Six glittering Rockettes, each with impossibly long, impossibly slim legs and full makeup, though it's only a Monday afternoon, are offering enthralled Towson University dance students a glimpse behind the curtain.
Is there a height requirement?
Yes.
A weight limit?
No.
And their signature move? They each perform about 300 kicks per show, so with 100 shows a season, the young women thrust their high-heeled feet to within inches of their eyes thousands upon thousands of times.
And no, oh no, it's not easy. But it is their job - and their great honor - to make it look that way, just as more than 3,000 women who came before them did. They're Rockettes, after all - a high-stepping facet of Americana and holiday tradition for more than 75 years.
The Rockettes' Radio City Christmas Spectacular tour stops in Baltimore for the first time this year, opening Tuesday at 1st Mariner Arena. The show runs through next Sunday.
The chorus line started kicking in 1925 in St. Louis, then known as the "Missouri Rockets." A New York showman spotted the dancers and brought them to New York, where they made their debut at Radio City Music Hall on Dec. 27, 1932.
Since then, the Rockettes' fame has spread with the young women entertaining the troops during World War II, performing halftime acts at the Super Bowl, spots at two presidential inaugurations and numerous television appearances, including being a mainstay of the annual Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.
The Rockettes estimate that more than 2 million people see their Christmas Spectacular every year. For 14 years, the company has been taking the show on the road, though this year, for the first time, it will stop at arenas such as 1st Mariner. The arena setting allows the Rockettes to spread out into a much larger-scaled production than they perform at smaller theaters.
Samantha Harvey was just one of the thousands of little girls whose parents treated them to a Rockettes show in New York for the holidays. It ended up changing her life.
"Ever since then," says the Baltimore native who makes her Rockettes debut this year, "I knew I wanted to be a professional dancer."
Harvey, 22, graduated this year from Towson University. Before she moved to New York, she taught dance classes at Towson's Children's Dance Division, Dance Allegro School and Mercy High School.
