Three dozen women, mostly retirees from Broward, Miami-Dade and Palm Beach County, rehearse twice a week for 10 months, practicing their steps and synchronizing their moves for performances to be held in Broward and Palm Beach counties. And while the theme of the New Florida Follies latest extravaganza is “Be Our Guest” from Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast,” the real theme for the cast, they say, is “Be Our Best.”
“Be Our Guest,” opens at the Township Center for the Performing Arts, 2452 Lyons Road, Coconut Creek at 2 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 26. Additional performances at Spanish River Community High School, 5100 Jog Road, Boca Raton, 2 p.m., Feb. 16, 23, March 23 and 30; and Palm Beach State College, 11051 Campus Drive, Palm Beach Gardens, 2 p.m., Sunday, March 16.
The dancers, ranging from age 55 to 96, want to keep working in the industry they’ve loved since childhood. Only they don’t consider it “work.” The New Florida Follies are a show-business sorority, with shared memories of a glamorous past from earlier eras that no longer exist, says Cheryl Steinthal, who has been the director and choreographer of the New Florida Follies for seven years.
The cast, made up of former professional dancers, NFL cheerleaders and Radio City Music Hall Rockettes, offer a direct line to fascinating vaudeville, burlesque, summer stock, regional theater, Las Vegas, Broadway and Hollywood history. The performers recount true life stories with Gypsy Rose Lee-type scenarios, including performing at Minsky’s Follies in Las Vegas, running afoul of child labor laws in a burlesque theater in the 1930s, to auditioning for director Michael Bennett for “A Chorus Line,” and opening for “The Jackie Gleason Show.” The comedian often worked in Miami and was a resident of Lauderhill.
For The Love of Dance
Steinthal, who lives in Boynton Beach, says her link with a dancing great came when she was the “standby” for Ann Miller in “Anything Goes” at the Paper Mill Playhouse in Milburn, N.J. in the 1970s. That meant, she was not assigned a role in the play, but if Miller couldn’t perform, Steinthal had to step in with the tap dance solo. She also taught those steps to Miller’s understudy; who had a minor role in the play and would have acted in Miller’s place.
Steinthal also worked and volunteered at beauty pageants, including Miss America, where she met 1955 Miss America Lee Meriwether—which gave her an interesting insight.
“Competing in Miss America is very similar to being a Rockette,” says Steinthal. “It’s a sisterhood. We all have something in common. Once a Rockette, always a Rockette, we are part of the legend.”
And those relationships from an exciting past are rekindled in moments at the Follies. Steinthal had been on stage with Sheila Phillips from Miami, who was a Rockette for 14 years.
“We performed together in the seventies for two years, including a “42nd Street” number in red costumes and wigs. Then we met again at the Florida Follies,” says Steinthal. “It makes no difference how long you were there. You were there.”
Other Follies performers have similar perspectives and careers. Two were Miami Dolphins cheerleaders, while another boosted the Minnesota Vikings. A current cast member danced professionally at the Latin Quarter, a Copacabana-type nightclub that continued for decades as LQ on Lexington Avenue in New York City. Prior members were Las Vegas showgirls and many were dance instructors and choreographers, although one had a career in the Miami Fire Rescue Department, says Steinthal.
The local Follies’ esprit de corps goes back decades. In the mid-eighties, The Ziegfeld Club performed in Broward County. Mary Rowland, a Deerfield Beach resident who passed away in 1991, had been a principal dancer with the original Ziegfeld Follies in New York. The troupe raised money for needy, retired actors in the northeast.
Doing Splits At 96
Perhaps the best-known dancer in the New Florida Follies is its oldest, Cindy Trinder, 96, who lives in Tamarac with her son, an electrical engineer. Until she was widowed from her fifth husband in 2017, Trinder lived in a house on the Intracoastal in Pompano Beach.
Trinder still does the splits in every show. She’s performed with the Follies for 20 years, back when the group was known as The Original Florida Follies, changing names around 2018, according to Steinthal.
As a child in the Great Depression, Trinder begged her mother for dance lessons. “Mom was a seamstress and Dad was a butcher and there was very little money,” says Trinder.
At age 14, Trinder and her older brother were yanked off-stage at the Warner Theater in Oklahoma City because they were too young to work, she recalls. But the siblings’ performances paid for dance lessons. Trinder’s mother made her costumes. By 18, she left home to do four shows a night at a nightclub in Phoenix, as a solo acrobat.
