It happens every spring,–no, not baseball–the annual ballet school recital. Well, this one was actually on the weekend after the summer solstice, but they must have needed time to polish this production. Ballet, tap, modern, jazz, funk and hip-hop in 30 numbers with about a hundred dancers, from tiny tots to very well schooled teens. Three performances–for all but the littlest kids, who did just the two matinees–filled Pepperdine’s Smothers Theatre with parents, grandparents and friends supporting students of Ciara Dance Studio in Woodland Hills.
I went because my friend’s just-turned-5-year-old granddaughter was making her debut. Having been through this routine with my own granddaughter at about the same age–different studio, same routine–I figured it would be all pink tutus and scuffed slippers, tights with runs up the back and artlessly applied makeup on tykes who hadn’t quite mastered the steps. I figured wrong.
This was a class act. Start to finish. Costumes were smashing, not made by loving hands at home, but happily paid for by moms who hadn’t touched the old Singer in years. The designer must have known the dancers, their strengths and weaknesses, because the effect was perfect. One group, with a few given to preteen pudginess, sported shiny yellow overalls with green tops that stopped just below where the bust line would soon be and a fringe just long enough to cover the poochy tummies.
A show stopper early in Act One was “Broadway Baby,” performed by 10 little girls from the Pre-Ballet and Tap II classes, who were escorted onstage while the lights were dimmed so they would all be on their marks when the lights came up. Well, the last little doll at stage left wasn’t quite sure she wanted to be left out there and started to exit just as the lights came up and the music started. Slightly bewildered but trapped in the spotlight, she looked at the next dancer in line and made valiant attempts to follow the steps, inevitably turning the wrong way.
It was hilarious. The applause was deafening. She was obviously relieved to have survived without falling or bumping into anyone, oblivious to the laughter and to the fact she had successfully upstaged the others. She was a big hit.
I always go to these things knowing I will at least enjoy the music: Classical for ballet, show tunes for tap and jazz for modern. I cringed when I first saw the program included several hip-hop numbers. Not my beat, so to speak.
Wrong again. The hip-hop numbers were fantastic, the energy palpable, and the joy infectious. Youngsters who lacked the finesse, the lithe bodies, the rigorous training to do ballet, poured their enthusiasm into this most modern of dance forms. Forget the pirouettes, the tour jetes, Tchaikovsky, the swans. They were jivin’ and loving every minute of it.
Every troupe has a star, and this was no exception. From the opening jazz number, “Lean on Me,” one girl stood out. Not because her tan was a shade darker, her legs a bit longer, her arms the most graceful, but because she was so focused, so part of the music, so completely in the moment. It was no surprise when she returned with the advanced ballet dancers, her leg lifts the highest, her leaps the longest, and all with effortless grace.
We learned at intermission that she is Cara Lynn McGee, daughter of the school’s guiding light, Cindy McGee, who directed and produced the show and choreographed most of the ballet. Cara has been accepted on a full scholarship at the Dance Theatre of Harlem and will be a freshman at Columbia in the fall.
I remembered seeing the movie, “Billy Elliot,” about the son of a coal miner discovering ballet when he was supposed to be taking prize-fighting lessons. How he loved to dance to popular music, tried to learn to play his dead mother’s piano. How the ballet teacher recognized his gift, coached him for nothing and fought his father to allow him to audition for the Royal Ballet Academy. After his audition, one of the judges asked him what he felt when he danced. He said it was like electricity moving through him. No wonder he didn’t want to box, he just had to dance.
For every 5,000 kids learning the time-step and the waltz clog, maybe one will be a Gene Kelly or a Fred Astaire. Maybe only one who hoists a leg up on the barre will become a Baryshnikov or a Nureyev. Still, the urge to move to the music, to be transported by the movement, maybe to feel the electricity, is too strong to resist. Some may wind up in the chorus; a few may become principal dancers with major companies. But as long as there are dance programs in schools and dedicated teachers at local studios, a few will find their bliss. Cara McGee is definitely on her way.