They like us. They really like us.

As I double-time-stepped my way downstage at the front tip of what I refer to as the “flying triangle formation" (pictured above: photo by Chris Clay) getting closer and closer to the final few bars of tapping in the encore number, I had ‘the moment.’ At first I thought I heard merely the echo of twenty-six tappers bouncing off of the acoustically assembled auditorium, but as our mass of sweaty, glistening and gleaming dancers pushed its way to the front of the stage, I realized it was not the sound of our own tapping but rather the sound of applause and cheering that drove us into our final clicks and clanks of the evening. It was ‘the moment’ when I thought to myself; “this is cool…they like us!”

I wish I could say that wanting an audience to “like us” is not of utmost importance when putting on a show, but that would be a lie. In most cases, however, when you are proud of and recognize the quality of your work and product, it generally comes as no surprise whether an audience will enjoy the show or not. In this case, however, we had no friggin; clue! Anyone can enjoy a good tap number, but can they really grasp and appreciate in one sitting an entirely new art form, musical comedy, never before introduced into the Chinese culture? It was a concern and an anxiety all of us shared. I didn’t know if I could spend a year doing a show, no matter how fabulous or exciting, to vapid and unappreciative audiences.

And so I caught myself staring offstage in the beginning of Act II, fixated on the supertitles scrolling on the side of the proscenium, wondering exactly how the script translated into Mandarin and whether or not the audience was actually ‘getting it.’ Every once in a while, however, a joke would land and we would hear laughter (sometimes when we least expected it, but laughter is laughter), or a number would get applause before the final bump, and we would share a moment, on or offstage; a smile or simple glance that said in perhaps no words at all: “they’re getting it.”

So after we had finished the show, taken our bows, and persisted to dance our little hearts out in the dazzling costumes and striking formations of the Encore dance, I felt a shiver that I later discovered was shared by everyone on that stage. It went sweeping through the cast as we stood, winded but utterly wound up, poised in our final pose of the evening, listening to the crowd go crazy and watching the audience rise to their feet, thinking to ourselves; “we’ve got ourselves a show!”