Divorced from her first husband, a drummer in the same show, Trinder went on the road as a single mother. She played AT the Aladdin and Silver Slipper on the Las Vegas Strip and performed throughout California. Closer to home, she performed with Ann Corio, “the Queen of Burlesque,” at the Coconut Grove Playhouse in Miami in the 1970s.
Trinder was also in the opening scene of the 1974 movie, “Lenny,” starring Dustin Hoffman and directed by Bob Fosse, about the “blue” comic Lenny Bruce where she says she played a stripper.
She wistfully remembers an entertainment world that has mostly disappeared, such as nightclubs, cigarette girls, exotic dancing, strip teases (from evening gown to bikini), live talent revues and the like. “Sometimes I wonder if video games had something to do with it,” says Trinder.
Steinthal is assisted by Rita Rhodes, who lives in Deerfield Beach and has been the stage manager since 2010. As a young woman, Rhodes worked in The Hawaiian Room (a tropical and tiki-themed venue in New York’s Lexington Hotel) and also tap danced with the June Taylor Dancers and the Hal Sands Manhattan Rockets.
Rhodes switched careers to work for a bank holding company, Manufacturers Hanover, rising to assistant vice president for acquisition and transfer management.
“I was a lost soul and a workaholic,” says Rhodes. “I got a job transfer to south Florida and was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS) once I moved here. I couldn’t dance anymore. Then I found the Follies. It’s made all the difference in my life,” who handles production details for the show such as props and projections.
The Follies’ Friendships
Above all, the show must go on.
Joyce Listro, Deerfield Beach resident, will fill in for Lois Ginsburg of Lauderdale Lakes, who has a shoulder injury, but is expected to fully recover in time for the February and March performances in Boca Raton and Palm Beach Gardens, says Steinthal.
Listro has been with the Follies for 10 years, after moving from Hamden, Connecticut near New Haven. She was a Duke University cheerleader, a June Taylor Dancer, then a schoolteacher and dance studio owner.
Her husband, Santo, is one of three men in the Follies, joined the troupe first (15 years ago) and persuaded her to join.
“She’s a dynamo who would be bored out of her gourd if she had nothing to do,” he says about his wife. The two met performing “Guys and Dolls” in community theater more than 50 years ago.
For Love Crisson, from Plantation, it’s her eighteenth year with the Follies. After retiring from 40 years at American Heritage School in Plantation, she wanted to dance again after after seeing her grandchildren in a recital.
“It’s my chance to dance. It’s my joy; the camaraderie. It’s a wonderful group; we care about each other,” says Crisson.
Holley Budney, who taught public speaking at Broward Community College, was born in Miami Beach and studied with the University of Miami theater department. But she put theater on the back burner to pursue public relations.
The Highland Beach resident’s interest in the Follies was piqued when she scheduled a former Rockette to speak at Sinai Residences in Boca Raton. “I hadn’t danced on stage since high school but then I got the bug.”
She returned to theater volunteering with the West Boca Theater Company, which led to a full-time independent contractor job. During the theater company’s season, she designs sets and is co-director of the theater company. Even with those responsibilities, she can’t get enough of the thespian life and gets a lot of joy from being on stage with the Follies.
“The Follies have been an incredible life-changing experience, it’s a sorority,” says Budney. “Being able to perform and raise money for charity is an incredible way to spend time being 55 plus and enjoying your life. It keeps us sharp and in shape and I can’t imagine life without it.”
The nonprofits the Follies raise money for are Children’s Diagnostic and Treatment Center in Fort Lauderdale; Make A Wish Southern Florida in Miami, and Ukulele Kids Club.
In addition to socializing and friendship, Trinder values the Follies’ physicality. “I never got fat, because I didn’t eat much. But when you are old like me, you don’t want to exercise. This is how I force myself into it.”
Interested in joining The New Florida Follies? Auditions start in May at Dance at RDA in Coral Springs. For information, contact thenewfloridafollies@gmail.com.
IF YOU GO
WHAT :
Florida Follies Presents “Be Our Guest!”
WHEN:
2 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 26.
TICKETS:
$35. Group discounts available, 25 attendees or more.
WHERE:
Township Center for the Performing Arts, 2452 Lyons Rd., Coconut Creek.
INFORMATION:
(954) 970-0606 and
boxoffice.townshipcoconutcreek.com
