Home turf's a kick for Rockette

How do you get to Radio City Music Hall? If you are Kristina Larson, one of the Rockettes in this year's edition of "The Radio City Christmas Spectacular Starring the Rockettes" (now at the Rosemont Theatre), the answer is practice, practice, practice. Or, rather, rehearse, rehearse, rehearse.

Not that Larson dislikes practice. She has been rehearsing her dance for most of her life.

"I began dancing when I was 6," Larson says. And for her, dance was not just a class she took, it was something she loved to do more than anything else.

"Dancing became my passion," Larson says. She discovered her love of dance when she was growing up in St. Charles. "As a child I was into dance and soccer and gymnastics," Larson says, "but eventually it was too much. My mother said we had to choose."

For Larson, there was no choice. She could give up anything but dance. "Anytime we would go to a show I would sit in the audience and cry," Larson says. "And my mom would ask, 'Why are you crying?' I would say, 'I want to be up there.'"

Today, Larsen is up there, marching and kicking and dancing in precision lines with the rest of the Rockettes. And she couldn't be happier.

But she had to fight for her dream. "I graduated early from Burlington Central High School," Larson says. "And I applied to a lot of colleges. But I had a deal with my parents that if I booked a job as a dancer before I graduated from high school I could give dancing a try."

She auditioned for some dancing roles and, as luck would have it, landed a job at 18 at a place called Club Chameleon in the Empress Casino in Joliet.

"The Club Chameleon was a themed dance club," Larson says. "We had '50s night and Disco night."

So college was put on hold, where it remains to this day. (Larson is quick to add she plans to finish her schooling soon.) Instead, Larson paid her dues. "Anything I could audition for, I did," Larson says. "I was open for anything. I do tap, jazz, modern, ballet, Broadway."

Nine years ago, after stints touring with the USO in Italy, Greece, and Turkey, and other dancing gigs, she auditioned for the Rockettes. Her versatility paid off and Larsen found a place in the touring company.

Ever since she has been part of the company that tours through Chicago.

"The Radio City Rockettes is its own entity. The dance is very stylized," Larson says. "Precision dance is a lot harder than it looks. There is no preparing for it. It is something you have to get into your body."

That's where the practice comes in. "We start rehearsals in the beginning of October," Larson says. "Six days a week, seven days a week. We go from October to January."

When Larson isn't dancing with the Rockettes, she works as an extra in movies and on TV. She also appears in music videos. Most notably, she is in William Hung's video for "She Bangs."

But her heart belongs to the Rockettes. "It becomes such a tight-knit family," Larson says. "We get very close on tour. We have tree-decorating parties and cookie-decorating parties."

And they practice. So when the curtain goes up their precision dance steps are the most precise they can be.

"Radio City Christmas Spectacular Starring The Rockettes" runs through Dec. 7 at the Rosemont Theatre, 5400 N. River Rd., Rosemont. For tickets, see rosemonttheatre.com/index.php.