Sharp-eyed local viewers of the hit musical Chicago may spot a familiar face dancing with Richard Gere, Catherine Zeta-Jones and John C. Reilly. That’s Tara Schwartz, Lake Mary High, class of ’90, giving us a little “Razzle Dazzle,” in the slammer in “Cell Block Tango” and jazzing up “All That Jazz.”
“Definitely the highlight of my career,” she says from Los Angeles. “It’s making people think about musicals again. Musical scripts are being passed around town, and every actor is signing up for voice or dancing lessons now.”
But Schwartz will have a leg up on all those hoofer-come-latelies. She has been a professional dancer since she was 18, and has turned up, acting and dancing, in everything from The Drew Carey Show to Coyote Ugly and That Thing You Do.
“She said she’d go out for six weeks, and she hasn’t moved back yet,” says her mom, Donna Montague-Russell of Winter Springs. “She started acting with a McDonald’s commercial here when she was 14, and she’s been at it ever since.”
Schwartz, 32, has worked on the New York stage and danced in Oscar telecast production numbers. She has been around long enough to be surprised to discover genuine “triple threats” (singer-actor-dancers) among her famous fellow Chicago cast members.
“A lot of them, this was their first time trying all three,” she says. “A pretty vulnerable situation to be in. That made us bond, as a cast, I think.
“None of us knew Catherine, for instance, had a musical theater background. She came in, that first day, to sing ‘All That Jazz,’ and we were hollering and whistling in shock. Renee [Zellweger] was great to watch grow and blossom into this confident singer and dancer,” Schwartz says.
“Richard Gere worked harder than anybody. And John C. Reilly comes from the theater, but they never let him sing and dance in the movies. None of us had been exposed to that side of them. They were at the top of their game, I tell you.”
Maybe Chicago will bring back the musical in all its glory. But Schwartz is smart to cover all her bases. She’s in other films with less song and dance, for instance, the new Robert Downey Jr. quasi-musical of The Singing Detective.
“But hopefully, with all this buzz for Chicago, there’ll be more straight musicals, more work out here for actors who can sing and dance. That would be just great.”
