The Rockettes practice high kicks at a rehearsal for the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade last month at Macy's Herald Square in New York City.

FRESNO, Calif. — Let’s face it. Rockettes stand out.

Vanessa McMahan was hanging out Tuesday in the lobby of her San Jose hotel when a group of men came up and said hi.

“They kind of figured I was a Rockette,” McMahan says.

Of course, someone tipped the guys off that a group of the world-famous dancers was staying in the hotel as part of the touring “Radio City Christmas Spectacular.” But once the word was out, it didn’t take long to single out the tall, leggy dancers in the bunch.

McMahan is used to the attention.

“People’s eyes light up,” she says. “It’s a great conversation starter.”

The phone conversation she’s having this morning is all about plugging the Christmas show, an arena-stage extravaganza that includes a double-decker bus, a 25-by-65-foot LED screen, 16 ensemble members, eight singers, six children and, of course, lots of face time with Santa.

Plus the main attraction: 18 Rockettes, or, as McMahan puts it, “36 legs.”

The tour is visiting 19 cities for a total of 81 shows.

One of her favorite parts of the performance is the appearance of the double-decker bus — “ridden” on by all the Rockettes — which in conjunction with the giant LED screen gives the illusion of driving through holiday scenes of New York.

The show includes the “Parade of the Wooden Soldiers” and the “Living Nativity” scenes both of which have been part of the original Radio City holiday show since they were first performed in 1933.

Without a doubt, the most famous move by the dancers is the “eye-high” kick — that iconic image of the women in a single line strutting their stuff in perfect synchronicity. They perform 300 eye-high kicks in each show totaling 437,400 eye-high kicks during the tour. (Isn’t it amazing what sort of fun facts publicists send out? How about this one: Twelve hundred pairs of tights adorn the Rockettes’ world-famous legs during the 19-city run!)

There are a few tricks to make the eye-high kick routine easier to pull off. The women line up by height, with the tallest in the middle. The most important thing to remember, McMahan says, is the dancers aren’t kicking as high as they can. (“We could all kick much higher,” she says with the slightly smug assurance of a professional baseball player who knows he could hit 10 home runs during batting practice.) The key is for everyone to kick at exactly the same height to create an illusion of uniformity.

McMahan has had a lot of opportunities to perfect her technique. She moved from her hometown of Kansas City, Mo. to New York — this was in the days before the show’s national tour, so she’d only seen the Rockettes on TV — and stood in front of Radio City with hundreds of women auditioning for a few coveted positions in the company. After four auditions, she landed a spot in 2003. Among the highlights of her Rockette career: performing at the Tony Awards with Hugh Jackman and at the 2004 presidential inauguration.

Through it all, she says, she’s had a blast. She has no problem with another important requirement of the job: smiling.

“Your cheeks do hurt,” she says, “but you’re used to it.”