Mother Mary and the Rockettes: A Nativity Story

by: M. Lori Torok

Working at Radio City Music Hall during the Christmas Spectacular was a thrilling experience, a dream come true. As I passed through the golden stage door, sheer exhilaration welled up from somewhere inside me, a portal of childhood aspirations and wishes. The energetic imprint of history and tradition echoed through its halls. Both the job and the Music Hall were enormous in so many ways: cavernous, endless, and weighty.

I had been on tour with the Rockettes and finished my contract in Las Vegas. After two years, I thought it was time to return home. My apartment was calling to me, and my boyfriend was, too. James and I had been dating on and off for over four years, and a couple of years on the road didn’t do much for the relationship. After two years, James asked me to come back. He said he missed me, missed us.

I missed us, too. However, I enjoyed traveling and seeing the country (over seventy cities in all). The tour then moved to an extended run in Las Vegas. We had two shows a night at the Flamingo, but the days were ours. The tour gave me much time to observe, study, and write. Although I was already in my mid-twenties, with a Master’s degree in dance, my time with the Rockettes was another degree entirely. I learned, first-hand, what it meant to be a woman in America in the twentieth century. I learned to see through the eyes of others, as they gazed at “woman,” to be both the seer and the seen.

I was happy to finally be back home, in my place in Astoria, Queens. That year, I will join the Rockette line in the Christmas Spectacular at Radio City. Was this more real than being a Rockette on tour or in the Vegas run? It felt like I was coming back home, where a Rockette belongs. But I hadn’t yet performed at this home. The Christmas Spectacular—what a great word to describe the gilded performance around this time—a spectacular. Nonetheless, this Rockette was coming home to become real at Radio City Music Hall. I couldn’t help but wonder if James’ and my relationship would also become more real.

The rehearsal process was arduous. There is so much to learn when you are new to the show. Most of the cast had already performed these numbers in previous years. I was overwhelmed by the number of routines, costumes, and information I had to learn, and quickly.

After a dozen costume changes, juggling with tap shoes of many colors, swimming with bears, kaleidoscope ragdolls, golden xylophones, and gazillions of eye-high kicks, the last toy soldier falls. The scene shifts to its classic finale, the Living Nativity. It is an iconic piece: the birth of Christ in the manger, complete with live animals, which make the scene undeniably real. I was looking forward to this almost as much as the Parade of the Wooden Soldiers.

At one rehearsal, we were called to the stage to learn the staging for the Nativity. Elevators would bring you down from the upstairs dressing rooms to the stage level. When we were called down, everyone filed into the hall and stepped into the elevators. They were squeezing in to accommodate as many as possible. Since it was so crowded, I decided to take the nearby stairs.

I went too far down, and when I exited the stairwell, I discovered I was under the stage. I could hear the dancers above me walking on the stage. Instead of just turning around and returning up the way I came, I continued to pass under the stage, knowing that I could come up on the other side, where we were told to meet. I passed the pre-set costume pieces; I had been through this space before, no problem. But I got turned around and couldn’t quite remember which direction the front of the stage was. Stage right? Left? I passed the stables for the sheep and donkeys a couple of times and kept getting completely turned around. I was down there for what seemed like forever, in a bit of a panic.

I finally found my way back up to the stage and ran to join the group gathered, attentively listening to the director. The first thing I heard was, “…And that’s everything you need to know about the Nativity.” My heart sank. How could I have gotten so lost? How could I have missed the entire direction?

For the show’s run, I was a shepherd who made the pilgrimage to Bethlehem from the house left ramp, from the first mezzanine to the stage. Out in the house, with the audience, I could experience the Nativity for every performance. I was stirred to the soul and honored when it was my turn to walk onto the stage and kneel before baby Jesus—sometimes in camel poop. The costumes would be cleaned, so it wasn’t a problem. I was honored to witness the first Christmas every single day of the season, sometimes five shows a day.

As we approached Christmas, I looked forward to spending the holiday with James and creating new traditions together. In the quiet of my heart, I believed it would be a bridge to the next version of us. I felt he was planning something big, maybe entering into a deeper commitment.

