And today we're gonna talk about seven time from the movie Mary Poppins Every time.

Mary Poppins premiered August 1964 and was choreographed by Dee Dee Woods and Mark Bro.

Step in Town was composed by the Sherman Brothers and sung by Dick Van Dyke and the other chimney sweeps, and this is like the ultimate playground adventure on the roofs of London.

In this twilight Beautiful time of the evening.

I think that they get to be thrilled and wowed by these chimney sweeps and remember that adults could be playful.

So while Disney gave them a huge break, this was the first film that Mark Indeedy choreographed, which is amazing because it's one of the best dance sequences in our opinion of all time.

DD and Mark were inspired by their mentor, Michael Kidd.

Mark and Dee Dee both assisted and dance for Michael Kidd before Michael Kidd is known for many things, but some of his most famous is seven brides for seven brothers.

Hello, Dolly!

The bandwagon.

Michael Kidd would choreograph very athletic, very exciting acrobatic movement.

They were just taking a lot of his style and his energy and infusing into their sort of choreography style for Mary Poppins.

The song originated from an old English folk song called Knees Up Mother Brown with this movie.

They were trying to capture a certain time period and this song, Knees Up.

Mother Brown was a part of that time period.

Yeah, the song is is noted back to at least 1918 but it was published in 1938.

He really gets news up.

Mother Brown.

It became particularly famous around World War two times in cocky pubs in England.

Partners would like hook elbows, the Sherman Brothers, the composers of the film.

They were like There's something to this and they explored it.

They got 8 to 16 bars, I think, to Mark and DD before they were like, Can you do something with this?

And Mark and Dee Dee were like, Absolutely, they took it and sort of ran with it.

Call and response is when someone communicates through movement or verbally.

Ah, move and then the other person follows.

Simple is that it's either verbal or it could even be choreographically.

One person will show the move and then he's responding to the move.

So if it was like I'm trying to think of what they say, I slept like a birdie pop like a birdie.

And then everyone goes like already Step in time like a birdie jump.

First plea a arms stretch and walk.

234 Walk back to 34 right, left over, over and right.

Left pivot, turn kick.

1234 Kick, Turn right, left right, Kick, kick, kick, Judge.

It's a It's a cardio scene.

Yeah, get your knees up the woods and Mark Roe.

First of all, we're married, which we, of course, are really into since we're married.

Choreographing couple their work together was super athletic.

It was filled with energy and infuse a lot of styles of dance that infused ballet, jazz.

Some vaudeville aspects.

567 you just pop.

I stand eye popping your movements group you okay, first coming with a little walk, Little Charlie, Chaplain walk and then we pause, kick, grab inside, turning on the left toe land.

There's a cut here because it's like almost impossible to go to the next thing in the same Q Oh, so 123456781234567 Praise be Jump over the broom Turn, catch Don't stop it!

Twirl it Catch right into your double pirouette Land Jump into a chug Oh, but it's so fast this'll is gonna be interesting Just pray the guy we should do so twice Yes?

Uh huh.

Oh, my gosh!

Sorry.

Long jump.

Give me back my hand.

It's hard.

We gotta do this right?

We gotta do it right?

Yeah, It's only way gotta do Mar Mark, Indeedy Right Whole choreography that we see in step in time The theme is this like super heinie.

So it's that we have these big, high kicking attitudes With the knees up high, we have these big toe touches knees up high.

There's just this theme of the knees.

As choreographers, you take one thing that's, like, really simple, the basic sort of knees up.

And it's our responsibility to take this specific thing and elaborate on it to its fullest.

Yeah, we always talk about it when we're choreographing, like, how do you exhaust an idea?

And I think they fully exhausted this'd idea of this knees up and the use of space.

They exhausted everything the prop work, how they use the broom, the theme of the knees up the theme of the turned out plea aid legs.

They just they exhausted, which is and physically those dancers were exhausted.

We're exhausted.

Left right, Pull it up.

Turn cross the legs in front, a little swivel.

Separate the legs.

Turn leg back, leg, front, leg back, shift forward, tap down, kick forward for jump over it, punch forward and then stand upright, having different levels and dances sort of dance one on one.

You don't want to stay in the same plane.

You want to continue to explore different areas in step in time.

They did that, you know you have the chimney sweepers that are on the rooftop, and it's one thing to have them dancing together and doing this sort of call and response.

But the placement is owner roofs.

I think it's so clear in this scene just how much they strive for more and better.

