How Dancer and Choreographer Sarah Parker Juggled Three Broadway Shows at Once

What do the How to Dance in Ohio assistant choreographer, The Who’s Tommy assistant choreographer, and a Hell’s Kitchen ensemble member have in common? They’re all Sarah Parker.

Sarah Parker (center left) and the ensemble of Hell’s Kitchen on Broadway. Photo by Marc J. Franklin.

Dancer and choreographer Sarah Parker is not one for sitting idly. During the pandemic, she — like nearly everyone in the entertainment industry — found herself with a lot of downtime. She had been on the road with the national tour of Jesus Christ Superstar when it all came screeching to a halt. Instead of continuing on to the next city to rehearse and perform, she found herself back at her parents’ house in New Jersey.

Sarah Parker.

Loafing around her childhood home was certainly not as stimulating as tour life, so she seized her opportunity to pursue another passion she’d never had the time for and got a Master’s Degree in Journalism from NYU. She’d always been interested in writing but considered it a distant dream — maybe something she could pursue if her dance career were ever behind her, a reality she’d been forced to consider amidst the shutdown.

As theaters started to reopen 18 months later, Parker got the call to come back on tour. She hadn’t quite wrapped up her degree yet, so she had to find a way to balance both. She wasn’t willing to compromise on either. “Luckily, NYU was very understanding, and they helped me like finagle around that final course,” she says. And she completed her degree on the road.

Now that Broadway is busier than ever, Parker hasn’t had much time for her writing career, though she did still manage to squeak out a story last month on the logistics of transferring a show to Broadway, something she’s come to be very familiar with. Three of the shows that she had been developing for years have hit the main stem in the last six months, which has made for a very busy Sarah Parker.

Parker had been attached to How to Dance in Ohio since its out-of-town run at Syracuse Stage in the Fall of 2022, where she took on the role of Associate Choreographer, serving as the right hand to choreographer Mayte Natalio. A few months later, she began the developmental process for Hell’s Kitchen, workshopping the show as a member of the cast and eventually performing in its off-Broadway run at The Public. Then, she took on another Associate Choreographer role, this time working with choreographer Lorin Latarro on the out-of-town run of The Who’s Tommy at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago. At the time, these three projects occurred with few conflicts. They were all simply great gigs Parker was excited to work on, but Broadway rumblings quickly began to follow each project.

“There are always whisperings and feelings that something is going to transfer,” Parker says. “I had been in the midst of those whisperings for all three of these shows simultaneously.” For any one of them to make the jump to Broadway was hugely exciting to Parker, but she never could have predicted they’d all get greenlit at the exact same time. If she wanted to stay on board with each of them, she had to find a way to be in multiple places at once. She credits the teams of each show for being so flexible in helping her find a way to stay a part of all three musicals.

“I was just very upfront with the teams of every show, like ‘This is the situation and I want to make this work,’” she says. “And luckily all three teams were like, ‘Yes, we want you to remain a part of this production.’ I've never once felt that there was like competition or people were secretly not happy that I was working on another show.”

First came rehearsals for the Broadway run of How to Dance in Ohio, which overlapped with rehearsals for the off-Broadway run of Hell’s Kitchen. To accommodate the fact that Parker couldn’t be in the building at How to Dance in Ohio full-time, Natalio brought on another associate choreographer to help fill the gaps. When the Broadway rehearsals for the Hell’s Kitchen transfer overlapped with Tommy rehearsals, Latarro made a similar adjustment.

Still, Parker made it a priority to be present for each show as much as she could — even if it meant pulling 14-hour days. “I would be in rehearsal for Hell's Kitchen from 10 am to 6 pm, and then I would go be at Tommy for the evening sessions of tech from 6 pm to midnight,” she says. Though exhausting, her love for the projects helped her push through. “I'm so passionate about it. It's what gets me up in the morning every day, so I was so happy to be doing it — tired, but happy,” says Parker.

Her saving grace was that whenever there was overlap, her two roles — as a dancer and as an associate choreographer — were quite different. As an associate choreographer, her primary focus was documenting the show’s movements, taking notes, and keeping things organized. As a dancer, her focus was learning the movements and performing. “Dancer mode is intensely physical, especially [for Hell’s Kitchen]. It's very challenging work; it's very athletic,” she explains. “Working as an associate, it's much more mental work. It’s a lot of problem-solving.”

She appreciates the opportunity to flex different muscles — one physical and one mental — and give each one a break to recover while she uses the other. “If it was full out physical, both jobs, for 12 hours a day, I think I would be kind of wrecked,” she says. “But because it's switching to an opposite skillset it’s actually worked out really nicely.”

Of course, burning the candle at both ends like this isn’t a long-term plan for Parker, but she’s not ready to make any big career decisions yet, even though the pressure to choose between performance and choreography sits in the back of her mind. But if you haven’t yet figured it out yet, Parker makes no concessions when it comes to her passions. “There is this perception that once you decide to be a choreographer, you hang up the dancer hat,” she says. “And I don't necessarily think that always has to be the case.”

In fact, she says staying active as a dancer helps make her a better choreographer, and vice versa. “They really inform each other,” she says. “Being on choreography teams has completely changed my perception of being a performer on stage and vice versa. When I'm on a creative team, I bring a lot of perspective as someone who is still performing.”

Parker knows what a physical grind it is to have to perform intense choreography over and over again, and she uses her position on choreo teams to advocate for her fellow dancers. “I can speak for those dancers in the show and be like, ‘You know what? I see this vision, but I know that doing that eight times a week is going to be terrible,’” she says. It’s a perspective some choreographers may lose sight of as they step back from daily performance, and Parker has no plans to let go of it. “I hope to continue performing for sure as long as possible,” she says. “I'm not really interested in ending that chapter and starting a new one.”

But now, with How to Dance in Ohio closing, Tommy open and on its feet, and Hell’s Kitchen settling steadily into performances, Parker might just find herself with some unfamiliar downtime. But don’t worry, she’s always got her writing to fill her time. She simply seems incapable of letting herself be bored.

The Who’s Tommy is currently running at the Nederlander Theatre on Broadway.
Hell’s Kitchen is currently running at the Shubert Theatre on Broadway.