Mamma Mia!
August 16 to 21
More than 45 million people have already seen this hit Broadway musical, which just might be the happiest show ever produced. Filled with ABBA’s hits—everything from “Does Your Mother Know?” to “Dancing Queen” to “Take a Chance on Me”—it gets toes tapping and audiences smiling. Experience it for yourself at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre, and don’t even try not to sing along.—Sheri Radford
Eddie Mekka as DJ Vince Fontaine in Grease
If the name Eddie Mekka sounds familiar, you probably grew up watching Laverne & Shirley. Although Mekka appeared on TV shows such as The Love Boat, Fantasy Island, Moonlighting and The New Rockford Files, he’s best known as Shirley Feeney’s on-again-off-again boyfriend Carmine “The Big Ragu” Ragusa, a dancer/singer who spent the entire run of Laverne & Shirley striving toward his big break on Broadway. Now Mekka joins the Broadway Across Canada production of Grease as DJ Vince Fontaine. Catch his performances at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre (Oct. 26 to 31).—Sheri Radford
Lion King dance captain Kendra Moore on becoming a lioness, learning to sing, and returning to Alberta.
By Sally MacKinnon
At the age of five, Kendra Moore found her passion—one that has defined her life for more than three decades. The Royal Winnipeg Ballet came to her hometown of Edmonton, and when ballerina Evelyn Hart took the stage, Moore had a moment of pure clarity.
“I remember it exactly,” she says. “I just thought, ‘I want to do that.’”
This summer, Moore will come full circle. She is returning to Alberta not as a prima ballerina, but a dance captain in Broadway Across Canada’s presentation of Disney’s The Lion King. The musical is based on the 1994 hit movie, about a lion cub named Simba and his journey from exile to king of the jungle.
Moore teaches choreography—which has been set since the show’s inception in 1997—to members of the ensemble, the dancers performing behind main characters. She also takes over when a dancer is sick, injured or on vacation. That means at every performance she is backstage, ready to jump in as a gazelle, lioness or piece of the Serengeti.
Moore doesn’t find her duties stressful, even when she has to take over at a moment’s notice; her transformations give her the same serenity she discovered at five-years-old.
“There is something about it, expressing yourself through movement,” she says. “I’m thinking about nothing else. It’s more than just being in the moment.”
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