Ready for Broadway

Hatter will dance with the Rockettes this winter in New York after earning second dance scholarship

Austin Willms is ready for Broadway, but is Broadway ready for Austin Willms?

The 11-year-old earned his second dance scholarship earlier this year for a hip-hop performance and will head to New York in about a month to dance on Broadway — he will also will get to spend some time with the Rockettes.

“I’m excited,” he said. “We’re going to be doing a class with the Rockettes, a few Q and A’s and I’m not completely sure but I think we’ll get to do a show — I think it’s on a dinner cruise.”

Willms is in Grade 6 and attends Ken Sauer School and says he has loved dancing for years.

“When I was in Grade 1 there was a kid in my class who took break dancing and I thought it was super cool,” he said. “I thought I’d try it out for myself and my mom found (Hit The Floor dance studio) and I got signed up.”

Willms takes hip-hop, jazz, ballet, lyrical, modern, tap, acro lessons and some private classes on the side as well. He says dance is his favourite thing.

“When I first tried dance I had a lot of fun with it and now it’s my favourite thing to do,” he said. “My favourites are hip-hop and tap.

“Hip-hop is what I started out with and it grew on me right away. Tap I took a few years later and didn’t really like it at first but now I really do.”

Willms says his last scholarship was at Walt Disney World in Florida — another very cool experience, he said.

“It was the same type of things we’ll be doing in New York but we did a parade through Magic Kingdom and we had a big performance with other companies in Hollywood Studios,” he said. “There’s a lot of learning when we go. We work on technique and on different moves with professionals.”

Willms says he has no plans on slowing down his dance life and says he could see himself doing it professionally — but added it might be a bit early to say.