Precision Kickline

Precision kickline is chorus dancing whose entire subject is unison. Russell Markert formed the troupe in St. Louis in 1925 as the Missouri Rockets, wanting dancers who could deliver complicated tap routines and eye-high kicks. Samuel 'Roxy' Rothafel brought the line to New York's Roxy Theatre and renamed it the Roxyettes, then enlarged it again for the 1932 opening of Radio City Music Hall; the name Rockettes settled in 1934, and the Christmas Spectacular has run since 1933. Thirty-six dancers appear in each performance out of a larger hired company, they clear more than two hundred kicks a show, and the published audition height range runs roughly five foot six to five foot ten and a half. The line's most famous effect is engineered rather than natural: the tallest dancers stand at center and the line descends outward, which director Julie Branam has described as giving the illusion that the Rockettes are all one height when they certainly are not. The technique demands tap, jazz and ballet proficiency, a rigid torso, spacing measured to the inch, and a kick that arrives from the hip with no visible preparation. Book musicals borrowed the form outright, from A Chorus Line (1975) to 42nd Street (1980).