Glossy Fosse

Because the mass impact of movies eclipses the stage, the most commonly held impression of Bob Fosse the man, as opposed to Bob Fosse the artist, perhaps inevitably will come from the unflattering self-portrait he drew as writer-director of the film “All That Jazz.”

The semiautobiographical picture, released in 1979, was packed with the glorious, sexy, sudden and kinetic dancing that made Fosse one of Broadway’s leading directors and choreographers.

He got his start as a boy hoofer in Chicago vaudeville houses and strip joints, became a high-profile dancer in the early 1950s, then exploded into a 25-year prime.

His credits, by the time “All That Jazz” emerged, included a long list of hits: choreographer of the stage and film versions of “The Pajama Game” and “Damn Yankees,” director of the stage musicals “Sweet Charity,” “Pippin,” “Chicago,” “Dancin’ ” and the film version of “Cabaret.” Excerpts from nearly all of those make up the dance musical “Fosse,” which opens tonight at the Orange County Performing Arts Center.

“Fosse” is a celebration that re-creates his dances as he originally staged them. But his self-assessment in “All That Jazz” was no celebration. Fosse, who died in 1987, cast a haggard, goateed Roy Scheider as his alter ego, Joe Gideon--a man whose every morning began with a caustic overture: shower, eyedrops, swallow an amphetamine, look in the mirror, put on a happy face and self-mockingly proclaim: “It’s show time.”

Fosse made Gideon into a guy driving himself to death with affairs, overwork, endless cigarettes and an apparent core indifference not only to the many people in his life who loved him--ex-wife, daughter, girlfriend--but to life itself.

The other person forging a lasting celluloid impression of her real self in “All That Jazz” was Ann Reinking. The Seattle-raised actor-dancer, a dark-haired, husky-voiced beauty, had been Fosse’s lover off the stage and protegee on it. On screen she played exactly that role under the name Kate Jagger. Fosse used her bountiful winsomeness and talent to pack the case against himself/Gideon. What kind of loser would it take to sleep around and drive himself to death when he could come home each night to that?

Reinking and Gwen Verdon, the dancer who married Fosse and starred in his shows, were prime movers in creating “Fosse.” As much as “All That Jazz” would suggest that he neglected and hurt them, they were loyal keepers of his flame--Verdon right up to her death last fall at 75.

Now Reinking is subjecting her body again to the rigors of Fosse dancing. At 51, after a three-year hiatus from the stage, she has been singing and dancing lately in the Broadway cast of “Fosse.” The show opened in January 1999 and won a Tony Award that year as best musical.

She spoke over a backstage phone at the Broadhurst Theatre last week while awaiting her call for the second act.

Reinking, whose two-month New York engagement ends April 29, said that when Ben Vereen signed up earlier this year for a limited stint in “Fosse,” she was inspired by the sight of another leading star who had worked under Fosse dancing alongside a new generation of performers. Vereen’s career took off after he starred in “Pippin,” and he later emceed the elaborate, phantasmagorial death-scene production number at the end of “All That Jazz.”

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Reinking saw that some of Fosse’s pieces have “a span of life” that enables an older dancer to take them on.

“Fosse,” of course, is all about extending the span of life of the mentor’s dance inventions. Reinking and others have noted that Fosse’s work in the ‘60s and ‘70s showed up in some of Michael Jackson’s moves in his influential videos of the ‘80s. Credited as a co-director and co-conceiver of “Fosse,” Reinking has had the chance to teach a new generation of dancers the master’s steps.

“There’s something genuinely classic, and they warrant being done,” she said. “It’s sort of an unspoken rule in dance that you pass on what you know. And if something is very good it will last. So far, Bob’s work is lasting very well. Every time they revive something of his, it works.”

She said Verdon reconstructed as many as 70 of Fosse’s dance pieces while preparing “Fosse.” And, with 24 replications in “Fosse” (as well as several transitional numbers and pastiches that Reinking choreographed after his style), that leaves a lot more for a “Fosse II.” Reinking said there is talk about doing just that: “They’re all good, a whole mess are famous, and there was only so much time” for a single show.

Though “Fosse” proves that his disciples can successfully remount his showpieces, it’s less certain they can undo the unsympathetic image-making of “All That Jazz.”

Reinking, for one, thinks he was far too harsh on himself in creating Joe Gideon.

“I asked him why and I said, ‘You know, that’s not really you at all.’ ” Fosse’s answer was that he drew the character to make an artistic point.

“The whole gist of ‘All That Jazz’ is Faustian. It’s about a man who sells his soul to show business--which Bob didn’t do. He understood the dangers of glamour and falling into that kind of life. He wanted [Gideon] to be not quite so likable, so you could get the moral of the story.”

Furthermore, Reinking said, she never heard Fosse utter the expression, “It’s show time!”

“I do know one line in the movie that is very Bob. [Gideon] says, ‘I hate show business.’ And I say, ‘You love show business.’ And he says, ‘You’re right. I’ll go either way.’ ”

SHOW TIMES

“Fosse,” Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. Opens tonight. Tuesdays through Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 7:30 p.m.; matinees Saturdays and Sundays, 2 p.m. Ends April 29. $29.75 to $63.75. (714) 556-2787 or www.ocpac.org.