Proud Cameroonian- Karine Plantadit

Karine Plantadit, Dancer
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By JULIE BLOOM

Published: February 17, 2010

In a cramped studio on West 42nd Street in Manhattan the dancer Karine Plantadit moves to the center as Sinatra’s record of “That’s Life” swells in the background. She breaks free from a male dancer’s embrace, her fists clenched, her arms flexed; all of the song’s force embodied in her movement. Wearing a skimpy brown blouse open down to there, she’s a bit reckless, a little wild and impossible not to watch.


Sara Krulwich/The New York Times

The critics agreed. Variety used the words “sizzling” and “stunning” to describe her performance in Twyla Tharp’s latest venture, which was called “Come Fly With Me” when it had its premiere in Atlanta last year and has been retitled “Come Fly Away” for Broadway, where it opens on March 25 at the Marquis Theater. In the show, set to Sinatra music and loosely about couples in and out of love, Ms. Plantadit (pronounced plahn-tah-DEE) plays Kate, but in her head the character goes by Lola J. L. Jackson — in tribute to Samuel L. Jackson — and she represents a woman who “has decided that she will have a ball no matter what.”
Ms. Plantadit, who is 40, and her co-star Rika Okamoto approached Ms. Tharp about creating new work two years ago, and what started out as semiprivate classes at Ms. Tharp’s home studio eventually became the basis of the show.
“It was so hard,” Ms. Plantadit said of those workshops. “And every time I would sweat, I thought to myself: ‘You’re like Muhammad Ali in the ring. You asked for it, so shut up.’ ”
It is something she has wanted ever since watching a bootlegged tape of “Fame” in her native Cameroon. When she was just 14, she moved to Cannes, France, to study dance and soon after saw the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater perform in Paris. She eventually came to New York to study with Ailey and went on to perform with the company for seven years before joining the cast of “The Lion King.”
But it wasn’t until she appeared in Ms. Tharp’s unusual “Movin’ Out” (2002) on Broadway, with its emphasis on telling a story completely through movement, that Ms. Plantadit felt she had finally found her match.
“My own hope is that I’m able to portray a character from Point A to Point Z with absolute continuity and absolute depth like a real actor will except that at times I will use my body,” she said.
With this show she hopes dancers in particular realize the importance of Ms. Tharp’s contribution. “This is a new genre,” she said, “and as dancers we need to evolve in a very serious way, and I love that.”