Muses & Musings with Choreographer Warren Carlyle
In my role as Columns Editor for SDC Journal, I interviewed choreographer Warren Carlyle for the Muses & Musings column, which highlights directors and choreographers sharing their current sources of inspiration. This was published in the Fall 2025 issue of the magazine.
Who or what inspired your career in theatre?
I grew up in a village in England, and the village didn't actually have its own theatre. So a lot of my early inspiration came from MGM movie musicals. Anything that Fred Astaire did, anything that Gene Kelly did—that was really my first access to dance of any kind.
I studied in the local dance school, and I graduated from there into full-time ballet school, just outside of London. Classical ballet was the bedrock of my training. Then I danced. I worked on 10 West End shows before I came to America. I danced lots of different styles, in lots of different productions. I was a swing, a dance captain, an assistant choreographer, and a resident director. I found an interesting path and I think those early MGM movie musicals led me to what I'm doing now. Big, bright, joyous shows. That's my hope.
Where do you get your inspiration now? Is it books, music, visual art?
One of my earliest memories is listening to music and imagining things. I think I just always had that thing—I hear music, and I see people moving. Now I sit in my apartment and listen to music and imagine people dancing.
I spend a lot of time in my scripts and in my music. I always have a dance arranger. I always have a drummer. I do research, but I try not to be bound by it or biased by it. Especially with some of the period things. Pirates!, as an example of that, is set in 1890. And if I was bound by period, I'd really be in trouble, I think; I don't know quite how I'd make that dance in the way that I have.
As we speak, your production of Pirates! A Penzance Musical, a reimagining of Gilbert and Sullivan's The Pirates of Penzance, has just opened on Broadway. Tell us about the world you created for that show, and what inspired it.
Pirates! is very much a kind of decoupage world. I wanted the dance to feel like that. The clothes—beautifully designed by Linda Sherwin—feel like that; the scenery—by David Rockwell, lit by Don Holder—feels like that. I wanted the choreography to be in the same world as the scenery and the costumes.
One of the biggest opportunities with Pirates! was to make something that's traditionally a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta—something that's not a dance—to make it dance. To make it move, give it style, give it a language all its own, to make it for this particular generation. We've updated it already, because we've set it in New Orleans. That gave us license to change the music. Then as soon as we got jazz and Creole influences in the music, that started to influence the casting, and that started to influence the way people are moving.
There are very distinct character groups in Pirates! That was fun for me. There are the pirates, the daughters, the police, and these very well-defined principal roles: the modern Major-General, played by David Hyde Pierce, and the Pirate King, played by Ramin Karimloo. How's the Pirate King going to move? How is he expressing his physicality and his strength? Jinkx Monsoon plays Ruth, the nursemaid. How does Ruth move? How does she express herself?
I researched British Naval semaphore [flag signalling] for Pirates! I wanted to create a language for the modern Major-General, and I wanted it to be historically correct. The flags in Pirates! are actually correct: blue and white was correct for the land, and orange and red is correct for "at sea."
So for me, it was a massive opportunity to really create a world for each character and group, and then to push all those things together. Pirates! is this beautiful combo of a show with very distinct movement styles for each of these groups, and then for each of those principal characters.
The other thing I wanted to do is to have fun. I wanted to make a bright, joyous, intelligent, humorous piece of theatre. I didn't want it to be too thoughtful, choreographically. I wanted it to move. I wanted it to move beautifully—every time it stopped, I wanted it to look beautiful—but I wanted it to move.
Where do you find inspiration outside of your work as a choreographer?
A friend of mine, David Rockwell, who's a brilliant designer, has really encouraged me to paint. I really haven't painted in my life. I don't remember ever having painted in watercolor, certainly. I really like it. I feel like I paint pictures with people for a living. That's really what I do.
I hope I paint beautiful pictures with people and tell beautiful stories with people. And now I've started to try that with paint, just gently with a brush, and see how that works. It's really humbling and really challenging, but I like it. My brain likes it.
You paint lot of landscapes, so you're painting with people in your choreographic work but not yet in your visual art.
It's tricky. People are way too hard for me. Unless I'm struck by something at New York City Ballet. Quite often, those shapes really inspire me. I love going to ballet, and City Ballet has been such a big place of inspiration for me over my 25 years in New York. I continue to go to City Ballet every season, and I continue to be a huge fan of those dances, and of that organization too. That's a wonderful artistic venture, and something that I'm constantly inspired by.
I also love seeing other choreographers' work. I'm fascinated by it. I'm such a huge fan of this strange and wonderful group of people. I'm always curious about what makes someone tick. Why is that rhythm like that? Why are they traveling like that? Why did they choose that step? Why is that that color? Why does that go across the phrase, and why did they line it up the end of the phrase? The way people use music is fascinating to me, too. All of us are wildly different. I'm a massive fan of the theatre, massive fan of directors and choreographers.
Warren Carlyle is a Tony Award-winning director and choreographer. Broadway: Pirates! The Penzance Musical; Harmony; The Music Man; Yes We Can; Katie; Hello, Dolly!; She Loves Me; On the 20th Century; After Midnight; Hugh Jackman: Back on Broadway; Chaplin; A Christmas Story; The Mystery of Edwin Drood; Finian's Rainbow; and A Tale of Two Cities.
