From dance icon, a modern ‘Nutcracker’
“You’ve got big dreams? You want fame? Well, fame costs. And right here is where you start paying ... in sweat.”
That was the 30-something Debbie Allen in her breakout role as dance teacher Lydia Grant in “Fame,” the hit 1980s TV series. At 70, she still demands that kind of conviction. Now, however, the stakes are real.
Along with everything else she does, including her ongoing work with “Grey’s Anatomy,” the Houston-born dance icon and her husband, former NBA guard Norm Nixon, have operated the nonprofit Debbie Allen Dance Academy for 20 years. Students at the professionally focused conservatory in Los Angeles range from highly motivated teenagers to deer-in-the-headlights 4- and 5-year-olds.
The new documentary “Dance Dreams: Hot Chocolate Nutcracker” follows them as they prepare for their annual holiday extravaganza and biggest fundraiser — a modern, culturally inclusive musical theater piece written and directed by Allen. Produced by Shondaland (Shonda Rhimes and Betsy Beers) and directed by Oliver Bokelberg, the film drops today on Netflix.
As the COVID-19 pandemic has shoved dance into the virtual world, “Dance Dreams” underscores one of the reasons we cannot let live performance slip away: The classes and rehearsals leading up to the big show are about so much more than learning new dance steps.
“Every day is your rehearsal for life, not just ‘Nutcracker,’ ” Allen shouts as she tries to quiet a roomful of rambunctious students during one scene. It’s awesome that a star of her stature would even take time for the littlest ones. Allen and her staff of top-flight teachers truly seem to care about the young people they shepherd.
“Cheer,” the Netflix docuseries about competitive cheerleading, had a similar feel, but “Dance Dreams” is profound. Allen’s academy operates as an architect of change in a racist world. She founded it after one of the nation’s top ballet schools told her daughter, Vivian Nixon, she did not have the right body type for ballet.
The current generation has more options, but ballet obstacles persist. “The craft that chose me was not in my image,” says one of the academy’s stars.
Allen’s version of “The Nutcracker” opens a wider gate, choreographed to an original score by Mariah Carey, Arturo Sandoval, Chau-giang Thi Nguyen, James Ingram, Shiamak Davar, Tena Clark and Thump, one of Allen’s two sons. The dance includes ballet but incorporates tap, jazz and hip-hop. There are scenes called “Egypt,” “Bollywood” and “Rainforest” as well as “Candy Land” and “Fairy Land.”
Allen is in it, gamely, wearing what must the the most unflattering costume of her life as the leader of “the Real Rat Pack.”
“We have a Queen of Egypt as a Black girl,” she said during a phone interview, sounding as bighearted and energized as she does in every scene of the documentary. “What matter of pride is that? It’s pretty amazing.”
“Dance Dreams” has been translated to 180 languages. “That’s what’s exciting about being on Netflix,” Allen said. “I’m so grateful that even under all these circumstances this could be so powerful.”
As her fans know, the thread of ballet rejection begins with Allen, who found her footing on Broadway after graduating from Howard University. She took tap as a child, then started jazz lessons at 8 or 9 after the great Patsy Swayze, who had a studio in Houston in the late 1950s, caught her gazing into the studio’s big picture window.
Swayze asked Allen if she could dance and told her, “Come back tomorrow with your shoes.”
The ballet world was not so easy to crack. Houston was still segregated. Allen never saw a production of “The Nutcracker” as a kid; she wasn’t allowed inside theaters. The Houston Ballet Foundation’s nascent academy rejected her when she was 12, then gave her a scholarship two years later when it needed a talented Black student to fulfill a Ford Foundation grant. This was the mid-1960s, and the demanding Russian ballerina Tatiana Semenova, who carried a cane, was in charge.
“I was pretty good with all the positions, the tendus and so on,” Allen said. “It was like she’d found a diamond in the rough.”
Along with refining her technique, Semenova taught Allen to demand her students’ respect. In one of the film’s scenes, the young dancers curtsy and thank Allen one by one after a rehearsal. That’s old-school Russian ballet discipline.
Allen’s students learn from a slew of world-class teachers in all dance disciplines, regardless of their ability to pay for classes. Former Houston Ballet principal dancer Lauren Anderson and tap superstar Savion Glover, both of whom appear in the film, have been there as guest teachers.
Bolkenberg began filming in 2016 before he knew had material for a documentary. He and Rhimes are both parents of academy students. “Dance Dreams” turned out to be just the vehicle the school needed this year, when it couldn’t stage its live show and also was trying to raise $7 million build out new facilities.
Construction began in July on that new home, the Rhimes Performing Arts Center, which also will have a middle school when it opens next September. “It will be an oasis for the community,” Allen said.
The only thing missing now, when audiences might clamor for it, is a recording of the full “Hot Chocolate Nutcracker” show. All the lead-up of the documentary makes you want to see more than a few glimpses. Allen gets it.
“That will be the next call to Shonda Rhimes,” she said.