And what else can we do?

And how can we make it more dangerous and more athletic?

And yeah, they're they're pretty brilliant.

Team set certainly aids the choreography It just makes it that much more expansive and free.

And they're running everywhere.

They have so many different levels, so there's just like height.

Difference is we have people in the foreground in the background.

It totally makes sense to explore and exhaust all the space on a rooftop.

That sort of physical comedy and athleticism certainly existed, but I think this literal Parker from diving from roof to roof.

I don't think that was a thing with in Married with choreography.

Idea of Parker existed at the time, but Mary Poppins step in time up to Annie.

The risk taking was definitely taken to another level.

As a choreographer, you have these ideas of what you want to happen, and for us we try to make the impossible happen.

But then there's certain things that are just, you know, physically impossible, and that's when you bring in the harness.

And that's when you bring in all the sort of like special effects toe help in Aid.

And, for instance, the tour section that sort of jumped section that Mary Poppins does a tour is a jump in the air and you land.

It's like a ballet move that wasn't a great tour, but that was a tour.

And you could do doubles.

It's usually done by men.

Male dancer, male ballet dancers.

Can you raise you two?

Oh, no, not me, Chris.

Probably good for you, too.

I don't know.

I might fall over.

I'll go for here we go.

12 She shows the first tour.

She shows the chimney sweeps and my land.

It looks to them and they're like, OK, we could do it.

And then she's gonna go for a double, which is humanly possible, of course.

And then the guys do it.

And then it's like, How do we take it even further?

Oh, we need to make it ridiculous.

So, storytelling wise, the creative team came together.

It was like how now it has to be, like, over the top.

Impossible.

Because she's Mary Poppins.

She makes the impossible possible.

So I think making her do.

I don't know how many tours like films you're doing, but she does ridiculous about and then landed and of course, is like, Are you gonna do that, boys?

No, they're not.

DD and Mark knew about what it's like to choreograph for celebrities and people that might not be trained dancers and, for example, Dick Vandyke never danced before.

Meanwhile, he's killing it in the scene.

He looks incredible.

He's so athletic.

And that's a really good sign of a great choreographer, because oftentimes you don't have the luxury of having a principle actor that could move really well or has dance background.

So as a really good choreographer can take anyone's movement and then expand on it and expand on things that they do well.

For Dick Van Dyke, he grew up mining without dance training.

He has great movement training, and when he moves into the choreography, he's able to get those steps.

There was something that was a part of his, his movement quality.

I think he's just such a playful person that he's not afraid to be toe look foolish.

So I think as choreographers, that's like, You just pray and hope for that because when you have someone super timid and afraid, it's hard to pull it out of them.

I do not think that was the case with Van Dyke.

So Mary Poppins, we know, is this very prim and proper woman, orderly, always clean and put together and This is such a fun scene because we get to let her get a little dirty and loosen up a little bit.

But she certainly still keeps her like, prim and proper way it says Free After her dance, she does like a little hand signal and then, like, sits and like properly does her hair and, like fixes her hat, even her physicality.

She was always so.

We have this, like, turned out first position that she shows us even flying in when she first enters, she always has this turned out first position, feet on That's also in the dances choreographed the chimney sweeps have it as well.

It's sort of a theme throughout Julie Andrews, character Mary Poppins and Dick Van Dyke's Burt.

I think they were certainly choreographing around.

Their character is now with the rest of the dancers.

They just need to people that could really go full out.

Acrobatics can do technical things, like pure wets and high kicks and toe touches.

I know that Deedee and Mark really wanted some sort of dance training with the dancers that they hired, but also a certain kind of athleticism somersaults, cart wheels.

Could you do a back handspring.

It wasn't about perfect technique, necessarily, although they wanted youto have technique.

But it was it was that kind of like gusto, athleticism that they needed to see to be ableto make this scene happen.

Yeah, and the beautiful thing about these chimney sweepers is that, you know, this is this Choreography is completely said about Mark and Dede, but there is space for them to be themselves and show the character, so choreography isn't completely clean.

The big, sweeping moments of big running up the rooftops and then down there just running.

It's really quite simple when it comes to choreography.

But the fact that they're like racing up the roofs and then racing down it's just so visually stimulating where they jump from roof, the roof, they climb on the chimney.

They they dance with each other.

They dance with the props.

You know, as a choreographer, when I'm watching a piece, I always think to myself, Wow, what else would I do or like?

What else do I want them to do?