How Choreographer Fabian Aloise Made Sunset Boulevard Dance

Choreographer Fabian Aloise and director Jamie Lloyd have developed a style that blurs the lines between movement and storytelling, dissolving the boundaries of traditional stage language. Their works seamlessly integrate choreography and direction, making physicality an essential part of narrative expression. In productions like Evita at Regent’s Park (set to play the London Palladium this summer) and the upcoming Much Ado About Nothing starring Hayley Atwell and Tom Hiddleston, they rethink how movement shapes meaning, crafting theatrical worlds where every gesture speaks as powerfully as the text.

Now, with Lloyd’s radical reimagining of Sunset Boulevard at the St. James Theatre, Aloise has redefined how movement and dance function within the Andrew Lloyd Webber operetta, using the ensemble as both narrators and set pieces, introducing the haunting presence of Young Norma, and tapping into leading lady Nicole Scherzinger’s own performance DNA to elevate her portrayal of Norma Desmond.

In this conversation, Aloise breaks down his vision for Sunset Boulevard, from the intricate choreography of the show’s now-iconic walk through Shubert Alley to the unexpected moments of movement that bring this cinematic world to life.

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

There are moments of dancing in Sunset Boulevard as a musical, but it’s not what one thinks of as a dance show. And yet there’s so much movement in this new production. How did you envision that?
The first question I asked Jamie when he said Sunset Boulevard was, “What am I going to do?” Historically, it’s about Norma and Joe and a couple other people. Once we discussed what it was going to involve, and the camera work and the starkness of everything, I totally got what needed to happen. The ensemble is going to have to narrate where we are. They’re the corridors people are walking through on the lot. They’re closing those boardroom doors in front of Joe’s face in a visceral way, so the audience absolutely understands what’s happening to this guy. Their job is not going to be on the set; they’re going to become the set.

There are two actors who came over from the London production and aren’t in the central quartet of leads: Shayna McPherson, a dancer who is the main camera operator, and Hannah Yun Chamberlain, who plays the spectral presence of Young Norma. Young Norma isn’t a character in the original show. Where did that concept come from?

I had worked with Hannah on Cabaret at the Lido in Paris, where she was one of the Kit Kat girls. As soon as we had an inkling that this might be a direction that we were going in, I was like “She has to come in and do this.”

When we got her into rehearsal, we didn’t know how big the character of Young Norma would be. Initially, we felt maybe it would be a moment, but we discovered very quickly that this immortal being is the crux of the show. They keep referring to her. Max is in love with her. We open the show with Young Norma, this beautiful being that’s immortalized in the celluloid. Everyone is striving for that immortalization, the writers, they actors, the set painters. They all want that. Even Norma wants that. And nobody can get Hannah. Every time we bring her on stage, you can see the audience lean forward.

Shayna’s job is not just to capture it all on the screen; her job is to waft and dance with her partner while it’s happening on the screen. And then, in “This Time Next Year,” where they’re all at a New Year’s Eve party, she becomes the nucleus, and the audience sees both the outside of that number and the scene within it. We put it in the hands of a dancer knowing full well that she would be able to reciprocate who was in front of the lens.

One section people point out involves Nicole Scherzinger doing Pussycat Dolls-esque movement during the Salome scene. What was the impetus for that and were you afraid it would pull us out of the scene?
Everyone’s DNA is important to the narrative of a production like this. Rather than stepping into the shoes of someone Nicole’s not familiar with and trying to acclimatize her with that style of movement, it became very imperative that I start with her.

Nicole had so much to lean on, because she had had this incredible career at such a young age, performing in stadium after stadium, learning the dance moves required for this video and that video. Why would we not want to tap into that? That’s her own life story. It’s only going to make her interpretation of Norma more potent.

We initially deconstructed the steps from videos. Then we started to bastardize them, stripping them all apart to get to the essence of what she’s doing during the Salome section of the show. She’s just met this guy, sat him down in her home, and now she’s doing this full performance to show him exactly what the movie is going to look like. It’s so fantastical.

At one point in rehearsal, she was stretching, and I was like “Whoa, you can just go into second position like that?” And she was like, “Yeah, it’s not hard.” And then I was like, “Can you sustain that note while doing the splits?” The reaction in the room, their jaws are on the floor. Things like that are so brilliantly ridiculous that they just had to go in.

The walk into Shubert Alley during the title song is a souped-up version of what you did in London, which was basically just a jaunt around the exterior of the theater.
The Strand, where we did it in London, is a sleepy, sleepy road compared to where we’re walking in New York. That moment is a culmination of every single department working together at the same time in a way I’ve never experienced on a musical. Choreographically, especially walking through the streets of New York, we needed to level up. There were concerns about traffic, crossing roads, specific locations, people finding out. We had to be very careful.

Then, when we had the idea to involve the company, which is not something that we did in London, the choreography became paramount for the safety of Tom Francis and actors, the safety of Shayna, who’s filming the whole thing, the safety of stage management, and even the safety of the people that ware protecting the actors.

There are different routes that we’ve tried and tested. There are contingencies in place for weather, climate, traffic problems. You can’t control those outside elements; the only thing you can control is what we do. When we found the routes that worked, there was such a sweet release in the auditorium. It was exhilarating.