Impossible Things in CINDERELLA at Gammage

Erin Weinberger

by Jennifer Haaland

Dancer and actor Erin Weinberger practices daily making the impossible possible. As a cast member in the upcoming national tour of Cinderella at ASU Gammage AND as an online student of ASU too, her Tempe stop is layered with implausible dreams that she's turning into reality.

"I would say I'm at an age of growing into myself," Weinberger said.

At 23, she's known for many years that she wanted a lifetime of performing on stage.  After high school, she added to that wish list her desire to become a licensed massage therapist. With each of those careers in full swing, Weinberger is figuring out how to grow both into lifetime commitments.

In the roles she's playing and her real life choices, it's like she's building lives within lives.  For instance, in the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical fairytale, her main job is to support the central rags to riches plot.

"We portray the life and lifestyle that the leads are living. So at one point I protect and celebrate the Prince. As a peasant, I'm the bread seller, one of Cinderella's friends. We are all in different class systems, but our purpose is clear," she said.

the company of Rodgers & Hammerstein's Cinderella
photo by Carol Rosegg

But if they portray that lifestyle, they also have their individual lives. Weinberger noted that each character has separate relationships and that the dynamics change when the dance partners change.

"We each have our own love story going on. Our director drilled into us that 'you have to fall in love every night.' And literally, we fall back into the man's arms every performance."

Like the interior life of her characters on stage are deeper and more full than the big story of Cinderella suggests, Weinberger's personal goals intensify below the surface, too. That is, she loves the massage studio she currently maintains in New York when she's not on tour, and is happy that some of her cast mates are also her clients.  But she's gunning for more.  And ASU was the only university she found that offered her an online degree program that would work with her career as a performer.

"I need more than just my license because I want to be completely and truly invested in massage therapy," she said. "The health science program through online study at Arizona State University was a brand new major when I enrolled."

As a full-time performer her ideal is to fit one to two classes per semester into her schedule. She already has some of the biology out of the way. She's thinking Spring holds courses in modalities of Eastern science, nursing, or communications.

People assume that a dancer's life is finite and that Weinberger is being smart about a back up plan. But we're not talking back up plan, we're talking concurrent lifestyles. When Weinberger thought out loud about her performance career, she said simply, "I don't think I'll ever stop."

Whether it's a lifetime of performing or getting a science degree in the midst of a singing and dancing career, Weinberger is all about challenging conventional thought.  Watch closely to see how her character on the Gammage stage is committed and deeply involved in a life that's so much bigger than being a royal servant or an empathetic, hard-working peasant in Cinderella next week.  It's a perfect blueprint for making impossible things happen every day.

CLICK HERE for more information on Rodgers & Hammerstein's Cinderella, at ASU Gammage from December 19th to December 24th