DANCING QUEENS
This dancing sensation has fans across the country, but none bigger than her parents — watching her on TV from their NYC bodega
GENESSY Castillo beat out more than 2,000 hopefuls to make the finals on “So You Think You Can Dance” — but she almost didn’t even try out.
“My friends were like, ‘We’re all going, just come on,’ ” the 19-year-old contemporary dancer from Queens tells The Post. “The last week of submissions, I sent in my video and got the callback.”
Now she’s one of four talented dancers competing to become “America’s Favorite Dancer,” an honor that comes with $250,000 in prize money, a role in the upcoming live TV version of “Rent” and the cover of Dance Spirit magazine.
Viewers voting online and via text message will ultimately decide the winner on Monday. For now, Castillo’s got the support of everyone at Blessing Food Corp in Brownsville, a bustling Brooklyn bodega run by her mom, Yessy, and her dad, Sylvio. It’s there that Genessy and her older siblings used to help out behind the counter, accepting food stamps from customers and filling bottles with condiments.
These days, the bodega walls are papered with posters of Genessy, midleap and clad in a flowing silver dress. Monday nights, when the Fox show airs, it plays on the store’s TV.
“People come to the store — new customers — and say, ‘She’s so beautiful, she’s gonna win!’ ” Yessy Castillo, 46, tells The Post, adding that she’s been stopped on the street by fans yelling “Genessy! Genessy!”
After last Monday’s show, “These old ladies came in in tears,” she says. “They said to me, ‘Oh my God, her dance made me cry,’ and then I started to cry with them!”
There was always music playing at the Castillo home in Jamaica, Queens. “Bellydancing music all day long, and hip-hop, of course,” says Yessy, who grew up in the Dominican Republic. She used to belly-dance at home for fun, and one day found 3-year-old Genessy standing behind her, dancing too. “I said, ‘You know what? I think you like to dance,’ ” Yessy says. “Two weeks after that, I put her in classes.”
She was also driven, Yessy says, declaring her determination to go to LaGuardia High School, of “Fame” fame, by the time she was 6.
Throughout her four years there, Genessy hit the competition circuit in her style: contemporary. “I’d win regional titles and stuff like that,” she says. But the tough training and intense academics weighed on her. “I actually wanted to quit my freshman year, because it was so much for me, but I knew in the back of my mind that I couldn’t,” she says. She powered through, thanks to longtime dance teacher Anthony Borello. During her junior year, as she tried to plan her future, “he would call me every single night, and be, like, ‘Genessy, I know you’re going through stuff, but you have to dance,’ ” she recalls. “‘If you want to do this, you can. I believe in you.’ ”
Even so, she wasn’t sure if she could go pro. “I didn’t want to go to college, and I still don’t want to go to college. I want to dance, and I want to get my name in this industry,” she says. Still, she adds, “It was a struggle to get my momto see this as a career and believe it.”
She came closer to her goal when she hit the stage in Brooklyn this past spring for the first round of in-person auditions. Her 90-second solo wowed judge Mary Murphy, an awardwinning ballroom dancer and choreographer.
“You’re absolutely captivating,” Murphy said. Throughout the grueling competition — in which she’s completed 19 different dance routines in two months — Genessy was considered an underdog.
“I know I don’t have the most bubbly personality,” she says. “I cry a lot, I get sad and I’m genuine about it. That’s definitely something that sets me apart.”
Even so, her obvious affection for her partner, Slavik Pustovoytov, a hip-hop dancer from Oklahoma with no formal training, made her a fan favorite.
Their connection during routines was so sweet that it had judges — and the Twitterverse — wishing they’d actually hook up.
“I know you guys were out of your comfort zone, but that was just so beautiful,” judge Vanessa Hudgens gushed in August.
“We’re not dating,” Genessy says. “[But] it’s not not there, you know what I mean?” The duo is the only couple to have both members make it to the finals.
Genessy says that her big-city upbringing helped prepare her for the competition.
“New York [is about] that hard hustle,” says the teen, who fuels up on her parents’ BLTs and iced coffee. “But it’s also the battle of being gentle with yourself . . . my journey is just trying to be happy with what I can do.”
Her momhopes she can continue to think positively — and take home the crown. “The show’s called ‘So You Think You Can Dance,’ ” Yessy says. “So, if you think you can do it, you can do it!”