DaytonDailyNews.com

Birds fly in intricate formations without crashing.

Fish dart and swirl in schools, free of collisions.

Most human need seat belts, air bags and cordoned queues to protect them from each other.

Not so the Rockettes. For more than 75 years, they've personified precision and poetry in motion during their trademark kick line.

How do they do that?

Two Ohio members of the company, Mary Capellas from Warren and Anna Richardson of Westerville, who will be touring with the holiday show that will play Nutter Center on Tuesday and Wednesday, Nov. 25 and 26, explain.

The uniformity begins with auditions. You have to be precisely between 5 feet 6 and 5-10 1/2 in your stocking feet to even be considered for the company.

Taller hopefuls will try to slump, slouch and bend their knees. Shorter dancers will try to stand on the balls of their feet and wear high hair. Tryout officials with rulers are ruthless. No exceptions.

Once chosen, how do 30 women who differ in height by up to 4 1/2 inches kick at the same level when arrayed across the stage?

The truth is that they don't.

They're arranged with the tallest women at center stage, tapering down to the shortest on the ends of the line.

Then, to create the optical illusion that they are kicking at the exact same height, they each raise their feet to the exact centers of their own eyes. Aiding in the illusion is the impression that they are grasping each other around the waist. They aren't really. "What we're all thinking is, 'Feel the fabric,' " Capellas said.

That's one of the Rockettes' catch phrases. Others include: "Toe the line" (which applies to how they jump into their high kicks starting with feet together exactly on the same line) and "Light as a feather, stiff as a board," which is how they fall like dominoes during the scene in which they're dressed like wooden soldiers. "While falling, we also pull up and slightly away from each other."

Richardson said they do "up to 300 kicks" in a single performance. "We are the same. A unit. A Family. We work very hard and rewarded very well.

But it takes all kinds to be Rockettes.

Some are in college part time. Some are teachers, moms, wives or real estate agents. "I'm hoping to become a broadcast journalist," said Richardson, who's been in the company six years. Capellas is a 10-year veteran. But their spots aren't guaranteed. "We have to audition every year," she said.

"We live everywhere — New York, Seattle, London, Canada, Ohio. Some will take a season off to have a baby," she added. Capellas teaches in dance and Pilates in a studio.

The Rockettes, who do a more than eight-mute tap number to "The 12 Days of Christmas," dress as life-size teddy ears, wooden soldiers, ice skaters and ride a New York-style double-decker bus, are only part of the 90-minute Radio City Music Hall Christmas spectacular. Santa flies to the North Pole and there's a nativity scene with live animals.

But

show is 90 minutes up to four times a day. AIt's so great to dance at RCMH. Peopole come every year.

Up to us to maintain our technique and strength. AIt's a great honor to be a Rockette.

Red jackets. trimmed at thigh level with white futre. glittering earrings, necklaces. bow on top. full makeup.

Some will take a season off to have a baby.

2 casts in New York. 9 a.m. and 9 p.m. shows.

come from everywhere. London, Canada, Seattle.

Santa flies in. live animals. snows inside.

runway facing all different sides. 3-D.

When not Rocketting, Mary teaches at a dance studio and Ilates. 10th year.

]Anna sixth year.

Anna. honor to be part of this.

DATELINE — Begin text here.

How to kick like a Rockette.

Eye-high kicks: The dancers do about 400 of them during every show.

Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2377 or tmorris@DaytonDailyNews.com.

The uniformity of the costumes allowed one to see the dance more clearly without being distracted by the dancers themselves. ...

share the same vocabulary of movements and know how to read and give clear cues and transitions to your fellow dancers.

If you have ever been amazed watching a flock of birds flying in beautiful formations, or have seen a school of fish swimming to and fro, and wondered how they look so synchronized, then you have witnessed the magic.

Is the individual subsumed?

frustration? Safety?

Uniformity. Precision. Spacing &. Transitions.

those eye-high kicks (dancers do about 400 per show).

They also learn the tricky "hook up." Rockettes appear to link arms to form a tight-knit kick line, but they're not actually allowed to touch — leaning on a neighbor could send the dancers crashing to the stage.

ROCKETTES must be between 5'6" and 5'10 1/2" tall (measurements will be taken). Rockette candidates must be proficient in jazz and tap.

ENSEMBLE/PRINCIPAL REQUIREMENTS

MALE DANCERS must be proficient in jazz and ballet. If you also sing, please bring sheet music.

MALE VOCALISTS: Seeking strong singers for multi-racial ensemble vocal group. Must have great voice and style with a wide vocal range, be proficient at singing close harmony and able to move well. Prepare an uptempo song and a ballad in your key for the audition. Please bring sheet music. No recorded music is allowed. Be prepared to move.

MALE SINGERS WHO DANCE WELL are asked to prepare an uptempo song and a ballad in their key for the audition. No recorded music is allowed. Please be prepared to dance.

LITTLE PEOPLE PERFORMERS must be under 4'10" tall, agile, move well to music, and be able to project their voice and personality. Auditioning is preferred but LITTLE PEOPLE PERFORMERS ONLY may submit a video by mail. (Send to MSG Entertainment, 1260 Avenue of the Americas, New York NY 10020, Attn: CAA Production. No video or headshot/resume submissions will be accepted for any other performers.)

The Rockettes are a well-known precision dance company, stationed out of the Radio City Music Hall in Manhattan, New York City. During the Christmas season, The Rockettes women have performed five shows a day, seven days a week, for 75 years.

The Radio City Christmas Spectacular at Radio City Music Hall and numerous other American and Canadian cities is the most-watched live show in the U.S., with more than 2.1 million spectators annually, when they are performing.

The Rockettes have performed annually at the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade (since 1957), The Columbus Day Parade, and America's Thanksgiving Parade in Detroit. The NBC Rockefeller Center Tree-Lighting Ceremony also traditionally includes a performance by the dance troupe.

The Rockettes have also kicked off the announcements for new product lines launched by such diverse companies as McDonald's, Coca-Cola, Oldsmobile, L'eggs hosiery, Mannington Floors, and Honda's 50th Anniversary show.

Their famous kick line started with 16 women and now has 36. They are all between 5?6? and 5?10 1/2? and are arranged tallest in the middle and shortest on the ends.

The group was started by Russell Markert in 1925 in St. Louis, Missouri as the "Missouri Rockets." In 1927, Samuel Roxy Rothafel discovered them and brought them to New York City. They in many ways took over what the Ziegfeld Follies had been before Flo Ziegfeld's death. Their New York City debut was in Rothafel's own Roxy Theater on 50th and 7th, and under the name "Roxyettes." Rothafel moved them to their current stead, opening at the Radio City Music Hall on December 27, 1932. In 1936, the troupe won the grand prize at the "Paris Exposition de Dance."

The Rockettes did not allow African-Americans into the dance line until 1987.[1] The justification for the policy against hiring African-Americans was that they would distract from the consistent look of the dance group[2]

During the halftime show of Super Bowl XXII in 1988, the Rockettes were seen by a television audience of 150 million viewers. President Bush's 2001 Presidential Inauguration Ceremony featured the leggy performers prancing down the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

In November 2005, the Christmas Spectacular's musicians went on strike, although the show decided to go on, with The Rockettes dancing to recorded music.

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I had seen the John Tiller Girls in the Ziegfeld Follies of 1922. If I ever got a chance to get a group of American girls who would be taller and have longer legs and could do really complicated tap routines and eye-high kicks... they'd knock your socks off! "

—Russell Markert