when local directors learned of her dance background, she was hired to choreograph “Equus” and “Return to the Forbidden Planet” at Peninsula College, among other shows.
She met her husband-to-be, Jeremy Pederson, on the “Forbidden” set; he admired her command of the stage while she noticed his enthusiasm for the dance steps, despite his inexperience.
“And I realized: I’m not done dancing,” she said.
The original production of “A Chorus Line” made Broadway history by playing for nine years, winning the 1976 Pulitzer Prize for drama and nine Tony Awards.
It demands a lot of its cast. The characters, as they try out for a Broadway show, must sing, dance — and tell their personal stories to the hardboiled director.
One by one, they step forward to explain what drives them. They are fierce, even if they’re little like Connie (Sierra Stack).
Her character is under 5 feet tall; “the only thing that grew about me was my desire,” she tells director Zach (Pete Griffin).
“I wanted a part I could sink my teeth into dance-wise,” said Quinton Cornell, who like his character Mike fell for dance when he was very young.
Cornell, 23, adds that the my-life-so-far stories in “A Chorus Line” ring true.
They’re about going through adolescence — and coming out the other side with a full-fledged passion for art.
Cassie, meanwhile, has more experience than the rest, not all of it good. She and Zach were once romantic partners; he was a workaholic. She moved to California to pursue stardom.
Now Cassie has returned, with no prospects, to New York City. She’s still got that fire. During her signature number, “The Music and the Mirror,” Pederson blazes in her red leotard and tiny skirt.
“In high school, I never just enjoyed dancing in the mirror,” she remembers. Though rail-thin, she saw a fat girl in the looking glass.
“Now,” Pederson said, “I see myself.”
And she is free.
Pederson has been in recovery from her eating disorder for four years now. She is doing what she loves: dancing, choreography — and guiding others as they glide across a stage.
“I love working with adults who have no idea what they’re capable of,” she said, “and then they get that combination” of steps.
Jeremy, her husband of 10 months, is among the dancers she works with; in “A Chorus Line,” he portrays Bobby, a young man from a conservative Buffalo, N.Y., background.
The couple also appeared together in “Salome” last fall at Peninsula College: She played the title role, and he was John the Baptist.
In “A Chorus Line,” there are memorable Marvin Hamlisch numbers such as “One (Singular Sensation)” and “I Hope I Get It.” But if you had to narrow it down to one that crystallizes the show, that would be “What I Did for Love,” the song about how an artist pursues his or her passion at all costs.
As cast and crew member, Pederson has watched her compatriots — including those with little background in theater — plunge headlong into this story. Completing the cast are Sarah Tucker, Jordan Walker, Annika Pederson, Lydia Wilhelm, Katie Herreid, Brandi Larson, Sierra Fairchild, Kal James, Johnathan Mitchell and Misha Casella-Blackburn as the auditioners and Jonas Brown as Larry, Zach’s assistant.
Richard Stephens, the production’s costume designer, nods to “A Chorus Line’s” original director and choreographer, the late Michael Bennett. His show is an homage to the “gypsies” of the Broadway stage, Stephens says.
“It was Bennett’s hope,” he notes, that audiences “would not just focus on the stars of the show, but look closely at the chorus, see their hard work . . . and wonder about their individual stories, dreams, sacrifices.”
