Them being Cost n' Mayor, Austin Telenko and Marideth Batchelor. Their choreography went viral for a reason.
It's high energy, funny, innovative, and impossible not to watch, and now they're taking that energy to the Off-Broadway stage.
Their new show, 11 to Midnight, at the Orpheum Theatre, is turning their choreography into a theatrical dance experience. And I recently had the chance to drop in on rehearsals.
Joelle Garguilo: First, let's just start with the show, Eleven to Midnight. What is it going to look like?
Marideth Batchelor: The biggest and most fun party you've ever been to in New York City.
That party takes place on New Year's Eve with a group of friends and 65 minutes of nonstop dancing.
Austin Telenko: We really just zone in on what's happening during that very last hour on New Year's Eve, where all the possibilities are endless. You rethink things - you want to start something new, get rid of old things, reconnect, rekindle. All the feelings you can feel are within that last hour. And that's Eleven to Midnight.
Joelle Garguilo: How many dance numbers are in this? Do we know? Do we have a count?
Austin Telenko: I was gonna say 30. It feels like a lot.
Marideth Batchelor: I was gonna say 30 too. I don't know.
Joelle Garguilo: So it's safe to say nonstop dancing.
Marideth Batchelor: Nonstop dancing.
As for their story, well, it didn't start on TikTok.
Joelle Garguilo: How did this happen? Your trajectory is awesome. To really talk about this, we should go back to Six Flags in New Jersey.
Both: Oh, you studied.
Joelle Garguilo: Just... those kids then.
Marideth Batchelor: We met doing a Halloween show at Six Flags Great Adventure. We were airbrushed head-to-toe every night as zombies, which is so weird because when I look back on falling in love, we were like... decrepit. If we went back and told our younger selves that this is where we'd be, we wouldn't have believed it at all.
When the pandemic hit, they'd only been dating for a month.
Joelle Garguilo: And you say...
Marideth Batchelor: "Why don't you come to North Carolina with me? Just wait it out with my family. It'll be so fun. It'll be two weeks." And then we were there for a very long time. And then my mom was like, "You know, everybody's dancing on TikTok these days." We started posting our original choreography, and it just took off. We ended up making Cost n' Mayor a thing. We made Austin and Marideth a thing. And we got married, and the rest is history.
And now they can call the Orpheum Theatre home.
Marideth Batchelor: It's amazing to have such an iconic theater for a dance show, and stepping into that space will be so fun.
They even taught Joelle Garguilo some moves.
Joelle Garguilo: Can we take the simplest thing and teach me that?
Marideth Batchelor: I don't know... I think this is not a- I think they should do it. I think they should do it.
Joelle Garguilo: Tell me about this.
Marideth Batchelor: So in this number, the whole friend group at the apartment plays a game called Don't Spill Your Drink. So when we dance, we have to be careful not to spill.
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