After a Century, the Rockettes Are Still Kicking Their Way Into American Hearts

In 1925, the dance firm received its begin in St. Louis, and it has since grown to be a Christmas season staple

Marta Hill

– Workers Contributor

December 22, 2025 1:05 p.m.

Throughout each winter of Ginny Hounsell’s childhood within the late Nineteen Fifties and early Nineteen Sixties, her household bundled up and headed to Midtown Manhattan, clutching sizzling candies to remain heat as they waited in line for Radio Metropolis Music Corridor’s Christmas Spectacular—the identical one that also runs right now.

The primary time Hounsell walked into the storied auditorium, she remembers seeing an airplane on the stage and being blown away by the majesty of all of it.

“I checked out it, and I stated, ‘I wish to be right here,’” Hounsell says. “After which when the women got here out, I turned to my father and stated, ‘I wish to do this.’ He stated, ‘Properly, you higher get to work.’”

And Hounsell did precisely that. By the Nineteen Seventies, she was on that stage as a Rockette. From 1971 to 1999, Hounsell danced with the road of ladies performing their well-known eye-high kicks.

Simply as Hounsell’s Rockette dream began as a baby, Karmen Moore’s did, too. Moore’s mom would wake her as much as watch the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. “She needed me to see robust, highly effective, sleek girls onstage or on the display,” Moore says.

In 2014, she noticed the Christmas Spectacular in Nashville. “And I keep in mind that 12 months, I used to be like, ‘That is what I’m going to do for the remainder of my life,’” Moore says. She is now in her third season as a Rockette.

“It was like a dream come true when it occurred,” she says. “It appears like house in a approach.”

The Missouri Rockets are born

Choreographer Russell Markert created the primary forged of what would turn out to be the Rockettes in 1925 on the urging of the Skouras brothers, a trio of siblings who ran a movie show in St. Louis.

Markert recruited 16 girls to bounce as pre-movie leisure. They primarily carried out within the theater, because the Missouri Rockets.

“They have been a part of the choices from that theater,” says Amanda Clark, a public historian on the Missouri Historic Society. “It was not simply them, but in addition an animal present, vaudeville exhibits, all these things would lead as much as the film beginning.”

Whereas on a nationwide tour, New York theater proprietor S.L. Rothafel, higher often called Roxy, observed the corporate. He acquired the group, moved the group to New York and expanded the forged.

When the troupe first arrived in New York Metropolis, its performances didn’t intently resemble right now’s Christmas Spectacular. As a substitute, they continued accompanying movies at Radio Metropolis Music Corridor, which opened in 1932.

“Each time there was a brand new movie, they might have a brand new quantity,” says Adrienne Gibbons Oehlers, a former Rockette and a dance and theater scholar at Wittenberg College in Ohio. “That they had the introduction quantity, after which they’d a specialty quantity—it may have a cowboy theme, if the film had a cowboy theme. … So, the dancers needed to be tremendous malleable.”

After settling in New York, the dance group formally grew to become often called the Rockettes. In 1933, the Christmas Spectacular debuted, bringing with it the long-lasting “Parade of the Wooden Soldiers” quantity, nonetheless carried out right now, by which the dancers mimic the actions of toy troopers, all in excellent unison. The dancers additionally carry out the picket troopers’ fall, with all 36 Rockettes slowly tipping backward onto one another.

“We are saying we actually and figuratively have one another’s backs, as a result of that’s really what occurs,” says Julie Branam, a former Rockette who now directs the troupe. “It’s placing your belief realizing that everyone goes to do her job and do it effectively in order that we execute this.”

Secrets and techniques of the Rockettes’ Wood Soldier Fall

The Rockettes would make their Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade debut in 1957, and identical to the Christmas Spectacular, their performance at that occasion grew to become an annual custom. This 12 months marks the Rockettes’ centennial, with the Christmas Spectacular working from November to January 5, 2026.

Within the final 100 years, greater than 72 million people have watched the Christmas Spectacular. The Rockettes proceed to dazzle audiences at Radio Metropolis Music Corridor, they usually hopefully will for a lot of extra to return, says Bruce Michael, who was a artistic producer for the Rockettes for 15 years.

“It actually requires the type of stamina that solely a superb artist who was additionally extraordinarily athletic and very disciplined can pull off,” Michael says. “I feel [Markert] could be very happy with what the Rockettes seem like now.”

Although the corporate has seen a handful of administrators and numerous choreographers, Markert’s imaginative and prescient continues to be the guts of the Rockettes’ routines. Hounsell was employed in Markert’s final 12 months as director in 1971. “He was very strict, however he liked his dancing daughters,” Hounsell says. “He liked us, and the women actually revered and liked him.”

The which means of precision dance

Maybe essentially the most iconic transfer within the Rockettes repertoire is the kick line: 36 girls lined up throughout the stage, kicking to eye peak at 152 beats per minute.

“I marvel on the Rockettes and typically how straightforward they make one thing look once I know it isn’t straightforward,” says Branam. “Kicking your toe to your eye each time isn’t the very best kick you might do, however to manage it, to make it go there each single time on a really fast beat when you’re linked up with anyone on both aspect of you isn’t any small feat.”

Rockettes Dance Strikes: Eye-Excessive Kicks

Precision dance, constructed on a powerful basis of faucet, ballet and jazz with an emphasis on actual actions, is all about mixing in and completely matching the dancer subsequent to you. Rockettes should kick concurrently to the identical peak and spot two dancers down to make sure the road stays straight.

