Joanne Cady, longtime Omaha Community Playhouse choreographer, dies at 96

The longtime choreographer for the Omaha Community Playhouse was just a tiny girl when she figured out she belonged in the theater.

Council Bluffs native Joanne Cady, who died this week at age 96, was in a fashion show at age 3, said son Jay Cady of Roeland Park, Kansas. Each model was supposed to walk on the platform, pose and walk off. But she had a different idea.

“When it was her turn, she went to the middle of the stage and started dancing,” Jay Cady said. “The audience started applauding. They loved it.”

Backstage, show runners were frantically trying to rein her in.

“She was like, ‘No, they love me,’ and kept on going,” Jay said. And a lifelong career was born.

She started dance lessons as a small child in Council Bluffs, got a high school diploma in boarding school at St. Mary’s Academy in Leavenworth, Kansas. She attended Iowa State University but didn’t graduate and moved to New York City in the 1950s to become a professional dancer, though no job was waiting in the wings.

“It was the classic ‘Go to New York to make it’ story,” Jay said.

She ended up working at one point with ventriloquist Shari Lewis and her puppets, though both Jay and his brother Jerry, of Council Bluffs, don’t know many specifics about that gig.

She also met her husband, James F. “Jim” Cady, when she stopped in a favorite New York City bar one evening. As it turns out, Jim was having a backroom birthday bash at the tavern that night.

The bartender asked whether she was there for Jim’s party, Jay said.

“She said, ‘I don’t even know Jim. I’m just here for a drink,’” Jay said, but later, when she realized Jim was the guy who had just emerged from the backroom, she changed her mind. They got married in 1954 and had been together 44 years when he died in 1998.

Joanne Cady died Saturday at her home in Amelia Place Assisted Living in Council Bluffs.

She choreographed her first show at the Playhouse, “The Music Man,” in 1974, working with then-artistic director Charles Jones, who had just arrived at the theater from Georgia. He hired her as a full-time choreographer and teacher and she worked there for 30 years, retiring in 2003.

People who worked with Cady in Playhouse shows have posted tributes on Facebook this week. She was known for her wit and her inspiring method of teaching.

“I will always admire the level of complexity and challenge she brought to her choreography, for both dancers and non-dancers” said Susie Baer Collins, former assistant artistic director at the theater. “(She) raised the bar for musical theater excellence at the Omaha Community Playhouse.”

Another Facebook poster, Valerie Thorson, offered an anecdote that spoke to Cady’s sense of humor.

“One day I was in Charles’ office (Jones, the artistic director), and he leaned forward to rip off the next page in his small desk calendar,” Thorson wrote. “He immediately began to chuckle and then laugh uproariously. Written on the calendar, in Joanne’s handwriting, was ‘Give Cady a raise.’ They made a remarkable team.”

Cady’s sons say she loved to laugh.

“She was funny in a very dry way,” Jay said. They also said she was a strong woman, calling her “the glue to hold things together.”

She was active in the community, choreographing the Ak-Sar-Ben Coronation Ball and a yearly variety show for the Arthritis Foundation that took months of rehearsal, her sons said. She was active in the Chanticleer Theater and the Bluffs Arts Council, was in the PEO sisterhood and was a lifelong member of the Catholic church.

When asked about her hobbies, Jerry displayed a little of her dry wit himself: “She didn’t really have time, did she?”

But both sons said she fit bridge games and knitting into her schedule.

In addition to her sons, survivors include two granddaughters. A memorial Mass is at 10:30 a.m. Friday at St. Patrick Catholic Church, 4 Valley View Drive in Council Bluffs.