On Auditioning to Work Out With Madonna
"Got off the bus at Port Authority and braved the bathroom to freshen up."
June 24, 2013
Gilford, New Hampshire
I was 19 years old
So, a week and a half ago or so, I saw a contest online, on her Facebook, offering an opportunity to workout/perform with Madonna. M’s got her own line of gyms and workout DVDs now (all Guy Oseary’s fault) and this contest would give fans the chance to do a dance-centered workout with the Queen herself. After my success with Mr. Emmanuel, I figured I might as well. I completed the application and, for those first couple days, I was so nervous, actually hoping that I wouldn’t win—out of fear. Fear! I think if this experience taught me anything, it was the benefits of overcoming all that. But more on that later.
So last Monday, I checked my email and there it was: “MDNA Audition Info.” Instead of the token butterflies, I felt a complete sense of calm. As if it were meant to be all along. And I truly felt that it was. The email said I needed to be at Broadway Dance Center by 8 a.m. on Wednesday. Fortunately, I was off that day from Hannaford—but was working until 9:00 the night before. Nevertheless, that Tuesday, after a morning spent at the Tilton Outlets looking for the chicest possible workout clothes and a five-hour shift at the store later, I was driving from Gilford to Boston to board a 1:00 a.m. Greyhound to New York City.
After a brief panic attack as a result of driving myself into Boston and getting a little lost (in a city I’d spent the last year calling home), I got to South Station with an hour to kill. I walk into the bus terminal, already a little apprehensive of the slice of life I’d encounter on an overnight bus to the biggest city in the universe, only to hear a woman scream, “You bettah clean that piss up!!!” I look to see a man who somehow had both a shaved head and a ponytail, pulling his dog away from where it had just peed right on the floor of this indoor bus station. A verbal knockdown drag out ensued between the clearly disturbed man and this woman, who took off—in her wheelchair—to find some personnel to help her out.
Fortunately, the bus was filled with relatively normal people—the middle aged white guy recording slam poetry into his iPhone aside. It was packed though and I was concerned that I would have to share my row of seats and not get any sleep at all. I put my backpack down on the seat beside me and immediately pretended to be asleep. And to great success. I packed some Benadryl and popped one as soon as the bus took off but still woke up every half hour or so. But then we got there and, already running off pure adrenaline, it was more than fine. Got off the bus at Port Authority and braved the bathroom to freshen up (a la Desperately Seeking Susan where, naturally, Madonna herself airs out her pits with the hand dryer). But, at this point, it was still only 5:30 or so. And the Broadway Dance Center wasn’t too far away. Port Authority on 42nd, the studio on 45th. So I leisurely made my way over there, stopping in a Starbucks for some coffee and people watching. Trying all the while to calm my nerves. Telling myself that, since I am obviously no dancer, this is nothing more than a fun opportunity to push myself out of my comfort zone and have a story to tell. No expectations = no disappointments. With that, I made my way over.
I got there at 7:15 and there were only 10 or so people in line. And I could tell just by looking that they were dancers. Real dancers. Epix people (The MDNA Tour was broadcasting on Epix the weekend after this and they seemed to be sponsoring this whole thing) and Team Madonna kept coming in and out of the studio, handing out waivers and making phone calls. Good Morning America showed up and filmed all the people in line (by 8 a.m., the line was 600 people long). They let in the first 25 people—myself included—and the show began.
Me and those 24 others walked into the studio, with its walls of mirrors and Good Morning America all set up in the corner. Music pumping with Madonna’s people up front. It was just amazing. Would I ever have imagined in a million years that I would be auditioning for Madonna?! I told myself to be present for every last moment, and savor it. Taking my own spot on the studio floor, I look around at all these dancers doing all kinds of stretches. And, of course, what choice did I have? I got down on the floor and started “stretching.”
Madonna’s personal trainer introduces herself and goes right into the dance sequence we’d need to do. A quick moving salsa, some arm work, and a jazz square. The salsa involved a “quick ball change” that kept tripping me up but, when it came time for judging, I tried my hardest. And for lack of fancy footwork, I knew well enough to just “give good face.” But I was never nervous! Never self-conscious. I went in thinking that this would just be fun and that’s exactly what it was. We were then asked to line up where I was not asked to step forward for the next round of auditions and, truly, I couldn’t be disappointed.
Because, at this point, I’ve told so many people about this trip and just about everyone has said the same thing. “I’d be way too afraid to do something like that!” But I wasn’t. I wanted to do this, I needed to do this. To prove to myself that I could hold my own in a room filled with people who knew better than I. That I could get to New York all by myself, that I could navigate this massive city all on my own, that I could make it alone, that I could do whatever I want to do. In less than 12 hours in New York, I walked 80 blocks, saw the punk exhibit at The Met, got pizza, auditioned for Madonna and felt so certain, all along, that this is just the start of something huge. The beginning of a life filled with auditions and experiences and lessons learned and dances performed, with lots of rejections and lots of yeses. This whole day just such a reminder of why I love New York, why I will live there one day. I have utmost faith.