“The quantity of power that it’s a must to have in your physique and the quantity of approach is insane,” says Rhonda Kaufman Malkin, a former Rockette and a dance teacher.

Dancers don’t come to the Rockettes to be particular person stars, says Sonya Livingston, who was a Rockette for 21 years.

“When you’re coaching as a dancer, we’re taught from an early age to face out,” says Livingston. “You wish to be one of the best. You need your leg larger than her. You wish to do extra turns than them. You wish to be seen. …To be a great Rockette, you are available in, your marks, you do your factor, however to be an incredible it’s a must to depart your self on the door.”

Markert aimed for the Rockettes to be a collective of dancers shifting as one doing intricate formations, Livingston provides. “Should you stand out as a Rockette, you’re doing all of your job spectacularly improper,” says Katherine Corp, who was a Rockette from 1998 to 2000 together with her twin, Kimberly.

However Jennifer Jones says she couldn’t assist however stand out when she made historical past in 1987 as the primary Black Rockette, breaking the group’s coloration barrier. “As a Black lady, I stand out wherever I’m going. Brown pores and skin. Lengthy legs. Broad eyes. Curly hair. As a matter of truth, I used to be born standing out, arriving in a world the place the media and fashionable tradition favored whiteness,” she writes in her latest memoir, Becoming Spectacular: The Rhythm of Resilience From the First African American Rockette.

Jones made her Rockettes debut in San Diego on January 31, 1988, on the NFL’s Tremendous Bowl halftime present. In her guide, she writes, “In an business that prioritized white followers and households, uniformity bought. I wanted to work extra time to make sure that my first time onstage with the Rockettes wouldn’t be my final.”

She would go on to be a part of the group for 15 years, retiring in 2002.

Being a Rockette

When Livingston educated Rockettes earlier than their stage debuts, she says she all the time made some extent to emphasise the historical past of the group.

“You’re getting into the footwear of the lady earlier than,” she says. “And in my day, you actually did, as a result of we didn’t get new footwear. We had another person’s footwear.”

That legacy begins within the audition course of. When Kimberly and Katherine Corp auditioned in 1998, the primary rounds of the audition consisted of a double pirouette and a time-step mixture. Then, dancers transfer on to extra rounds of auditions.

“As soon as I received into the corporate and skilled my first season, I stated to myself, ‘That is so exhausting. That is the toughest job ever completed,’” Kaufman Malkin says.

Now, greater than 1,000 dancers audition for the Rockettes yearly, all vying for simply over a dozen spots.

The Rockettes carry out as much as 5 90-minute exhibits a day through the vacation season and have completed so for a lot of the group’s existence. At the moment, the Rockettes have two casts, every with 42 members, together with six who step in if a dancer is out.

The hours of dancing can take a toll on the physique, simply as any athletic endeavor can, Hounsell says. She would take further dance courses between exhibits to maintain up her power and approach. Equally, the Corp twins bear in mind doing Pilates earlier than exhibits began for the day to work out any kinks.

“It’s like taking your physique to Jiffy Lube,” Katherine says. “It’s like giving your physique a tune up earlier than you go beat the crap out of it.”

At the moment, the corporate rehearses six hours a day, six days every week for six weeks earlier than the Christmas Spectacular opens. In numerous eras, that point was abbreviated. Livingston remembers being given just some days to study the numbers earlier than leaping into the pre-movie leisure.

These intense hours of rehearsal adopted by lengthy present days in a theater with about 6,000 seats creates a good bond amongst Rockettes.

Inside Radio Metropolis Music Corridor: The World’s Largest Indoor Theater | Set Tour | Architectural Digest

“We have been so linked to the lady subsequent to you that you just knew what she was going to do earlier than she did,” Livingston says. She remembers being so in tune together with her fellow Rockettes throughout performances that it didn’t matter if one of many stage’s elevators didn’t rise on the proper time, or if the orchestra skipped a part of the music.

A bond on and off the stage

Onstage, the Rockettes transfer collectively, a connection that trickles down into their offstage relationships.

“I didn’t have sisters. I had three brothers rising up,” Hounsell says. “I used to be all the time round boys, after which I met these girls who I had every part in frequent with. It was actually like abruptly I had dozens of sisters.”

Some Rockettes reside collectively, some meet their spouses backstage, and lots of type lifelong friendships.

“After I first got here in, I felt accepted, I felt liked. I felt all of that. I felt the assist of all the women,” says Lillian Colón, the president of the Rockette Alumnae Affiliation who was the primary Latina Rockette and carried out from 1987 to 2002 earlier than shifting right into a backstage position.

As part of the centennial celebrations this 12 months, the Rockettes carried out a Legacy Night time present for former Rockettes and others concerned with the group. The Alumnae Affiliation additionally hosted a gala, full with an elaborate present, choreographed and directed by Livingston.

The gala efficiency walked by way of the historical past of the Rockettes, beginning on the very starting in Missouri and shifting by way of all of the ups and downs of the final century. For previous Rockettes, these occasions have allowed them to reconnect with previous mates and relive reminiscences.

“It’s past the costumes, past choreography. It’s the folks,” Livingston says.

For Moore, a present Rockette, the centennial has supplied an opportunity to attach with the lengthy legacy of the Rockettes. In New York, “it appears like the whole metropolis is celebrating our birthday with us,” Moore says. “It’s wild to see how a lot this firm has impacted not solely town, but in addition American tradition, and the way many individuals look as much as us in that approach.”