“Sing with your body,” choreographer Ashleigh King urges the actors rehearsing a number from Signature Theatre’s “Ragtime.”
It’s an October afternoon, in a studio decked out with retro luggage and props evoking the musical, set in turn-of-20th-century America. King, her choreographer title notwithstanding, is fine-tuning not a dance but a baseball-watching sequence: the number “What a Game,” peopled by rowdy sports-fan characters.
Dressed in black slacks and a white top, and exuding calm control, King coaches the actors on how to convey both unruliness and rapt attention to an invisible baseball. “Let’s get more specific about where we’re looking,” she urges before guiding the performers through the song, one of her hands marking musical beats like a conductor’s, the other indicating the head-and-torso movements she wants to see.
Those movements aren’t just decorative: With its boisterous crowd, “What a Game” must convey how a changing America disorients the character called Father (Bill English), who knows baseball as the gentlemanly sport he played in his youth. In other words, the actors’ gestures and posture during this song help propel the narrative.
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The “Ragtime” score “is so beautiful that I could come up with steps for all of the music,” says King, 35. “But there are some moments of the show where it’s just much more important for the story to be the forefront.”
King’s ability to calibrate narrative, meaning and physicality is increasingly making her a prized theatrical collaborator. The winner of a Helen Hayes Award for choreographing Keegan Theatre’s 2019 “Legally Blonde,” she has worked at regional theaters like Vermont’s Northern Stage and been a local mainstay, including as movement coordinator for Studio Theatre’s “Fun Home.” Upcoming gigs include choreographing Woolly Mammoth Theatre’s “The Sensational Sea Mink-ettes” and directing Imagination Stage’s “A Year With Frog and Toad.”
“All of a sudden, Ashleigh’s career is blowing up,” says Signature’s Artistic Director Matthew Gardiner, who is staging “Ragtime” and wanted her to choreograph because “she has a director’s mind.”
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“She first and foremost comes to this from, ‘What is going to aid the story?’ Not ‘What fancy steps can I throw onto these people to make myself look good as a choreographer,’ but ‘How can I serve the story?’”
That attention to storytelling is particularly critical for “Ragtime,” which must strike just the right balance between epic historical sweep and empathetic exploration of character. Gardiner says the production is one of Signature’s largest ever, with a 33-person cast, a 16-person orchestra and an onstage Model T Ford.
The scope matches the panoramic vision of “Ragtime,” scored by Stephen Flaherty, with lyrics by Lynn Ahrens and a book by Terrence McNally, based on E.L. Doctorow’s novel. Touching on racism, immigration, exploitation of labor and other themes that remain timely today, the musical features such historical figures as Emma Goldman (Dani Stoller), as well as fictional ones like the Black musician Coalhouse Walker Jr. (Nkrumah Gatling).
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Reduce the scale of “Ragtime” too much and the production “loses the expansiveness of the story,” Gardiner says. But make the staging too sprawling and it might not fit in Signature’s Max Theatre, where, “because the audience is no more than 10 rows away, you have to be honest,” he says. “You have to make choices that are truthful. You can’t get bogged down by spectacle.”
King’s choreography is part of finding that truthful equilibrium. For example, her intent in certain dance sequences has been to acknowledge the distinctiveness of the communities evoked in “Ragtime” — part of the panorama — but also display affinities between them.
The story follows three families who represent Black Americans, White Americans in tony New Rochelle and recent immigrants. King says her choreography has members of all three groups doing a version of a grapevine, a simple side-to-side step. “What I like to see is how dance and music connect communities,” she says.
But the grapevine will look different for each demographic, reflecting how those individuals “hold the tension in their bodies, because of their upbringing,” she says.
She sees the natural human urge to respond to music as the cornerstone of her dance making. “Most of my career is not so much choreography as organizing instincts,” she says. When music prompts movement, “I’m just the person there that says, ‘Okay, we’ll follow these impulses in this order. The idea that you had? We’ll all do it together.’ As opposed to, ‘Here’s a step-kick and a jazz square.’”
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Her own dance impulses took hold when she was a youngster. Born in Washington, she grew up mostly in Virginia, training in competitive dance and appearing in shows that Debbie Allen created at the Kennedy Center. King’s credits as an adult have included performing, such as in Signature’s “Hairspray” in 2011-2012. But choreography always beckoned, and after “Legally Blonde,” her career as a dance maker has “been sort of nonstop,” she says. (As if she weren’t busy enough, she is also the mother of four children, including young triplets.)
“She finds a way to work with artists at whatever level they are at,” says Kevin S. McAllister, who recruited King to choreograph the “Little Shop of Horrors” he is directing at Ford’s Theatre next spring. “A lot of choreographers will walk in with certain expectations. Ashleigh’s very much: ‘I’ve got a game plan, but if this is beyond your skill set, I’ve got a plan B. I’ve got a plan C.’ She believes in making everyone look good.”
Back to the rehearsal, where King’s drive and discipline are on full display. As she refines the performers’ gazes and postures, she coaxes as the actors sing. “Lean,” she says, counting off, “two, three, four, five, six.”
Finally, the movement is as she wants. “Sweet,” she says.
If you go
Ragtime
Signature Theatre, 4200 Campbell Ave., Arlington. 703-820-9771. sigtheatre.org.
Dates: Through Jan. 7.
Prices: $40-$123.
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