As an American cultural heritage, The Rockettes continue to reinvent themselves. The iconic precision dance company celebrates its century of existence throughout 2025. Therefore, an extension of their prestigious dancer development program has been announced so that they receive the unique training necessary to learn the Rockettes Precision Dance Technique. Auditions began on April 22nd, and Rockettes Legacy will be created to preserve and unite all the dancers from their history forever.
The origins of The Rockettes can be traced back to a theater in St. Louis when Russell Markert initially named them the Missouri Rockets. The inspiration to create this group of dancers came from the Tiller Girls, a British precision dance company. The savvy entrepreneur Samuel Lionel Roxy Rothafel brought them to New York in 1927 to perform at his theater, The Roxy, where he named them the Roxyiettes.
In 1932, they settled permanently in their home, the Radio City Music Hall, where they became known as The Rockettes. The following year, they presented their first Christmas show, which continues to this day. According to official data, in 2024, over a million people attended this show, which still includes the original Wooden Soldier Parade number.
During the golden age of classic Hollywood, they performed as opening acts inKing Kong, Breakfast at Tiffany's, or Mary Poppins, and during World War II, they traveled to different locations to entertain American troops. One of the first internationally known Rockettes was Hollywood star Vera-Ellen, who, thanks to her dancing skills, appeared in On the Town (1949) and White Christmas (1954).
In 1962, Maria Beale Fletcher was crowned Miss America at 19. Until a few months before, she had been part of the precision dancer group, with her New York roommate telling The Asheville Times, "she was the nicest, most pleasant girl and the easiest to get along with that I've had as a roommate in over two years with The Rockettes."
For decades, all The Rockettes were cut from the same mold, not only in terms of height and dance skills but also in terms of skin color as they had to be white. The management argued that a different skin tone distracted from the group's consistent appearance. An article in The New York Times in 2018 revealed that Russell Markert, who had been the director of The Rockettes until the early seventies, had forbidden one of the dancers from tanning because he feared she would look like "a colored girl."
This unchanging premise continued with his successor, Violet Holmes, who staunchly defended the long tradition of racial prejudices by arguing that the dancers should be "mirror images" of each other and that "one or two black girls would undoubtedly be distracting." Civil rights protests rightfully spoke out against such injustice. Finally, Jennifer Jones, the first Black dancer, made her debut in 1998 at the Super Bowl XXII halftime show. Progress has been made as in 2019, Sydney Mesher was hired, the first with a visible disability due to missing her left hand from symbrachydactyly.
To be a Rockette, the applicant must be at least 18 years old, be at least 5-foot-6 tall, and master tap dance, jazz, ballet, and modern dance perfectly. In recent decades, they have collaborated with notable entertainment figures like Mariah Carey, Jennifer Lopez, the Backstreet Boys, Jimmy Fallon, or Pitbull. In 2024, over 800 dancers from 47 U.S. states and 24 countries attended the open auditions.