And while I might not have danced well enough to workout with Madonna, I evidently looked good enough while I was doing it. Because the day after all this, that Thursday, mom gets a call from Julie down the street, screaming that she saw me in a promo for the Madonna segment on tomorrow’s Good Morning America. Thankfully, I was able to track it down online and—there I was. The teaser had a wide-shot of my whole group doing the dance sequence but the one close shot, the lone close-up, the only dancer they singularly spotlit: moi. Dancing—and pouting—for about two total seconds. The cherry on top.
August 16, 2022
Brooklyn, New York
I am 28 years old
For someone already so exalted in my life, Madonna reads particularly God-like here. She’s everywhere but she’s no nowhere. In all places, at all times—just not right now. Madge the Great and Powerful enlivening every last detail of my audition to dance alongside her without ever stepping from behind the proverbial curtain. Something that was, surely, for the best. My likelihood of cardiac arrest aside, I think being in Her presence at that moment would have been too much of a good thing. My—and pardon the anachronism—main character syndrome already teetering too near the edge of mania that if the reason for this season were to present herself, in the flesh, breathing the very same Broadway Dance Center air, well, I fear what I’d have been capable of. Gasping, sweating, dropping to my knees, speaking in faggish tongues, reveling in this destiny long fated to occur. Either that or, racked with nerves, I’d dance the sequence all the more poorly and, broken spirited, walk myself those 80 blocks directly into the Hudson River. Hence, we don’t meet our idols.
Though I have come close. If only literally. Claiming a front row spot in the general admission pit for her aforementioned MDNA Tour, it was during “Holiday” that Madonna stopped short—at a portion of the stage I’d watched enough fan recordings to know she never stopped short—to stretch out her microphone to a particularly wild-eyed 18 year old boy, getting down on her knees to lean in even closer and properly pick up the tortured tones of his, “It would be/It would be so nice!” I don’t recall a second of it. As close as I was to the stage, shoved right against the rail for the whole show, I felt like I’d been blessed enough, the notion of ever being singled out well outside my realm of possibility. Go figure. There’s some videos of it online, iPhone 4-quality footage of me and Madonna getting closer and closer to each other. And all the while: I am blowing kisses. Smooching into my palm and flicking my wrist at Madonna in a fashion I don’t even kind of remember. The last time I blew a kiss, at anybody, let alone sincerely—who knows.
I’m neither the first nor the last gay guy to rattle off the million reasons why Insert Pop Diva Here makes him feel like the biggest and brightest version of himself. Besides, I already wrote about that last year. If anything, I could just as easily blame Madonna for the creation of an altogether dangerous precedent for me. The singing into her microphone, the ups and downs of this dance audition, they’re just two of the splashier examples of something that’s proven—knock on wood—pretty common for me. That at any moment, something totally spectacular, and for no good reason, will fall right into my lap. Jobs I’ve landed, writing that’s been published, people who took a liking to me—time and again, I’ve been privy to something that I objectively did not deserve. I won’t pretend this is a burden, this middle-class white man’s cross to bear hardly unusual, let alone fair. But if it isn’t only privilege that forged this path for me, I have a feeling who did. Because how can I be surprised that some of the most amazing things that’ve happened to me had something to do with Madonna?
“I went to New York, I had a dream, I wanted to be a big star, I didn’t know anybody, I wanted to dance, I wanted to sing, I wanted to do all those things, I wanted to make people happy, I wanted to be famous, I wanted everybody to love me, I wanted to be a star, I worked really hard and my dream came true.” She says that at the beginning of a professional recording of her very first—and aptly named—Virgin Tour. Like a forward, like a myth, an Apostles’ Creed made in her image, Madonna says all this in a totally inexplicable Brooklyn accent. Making it clear, kind of, that she’s in on the joke, leaning into an irony she’s spent an entire career explaining. But, like most good punchlines, it’s all true. Never a great singer and never the best dancer, there’s no reason Madonna should have arrived to New York City and become who she became. And if it was hard work that got her there, or just good luck, or shrewd calculation, or the watchful eye of angels, I’d rather not know for sure. Too much, for both of us, is built on the story.
I sometimes think of what it’ll be like when I meet Madonna. Surprise, surprise. Always framed—and decidedly—not as an “if” so much as a “when.” Manifested realities just a little less sad than an indulged delusion. Because there I am, running into her and the twins in Central Park or interviewing her during promotion for the biopic or holding my statuette for Best Original Screenplay at her Academy Award afterparty and, at last, we’re in communion. I won’t bother speculating how clever I’ll be, if I’ll manage to start and finish all my sentences, whether or not I’ll sweat clear through my jacket. Not when it’s otherwise so obvious how I’ll feel once it’s all over. When she goes her way and I go mine, clinging to some street light or sprinting the length of Manhattan or sitting with my pants up on a toilet seat. Tears rolling down my face while I return slowly to earth, wrestling with this latest instance of great undeserved fortune. And I’ll have regrets. Kicking myself for boring her, embarrassing her, for saying too much, for not saying enough. Again with the meeting of idols. So until then, missing her one place, I’ll search another, stopping at that moment, some ten years ago, when she reached out her microphone to that boy in the audience, completely out of his mind, blowing kisses from the front row.
Great piece!