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The Bowery Boys: New York City History

The Radio City Rockettes: New York's Dancing Queens (Rewind)

The Bowery Boys: New York City History

Tom Meyers

Society & Culture, History, Documentary, Places & Travel

4.83.6K Ratings

🗓️ 29 November 2024

⏱️ 52 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The Rockettes are America’s best known dance troupe — and a staple of the holiday season — but you may not know the origin of this iconic New York City symbol. For one, they’re not even from the Big Apple!

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

America's famous precision dancers, the Rockets, are having a final rehearsal before going on tour.

0:13.0

So gather around!

0:14.0

Hey, it's the Bowery Boys!

0:16.0

Hey! Hi there. Welcome to the Bowery Boys. This is Greg Young.

0:32.8

And this is Tom Myers. Tom, guess what I did this weekend? I went after so many years to the Radio City

0:40.8

musical Christmas Spectacular featuring The Rockets. How was it? Okay, so first of all, this is on an ad.

0:48.5

This is just my authentic opinion here, but I was kind of blown away. I think I saw it last in 2005 or something. It is so

0:57.3

fancy now with this brilliant light show, some pyrotechnics. Tom, they have drones now.

1:04.7

Drones. Drones. Ferry drones. Yes. The good kind of drone. Uh-huh.

1:11.3

Glinda, the good drone.

1:12.7

They flutter over the heads of the audience.

1:15.6

And all the singers and dancers were gray.

1:18.3

Santa and Mrs. Claus, of course, and the dancing bears.

1:22.0

But I was there for the Rockettes.

1:24.4

And they, of course, did not disappoint.

1:27.6

And get this. I saw an evening show, okay, the fourth of four performances that day.

1:33.7

Now, there are a couple alternating casts of Rockettes, but still, that is a lot of work.

1:39.5

That requires an amazing amount of athleticism and endurance, and they're doing it in heels,

1:45.5

all the while looking so glamorous.

1:48.7

And I just realized this, Tom, on last week's show on the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade,

1:54.4

we revealed that the first parade was in 1924.

1:58.5

The Rockettes' precision dance troupe was formed, believe it or not, in the following

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