On the Solstice, we met for lunch. James was already at the restaurant, sitting alone at a table for two. There was a bit of small talk about the weather, my work schedule for the week, and his family in Vermont. He was awkward, physically uncomfortable, as the conversation dragged into an aching silence. He perked up with a forced smile and said he wanted to give me my Christmas gift early. He reached down and, from under the table, he presented me with a full-sized umbrella, wrapped in shiny Christmas paper. It was covered so tightly that there was no doubt about the package’s contents. I returned a forced smile and began to unwrap what was so obvious to see.

As I gently peeled the paper off the curved handle, held together with far too much tape, James stumbled over his words. He stammered, “I thought this was good for you, and you’ll be able to actually use it.”

I was silent.

He revealed that he was leaving in the morning to be with his family for the holidays. As the “we” drained from the air, I knew he had already left.

I was alone that Christmas, alone with forty Rockettes and six thousand spectators, somewhere between two and five shows a day. It was difficult to navigate my loneliness amid such heightened Christmas effervescence and froth. It was the lie that the depressed show others when there is no room for the truth. I hated the lies I told on that stage. And I was shamed by my sadness. But then there was the show’s finale, and I would witness the birth of Christ, from the house left ramp. I would kneel, sometimes in poop, and I knew, somehow, everything would be OK.

I was scheduled to work the shows on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day—the gift of busyness. I don’t know what I would have done otherwise. I had no plans for Christmas celebrations, and I hadn’t told anyone about the breakup. I fell deeply into myself and my own emptiness. My apartment had become a mess, as I was hardly there and didn’t feel like tending to such things. Why bother?

In the Nutcracker segment, I was the shortest Polar Bear among three taller Rockettes. The director thought it was cute to have a runt in the scene. The costume swallowed me, head to claw. It was impossible to navigate the oversized fur-covered cocoon with any grace, and I was an obvious source of frustration for the others in the scene—and for myself.

Once, I ended a series of spins with the enormous, unsecured polar bear’s head spinning backward. I couldn’t see where I was onstage or how I related to the other bears, and I was dancing blindly. I fell into the girl next to me and shouted into the cavernous, backward-facing head, “This is not my life!”

On Christmas Eve, during the break between the last two shows of the night, I decided to walk through Rockefeller Center, hoping the city’s energy would help me get out of my head and into the Christmas spirit.

I found myself at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, an enormous place to hide, a marble monument—a showplace where spirit can easily get lost. I walked to the back, behind the altar, to the Lady Chapel. It was quiet back there, with only a few people deep in prayer, asleep, or maybe hiding, too. The energy of the Lady Chapel was extraordinary; the air itself was filled with the palpable prayers of those wanting to be hidden and those wanting to be found. I sat. My loneliness took over, and tears fell through my false eyelashes.

I was embarrassed by my sadness in this glittery life. Here I am, in the middle of the biggest Christmas production on the planet, living a dream, and I should be feeling joy, but I am lost, lonely, and confused. I silently asked, “How am I supposed to get through Christmas?”

A light came down around me, and I looked up, trying to see where this theatrical lighting effect was coming from. I heard a voice that was neither within me nor outside me. It was loving, beyond all love I had ever known; it was the voice of Mother Mary.

She spoke, “A child is being born tonight. This child is within you. You are giving birth, and you must prepare, for it is the birth of love. Prepare. Clean your apartment, and create a home for the newborn child. Prepare for Christ-love being born to the world.”

Something shifted deep within me. I was transformed, filled with light. Purpose. Love. Vibrating, I left the cathedral no longer heavy with grief, but reborn.

I returned to finish my workday with the final Christmas Eve performance. I could barely wait to get home and prepare for the birth of Christ on this beautiful night. This wasn’t about decorating, cooking, or buying anything. This wasn’t even about joining with anyone else. I stayed up most of the night, joyfully cleaning, until the place was sparkling.

The following day, I returned to Radio City with a newfound clarity of Christmas that I never had before, beyond all the trappings and wrappings that fill the day. Beyond the glitter, the sequins, the eyelashes, and the thousands of smiling faces—I felt free from the need to find Christmas outside myself. The performances I gave that day came from a personal experience, a place of honest, heartfelt love born of the Christ within.

© 2025 M. Lori Torok. Excerpt from a larger work.