By Doug Sturdivant
06 Dec 2008

Skinner's Broadway specialty is the musical with a film history. White Christmas, like Rodgers and Hammerstein's State Fair and the two 42nd Streets, allows him lots of evergreens to dance around. Plus, Berlin's screen score (the title tune, "Sisters," the Oscar-nominated "Count Your Blessings") was sweetened via a Whitman's Sampler of other Berlin hits ("Happy Holiday," "Let Me Sing and I'm Happy," "How Deep Is the Ocean?").

"I've always found Berlin to be a 'dancer composer,'" says Skinner. "He wrote three films for Fred and Ginger. He just knew how to write songs that were danceable. After you pick his songs, all you do is decide what genre you want to dance in — tap? jazz? ballroom?

"Of course, audiences flip out over the tap numbers — 'Let Yourself Go,' which opens the show, 'I Love a Piano' and, at the end, 'I've Got My Love to Keep Me Warm,' which I'm proud of. Carrie Robbins gave me gorgeous, wintry costumes, and Anna Louizos made a lovely snowy set, so I did a tap number that looks like ice-skating."

Skinner's personal favorite is "The Best Things Happen While You're Dancing," a simple, surging, man–woman thing. "Jeffry and Meredith have danced together now in three of my shows and are so in sync with each other. It's not unlike any great dance teamand Gower, Fred and Ginger, Fred and anybody. They know each other's body languages. They adore dancing with each other. They're like one person in space. There's a lot of hard technique there, but a layman can't see it."

The Act I curtain falls on "Blue Skies" — "a real '50s jazz number," he says. "That's where our chorus kids all get to come out and do little features. Walter loved that idea of giving each kid a moment to shine. That's why dancers like doing the show. People keep coming back because it's great fun to do a show that is dance-driven, where the chorus kids feel they're an integral part of the show. It makes a family."