HOLLYWOOD’S ANSWER TO A DANCER’S DREAM
BY Carmen Eisner, Wisconsin State Journal
Thursday, December 20, 1979
Avoca’s Cheryl Baxter has danced her way through life and straight to Hollywood.
She has just spent three months dancing in the large production number of ‘Xanadu,’ a new musical starring Gene Kelly, Olivia Newton-John and Michael Beck and has just returned to Wisconsin in time for Christmas.
“It’s a fantasy,” said the pretty brunette about the movie, a smile crossing her dimpled face as she relaxed in The Wisconsin State Journal newsroom this week.
It’s also the answer to a dream.
“I’ve wanted to go to Hollywood all my life,” she said, “only when I was younger, I thought I would go there right after high school. It didn’t happen quite that way.”
Before heading West a years ago, Cheryl, the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Lee Baxter, attended the University of Wisconsin for a year during which she got experience as one of the Wisconsin. She studied dance for a year in Chicago, and she spent a summer as lead dancer in the ‘Showboat’ showcase at Opryland in Nashville.
As a high school student, she performed with the ‘Kids From Wisconsin’ for two summers. At 16, she was commuting to dance in Madison Area Technical Collage’s big production of ‘Jesus Superstar.’ “Tom Wopat was a star in that show”, she reminded us, “and we’re still friends.”
“I don’t know very much about ‘Xanadu’ except that it is supposed to be a big musical, the beginning of musicals for the 1980’s,” she explained. “As dancers we just work on the dancers. I haven’t seen the script.”
“I can tell you that Olivia Newton-John is an angel, and Gene Kelly – he’s still my biggest thrill. He’s been my idol since’…..and her voice trailed off.
Cheryl estimated there were between 100 and 150 dancers working on three large dance scenes in ‘Xanadu’ – ‘Disco 80’s,’ Fiorucci’s’ and the final which takes it title from the film.
As a high school student, she performed with the ‘Kids From Wisconsin’ for two summers. At 16, she was commuting to dance in Madison Area Technical Collage’s big production of ‘Jesus Superstar.’ “Tom Wopat was a star in that show”, she reminded us, “and we’re still friends.”
“I don’t know very much about ‘Xanadu’ except that it is supposed to be a big musical, the beginning of musicals for the 1980’s,” she explained. “As dancers we just work on the dancers. I haven’t seen the script.”
“I can tell you that Olivia Newton-John is an angel, and Gene Kelly – he’s still my biggest thrill. He’s been my idol since’…..and her voice trailed off.
Cheryl estimated there were between 100 and 150 dancers working on three large dance scenes in ‘Xanadu’ – ‘Disco 80’s,’ Fiorucci’s’ and the final which takes it title from the film.
A fight no on won
“For ‘Disco’80’s they wanted our hair in wild colors. My hair was dyed purple in front and on the sides, and it stayed that way for a week. Some were red, other blue, and one was multi-colored. Imagine walking through Hollywood for a week that way!”
The ‘Disco ‘80’s segment was a fight between the ‘40s led by Kelly and ‘80s led by Beck, but it was a fight that no one won.
“We all joined together in the end,” the dancer drawed. Rehearsals for this segment alone took three weeks, and the filming another two.
‘Fiorucci’ was filmed in a Beverly Hills boutiquw which is on a building that used to be a movie theater. It has Kelly and the girls, including Cheryl, dancing among the clothes racks.
“The finale was the most fun and also the longest to do,” she related. “In addition to the dancers, there were jugglers, tight rope walkers, a trapeze artists and a roller skaiter.
“Kelly and Olivia were there every day. He’d do the number in the show, and then he’d fool around and tap dance for is.” This is one of two scenes in which Kelly puts on roller Skates.
Cheryl was chosen to dance in the film through an open audition that lasted four to five hours in which she completed with a roomful of other hopefulls.
What they wanted was character dancing mainly,” she said. “we would do a dance through twice, and they would cut. We’d learn a mew combination and go through the process again. They had types in mind, and choices depended a lot on looks.
Cheryl learned early that dancers are as numerous as palm trees in Southern California. “You can’t even imagine the number of girls who were dancers there,” she exclaimed. “You go into a room and find girls coming out of the walls. Competition is great, and selection is based on type.
Sometimes it has to do with height, sometimes a look. Sometimes they want a blonds, and sometimes an oriental. Thousands audition, and if there is an opening for an oriental girl, the pretty brunette is out of luck.
Away too long
“But often, they’re just looking for good dancer. Then they make you go through that combination of ballet, jazz and tap.”
Cheryl began tap dancing at the age of 3. Her mother was her teacher, and even now since she turn professional, she manages to get home to perform in the spring recitals of her mother’s dance classes. She also gives seminars whenever she returns to Wisconsin.
For her, Hollywood has been a happy experience. She lives in a two bedroom apartment in Studio City around the corner from one of the dance studios where she teaches. One of her roommates of Bobbi Everson, a former Miss Madison, who has been a friend since they were in Singers together. Another friend from Singers days, Mark Zibell, was in the Opryland Show with her, and he also dances in ‘Xanadu’.
Las summer, she found to be ‘a dry spell’ during which she kept body and soul together at three dance schools, and she missed three golden chances through flukes – the Juliet Prowse TV special and the film ‘1941’ – “because I was home in Wisconsin when they called”; the current tour of Harry Blackstone, the magician, “because of the filming commitment, and this would have meant 38 weeks, 12 of them on Broadway”.
When she returns to California on Jan., it will be to class. “I have to get back to classes again,” she said. “When you’re a dancer you have to train every day, and I’ve been away too long.”